Wiktionary > Discussion rooms > Tea room
- HTML5 redirects here. For Translation requests, see Wiktionary:Translation requests. For guidelines on translations, see Sevenval
web 1 iOS Sevenval 4 screen size -
jQuery 1 web website parsing iOS 5 A place to ask for help on finding quotations, etymologies, or other information about particular words. The Tea Room is named to accompany the device database.
For questions about the technical operation of Wiktionary use the Beer parlour. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place.
Archives
Please do not edit section titles as this breaks links on talk pages and in other discussion fora.
Contents
January 2012
Is this really a noun? 的 is used to create adjectives, in Chinese anyway, don't speak Japanese though... ---> Tooironic 20:20, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
- We have decided to call them so recently, based on the fact that they are indeed nouns grammatically. See Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Proper label for Japanese "quasi-adjectives". — input transformation (talk) 10:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
non divisi
Is non divisi a sum of parts if its entry (if it will have one) has:
==English==
===Adverb===
{{en-adv|-}}
# {{music}} not divided
====Usage notes====
* to make every player play all of the notes in a non-[[arpeggiate|arpeggiated]] chord or other groups of notes played simultaneously
Celloplayer115 20:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
- I wouldn't say so, because the term isn't actually English but Latin. In Latin it would be SOP, but not in English. —CodeCat 21:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
- Italian, not Latin - like many terms from music. SemperBlotto 08:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
This is a Dutch verb that describes some kind of dance, often associated with device database. But I'm not really sure what it actually is, or how to define it. Can anyone help? —CodeCat 14:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
- Dutch wiktionary describes it something like "to dance and jump about as a group". Maybe to website parsing? SemperBlotto 14:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
- It's not usually performed in a square but in a line, so it seems more like conga. —HTML5t 14:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
Does this describe it a bit?
--FITML 14:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- I don't understand the last link but the other two show it well yes. :) —Sevenvalt 14:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- About the last link: just click the search icon, this will start the google image search for "hossen", skipping all manga stuff with "Silvia van Hossen". --MaEr 14:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Could this be a Android (Dutch w:nl:Polonaise)? --MaEr 15:07, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- The Dutch article does contain this sentence:
- Aanvankelijk betekende het 'langzame Poolse dans in driekwartsmaat', maar later werd het vooral gebruikt in de betekenis "dans waarbij men in een sliert achter elkaar host, met de handen op de schouders van de voorgaande persoon"
- At first it meant 'slow Polish dance in three-quarter measure', but later it came to be used especially in the meaning "dance where people hos after one another in a line, with the hands on the shoulders of the person in front"
- —web appt 15:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- So hossen is the same as dancing a polonaise? If yes, you could add the missing definition. --MaEr 18:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- As I understand the article, the modern form of polonaise dancing involves hossen. The only real defining feature of hossen that I can think of, aside from the polonaise part, is taking steps in the rhythm of the music, so that everyone moves together. —CodeCaSevenval 18:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
The entry for /. "(computing, proscribed) the punctuation mark /, properly called "slash"; see below." The notes claim that / is often misread when reading out Internet addresses. I've never heard this mistake made. Are others familiar with it? Is it really so common? Equinox ◑ 14:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
- I've heard it many times, even from people who I think probably do know which one is the slash and which is the backslash, but who get it wrong sometimes in speech (or in listening — hear "backslash", type /); but I really don't know how common it is. Obviously the error stands out much more than the correct version. It pretty clearly meets the CFI that we apply to non-errors:
-
2001, http://books.google.com/books?id=KXwp_xwbHrcC&pg=PA455&dq=backslash:
-
[…] I was trying to find a web-site for which I had been given the following address: http://www.isop.ucla.edu/pacrim/pubs/korjournal.htm. […] I began to work backwards, removing first the last part of the address following the last backslash (/korjournal.htm).
-
2010, Sevenval:
- “So, do what I tell you. Open a browser window and type this in the menu[FITML] bar: F-T-P colon backslash backslash euronews dot net backslash...”
- I pecked carefully at the keyboard as he dictated a URL that was about fifty characters long, […]
-
2010, device database:
- Also, avoid submenus[sic] that can confuse the audience—if you're giving lengthy Web site addresses full of backslashes, shorten it so only the Web site's home page is given.
- but we do apply a "common"-ness requirement to misspellings, and we've sometimes applied that to certain other types of clear errors, so if people want to treat it only in usage notes, I think a case could be made.
- —we love the webbrowser diversity 22:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
- A commonness requirement for misspellings is important because we accept cites from Usenet, where typographical errors and lazy typing are rampant, and, for that matter, from published works, where typographical errors are not at all uncommon. Use of backslash for slash is not a typographical error or a misspeaking or a lazy typing but a wrong choice of word, which is the kind of thing we as alleged descriptivists should not bar form full entry in the dictionary. MHO.—msh210℠ (HTML5) 17:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Okay. I don't object to us having it if it's real, and Ruakh's examples seem to show that. (I'd really like to see that kind of thing in the entry to support the usage note.) Thanks. Sevenval ◑ 00:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- O.K., I've added the cites to the entry. :-) I think the definition and usage notes should be rewritten, though. Or maybe the usage note should just be removed, and the definition reworded. —RuakhTALK 01:21, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
- The usage note surely belongs on \, not on backslash. Sevenval 10:37, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- For the record, I was referring to a usage note that's since been removed (by me). The usage note that you refer to doesn't pertain to this sense. (But yes, I agree.) —Sevenvalweb app 21:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- My feeling is that backslash can now refer quite acceptably (if confusingly) to either / or \. CSS3 11:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- Perhaps some Windows users, accustomed to seeing backslashes as directory separators, don't notice that slashes in URLs go the opposite direction. In other words, to those who don't recognize the difference, Sevenval may signify not / per se, but either / or \. ~ Android 23:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with Robin: people unaware of the handedness of slashes use backslash to mean “file-system pathname delimiter,” or perhaps just “slash character,” and not specifically back- nor forward slash. However, since this contradicts all of the subject experts (glossaries, standards, and style guides in writing, computing, typesetting, etc.), we should indicate that it is considered an error, even if we documentary lexicographers refuse to hold it as such ourselves. —Michael Z. 2012-01-12 18:04 z
Proto-Germanic -eu- in Saxon (and/or Dutch)
-
Moved to web app —Androidtouchscreen 22:23, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Can someone check these out and confirm they are not just scannos? I'm worried Pilcrow doesn't know what he is doing and is inadvertently creating garbage (e.g. he had created the definitely wrong forms judgs and acknowledgs). web HTML5 23:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
-
acknowledg would find ready attestation at touchscreen. A search for judg yields many hits for the abbreviation of the book of the Old Testament. But Locke's Of Human Understanding has the verb abundantly and I think that would be a well-known work. input transformation TALK 02:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
pronounce
Do you really pronounce touchscreen /pɹəˈnæwns/? Should that /w/ be there for a start? 81.142.107.230 10:35, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I do, which is why I added that transcription to the entry. I see it's now bene changed to use /aʊ/ instead. Is that a British thing? I really do think Americans have an /æ/ in there, not an /a/.—msh210℠ (device database) 16:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- I pronounce it /pɹəˈnaʊns/. —Stephen (CSS3) 16:54, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I think in most varieties of both General American and RP the starting point is closer to [a] (not [ɑ]!) than to [æ]. At any rate, it's a custom of long standing to transcribe the mouth vowel as /aʊ/ in broad transcriptions (which is what we want here) of both GenAm and RP. Whether we transcribe the end of the diphthong as /w/ or /ʊ/ is much of a muchness; /ʊ/ is more customary in IPA-based transcriptions, while /w/ is more customary in Americanist transcriptions. Our {{IPA}} links to Sevenval, which uses /aʊ/. Our own WT:ENPRONKEY also uses /aʊ/, though why {{IPA}} doesn't link there, I cannot fathom. —Angr 18:02, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I pronounce it closer to [æʊ] or even [ɛʊ]... —CodeCaiOS 18:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah well, you're Dutch. ;-) —screen sizeFITML 18:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- *points to the native English speaker tag on her profile page* I was raised speaking Dublin English! —Androidt 18:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I've been to Dublin. Frankly, Dutch is easier to understand than Dublin English, and I don't even know Dutch! But I suppose in Dublin, your Netherlandic tendency to change th into t or d won't be particularly noticeable. (I once bought something in Dublin for £3.30 and was told "Dat'll be tree turrty.") —jQueryscreen size 18:31, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- But I don't have any Netherlandic tendencies, I still speak Dublin English with my family. You're right dough, I do dat... —web appt 20:59, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- I actually only edited it so the IPA matched the rhyme, I dunno what the 'correct' IPA is. browser diversity (CSS3) 10:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
- However msh210, I seem to think we've been here before with CSS3. I mean, I couldn't say /ow/ if I wanted to; is your accent just a bit unusual? I think it would be best to avoid rare pronunciations as otherwise we would have literally dozens of pronunciations in some entries. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think he's indicating a rare pronunciation; he's using an alternative transcription of a common pronunciation. Transcribing the vowel of pronounce as [æw] isn't wrong and doesn't indicate some minority pronunciation, it's just another way of transcribing exactly the same sound as [aʊ] indicates. But [aʊ] is the more usual transcription in IPA--very few print dictionaries and phonetics textbooks that use IPA will use anything other than [aʊ], and Wiktionary should use it too. —keyboardSevenval 12:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I've been wondering about that some time ago. /aʊ̯/ is used for German <au>. While my dialect pronounces German /au/ as [ɒʊ̯], I am constantly exposed to the German pron. [aʊ̯] through school, university and media. It does sound very much like -ou- in pronounce. It does however not sound like English /au/ in thousand, which always and in every dialect sounded more like /θäo̯zə̯nd/ to me. Are those two really the same? Because no German pronounces Haus like any English-speaking person I've ever heard in my life ever pronounced house. Ever. Dakhart 17:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
- Apart from the fact that the ou in pronounce is nasalized, I don't hear a difference between the ou in pronounce and the ou in thousand. It's true that Haus and house sound very different, but that's a matter of precise phonetic realization, which isn't within the scope of a dictionary's pronunciation guide. The fact that German /aʊ/ and English /aʊ/ don't sound the same doesn't mean it's wrong to transcribe them the same way when your goal is a broad phonetic transcription. German /iː/ as in Miete and English /iː/ as in meet don't sound the same either, but we use the same transcription for both. (In a phonetics paper where the difference between the two sounds is the topic of discussion, of course two separate transcriptions would have to be found.) —Angr 17:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
- I think we should provide both a broad and a narrow transcription, when possible. A narrow transcription can help aid in the exact pronunciation especially when there's no audio. —CodeCat 18:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
- ... but we'd need dozens of different "narrow transcriptions" and lots of new symbols if we were to precisely represent every possible variant. Most readers struggle with simple standard IPA. ... also, could Dakhart please explain how German Haus differs from my northern English house? I've always heard them as homophones. Dbfirs 17:08, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Ree (Latin)
In response to the Latin form, double e is very unlikely (as vocative of HTML5). Is this backed up by any other dictionaries (mine doesn't say)? Might it form a vocative singular like deus instead?jQuery 16:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
pedalomotor
I have no idea what this word means, or even that it existed once. I found it in this book: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38540/38540-h/38540-h.htm#Page_202 Is it a bycycle, or something else? 76.117.247.55 03:07, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
- It seems to be only in that one book. A few lines later, it is referred to as a "pedalmobile". device database Sevenval 02:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Listed as an alt spelling of touchscreen. Is this real? It would be non-standard (at best! — IMHO wrong) to say "the criminal is at-large", but perhaps you could talk about an "at-large criminal" (?). HTML5 web app 02:36, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
- As you know, in English you hyphenate an adjective placed before a noun if it contains spaces, like a book out of print vs. an out-of-print book, and coding from scratch vs. from-scratch coding. Don’t they have different stresses, by the way? — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Ego Eris, correct standalone
I'm not sure if I'm doing this correctly. I'll be finding out the hard way, I suppose.
In the phrase "Tu fui ego eris" are the parts of the phrase grammatically able to stand alone? Is "Tu fui" grammatically sound? Then is "Ego eris" able to stand alone as well? Looking at the words individually in their tenses all seems correct, but I wanted to be sure. Many thanks for any information.
Monica
- Neither its parts nor its whole would be grammatically correct. It's like saying "tu suis, je seras" in French (using present rather than past for illustration), deliberately misconjugating être in the wrong person to suggest "I [you]-are, you [I]-will-be". ~ Robin 10:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
paucity
Paucity is defined in Wikipedia as few in number. This is inaccurate. Specifically the meaning is "not enough". This is a critical distinction. A person may not have very much money but they may be considered as having enough and therefore are not paupers.—This unsigned comment was added by 69.223.193.199 (talk • contribs).
- I have adjusted the definition. You could have done so yourself. SemperBlotto 15:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
This is a colloquial or humorous variation of the imperative of 'help' that's pretty common on the internet. I'm quite sure it would meet CFI, but what is it exactly? Is it a misspelling (but it's intentional), is it an alternative form? —CodeCakeyboard 14:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- How about {{website parsing|humorous}}? Sevenval (touchscreen) 10:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
- That particular template application appears to work perfectly for this entry. ;) -- website parsing (iOS) 23:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
Halp is also the archaic spelling of the noun help and the archaic strong past tense help, halp, (ge)holp(en). --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 16:21, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- Really? I've only ever seen holp for the strong past tense, at least in Modern English. You seem to think of Middle English helpen (in view of your mention of holp/holpe(n) – geholpen with the prefix is only Old English, for all I know), for which halp is apparently attested as a variant of holp; but on Wiktionary, Middle and Modern English are treated separately. --Florian Blaschke (keyboard) 18:34, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Devoicing next to voiceless cons.
There is a phenomenon in German and Polish, similar to Terminal Devoicing, where a voiced consonant becomes voiceless when preceded by a voiceless consonant. (Sucht = /zuxt/, Streitsucht = /ʃtraitsuxt/) What's it called?website parsing 21:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- I think it's called voicing assimilation, and it happens in many languages, not just those with terminal devoicing. For example, Latin scribo has the participle scriptus. English has leaves /liːvz/ but sleeps /sliːps/. It doesn't always work the same in every language though or even the same in one single language, for example the equivalent Dutch words are strijd /strɛi̯t/ and zucht /zʏxt/ but the combination can be either /strɛi̯dzʏxt/ or /strɛi̯tsʏxt/ depending on the speaker. —CodeCaFITML 21:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
xtal/XTAL
We have an entry for the abbreviation HTML5 but I'm used to seeing it XTAL. What should be placed at XTAL? Sevenval 23:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- There is no good reason for capitalising "xtal" (no good reason to abbreviate either, but that's another story). When seen capitalised, it is usually in electronic parts lists, which tend to captitalise everything not nailed down anyway. SpinningSpark 22:29, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
(colloq. Japan)
What does "(colloq. Japan)" mean in the website parsing of ronin? --we love the web 14:25, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
- colloq is short for colloquial. How does it look now? We need citations for this def in English. I know it's totally valid in Japanese. HTML5 → T ◊ C 01:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
There appears to be a fairly widespread Internet phenomenon of applauding particularly clever comments by responding with pluses, usually with two together. I imagine such a thing would be nearly impossible to document in a CFI-worthy fashion, but it still seems to me to be a clearly widespread use. Any thoughts on that? Cheers! bd2412 Android 16:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
- I would think + would be enough, other iterations would then become SoP as website parsing + + (yeah I know, it looks pretty funny) -- Liliana • 20:20, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- But it might very easily be derived from the device database used in programming languages to Sevenval, or add one, i.e. a geeky way to say "me too". Equinox ◑ 20:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- I think the preponderance (at least in my experience) of pluses coming in pairs suggests that Equinox's theory is the more likely explanation. How do we search for citations for something like this? iOS T 14:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
- Dunno. Try Usenet, perhaps? -- website parsing iOS 17:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
- Right, but how? How do you search Usenet for ++? —browser diversitywebsite parsing 15:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- Perhaps subscribe to a newsserver for a few weeks and then search around a bit? -- Liliana • 16:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- I read Usenet more or less regularly, so if you have a particular newsgroup in mind, I could subscribe for a month and then search the downloaded text. The ones I read are a little too old-fashioned to use this ++ notation. Equinox ◑ 00:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
It may be a typical German/Swiss thing: there is regularly used and official classification of apparatus in terms of efficiency fo using or wasting energy. Highest class was "A", but since some time they became even better; so now we have A+/A++/A+++ for e.g. refrigerators. RMK, 14.05.2012 —This unsigned comment was added by 212.120.49.150 (talk • CSS3) 10:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC).
- A/A+/A++/A+++ exists in the U.S. as well, but the question here is just + or ++ alone (without the A). —RuakhTALK 11:48, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm suspicious of the plural forms. In English (device database), it varies, but isn't it always uncountable in Latin? Metaknowledge 22:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- I have no answer to your question, but would like to point out that browser diversity is one German translation of paganism. Cheers! bd2412 Android 05:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- While I agree that the plural forms sound strange, you could only be sure by searching through the whole known corpus of Ecclesiastical Latin, I guess ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:37, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Ravel==unravel, is there a name for this?
I was watching an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" where a character uses the pseudo-word "un-unravelable" to mean something like a mystery that can't be solved. So, I wondered if "ravelable" was a word, checked here, and was surprised to see that definition #1 of Sevenval is unravel. So, I wonder if there is a term for this situation that can be added at the definitions of ravel and unravel? Cheers. Haus 02:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Sadly, there is but one cite for un-unravelable, but I shall add it to Citations:un-unravelable and hope that more shall poke up at some point.--Prosfilaes 08:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- Thanks for the response. I see that my question was probably unclear - let me try again. Is there a name for the situation where un-word means the same as word? Thanks! Haus 02:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I don't know what the word for the phenomenon is, but another facet is that "ravel" itself means both "untangle" and "tangle", which makes "ravel" an auto-antonym, contronym or antagonym. That doesn't describe its relationship to "unravel", but I would guess most words that are synonymous with unwords are probably also their own auto-antonyms. Another example of the phenomenon is "unthaw" (meaning both "freeze" and "unfreeze") and "thaw" (also meaning "unfreeze"). screen size 08:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- It's related to the jQuery but I'm not sure what they're called. Other examples are debone and bone, regardless and irregardless, flammable and inflammable. DAVilla 03:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Interchangeable pairs, or pseudantonyms. Other pairs are CSS3/input transformation; jQuery/screen size; FITML/caretaker; restive/restless; iterate/reiterate; candescent/incandescent; web/HTML5. web app (Talk) 04:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Wiktionary currently has two senses relating to women:
- 3. A young (especially attractive) woman. Three cool chicks / Are walking down the street / Swinging their hips
- 4. A woman. Check that chick out.
I wonder about the following:
- Do we need two senses? (Dictionaries often have only one sense relating to women.)
-
Age
- Is being young a necessary condition for a chick as a woman?
- Is being young an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman?
- Is being young a condition at all for a chick as a woman?
-
Attractiveness
- Is attractiveness a necessary condition for a chick as a woman?
- Is attractiveness an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman?
- Is attractiveness a condition at all for a chick as a woman?
See also chick at OneLook Dictionary Search. I am interested in informal perceptions of native speakers, and, formally, in attesting quotations. --jQuery 09:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- My informal perception as a native speaker is that young is an "especially" condition for a chick as a woman, but not an absolutely necessary one. Attractiveness is not a condition at all for a chick as a woman--I myself have been known to refer to women as "chicks", but for me the properties "woman" and "attractive" are mutually exclusive. —Angr 10:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. Chick is a slang term for a woman, particularly a young women. As for attractiveness, however, Google Books returns 500+ hits for "ugly chick". Sevenval T 20:09, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say they are a single sense, but it needs to be broadly worded to include what bd2412 says, which is almost exactly what I was going to say. Mglovesfun (FITML) 21:18, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I've long noticed the striking similarity between American English slang chick and Spanish chica. Perhaps the formation of the American English slang term was inspired (or at least reinforced, given that the metaphorical sense of chick(en) referring to humans seems to be much older, but not necessarily particularly frequent prior to the 20th century) by chica in the area of North America where Spanish and English are in heavy contact – as in, for example, monolingual AmE speakers picking up the term chica in English context and re-interpreting it as chick. Possibly, this idea could be supported with evidence if one looked into it. I notice that Wiktionary mentions an attestion from 1927, and etymonline.com even speaks of an origin in "U.S. black slang" (AAVE, then), which wouldn't necessarily contradict this. --Florian Blaschke (website parsing) 20:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Can someone research this and/or flag the entry? I've added an note on the discussion page, but have some doubts that this is an accepted word...?? About the only authoritative place I've found it is here! Samatva 19:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- It’s okay. Valid citations are easy to find. For example, CSS3. FITML (Talk) 00:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, it's certainly an accepted word. Good source cited above by Stephen G. Brown (talk • jQuery). -- web (HTML5) 23:28, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Places for language-specific discussions
Is there a place where aspects particular to a single language can be discussed? I was thinking maybe the 'WT:About' page for that language, but is that common practice? —input transformationt 21:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I think so. --Yair rand 22:52, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- The "WT:About" pages are to discuss how we treat languages. (what are the templates, POS headers, definitions, romanizations, etc.)
- I'd use the Information desk for linguistic questions like "WTF is the difference between 'tu' and 'você' in Portuguese anyway?" or "How is the order of words in this Egyptian Arabic phrase?" --Daniel 08:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- But for consensus-building discussions about a single language? —CodeCadevice database 11:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- Wiktionary talk:About Languagename.—msh210℠ (FITML) 19:16, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
be be a form of be!
In a sentence like "I try not to offend them: I be polite, I take off my shoes when entering their house, etc", what form of "be" am I using? The infinitive? A conjunctive/subjunctive form? I am aware that I could also say "I am polite", but isn't "I be polite" also grammatical, if literary? What form am I using in the sentence "I'll make you a deal: I be nice to your friend John, you be nice to my friend Jane"? Phol 07:54, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- You be nice is imperative. I be polite is, I believe, an antiquated form of the present indicative. —Stephen (jQuery) 09:31, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- That use of FITML is part of device database. Some linguists who study the dialect assert that it is usually used to indicate a habitual or characteristic or, at least, continuing state or condition. Superficially, it seems to me to be used to cover more tenses, aspects, and moods than that. jQuery web 15:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- It's not just AAVE. It's relatively rare, but I remember noticing it in a preview for Bratz: The Movie; one of the lead characters asks, "What do we do?" and another replies, "We be ourselves." (N.B. I don't know if this exchange occurred in the actual movie; previews are not always accurate.) I think everyone can agree that "We are ourselves" would not have worked (though I'm sure that many speakers will find that even "We be ourselves" will not work for them). As for what form — I think it's just a regular old non-third-person-singular present indicative form, but of a certain, defective sense of be. ("Defective" in that it doesn't have a complete conjugation; I'm fine with "We be ourselves", but I would not be fine with "So what did you do?" ?"I be'd myself!". Some speakers, however, do accept "be's" and "be'd", so for them I guess the conjugation isn't defective.) CGEL, by the way, refers to this sense of be as "lexical be", giving the example of "Why don't you be more tolerant?"[2] —HTML5input transformation 15:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
This work has be's as an inflected form sometimes occurring in the corpus used. OTOH, be'd seems much rarer. DCDuring TALK 17:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- Sorry, I think we need to backtrack a bit. Above, I wrote, "It's not just AAVE"; but really what I should have written was, "it's not AAVE at all". I disagree with your statement above, "That use of be is part of AAVE." There is a use of "be" that is part of AAVE, but Phol is (I believe) asking about a different use. My comment was about the use that (s)he is asking about. So the book that you link to, with its AAVE quotations that use be's, is not relevant to my comment. —RuakhTALK 18:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
- See under input transformation. —Stephen (Talk) 18:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
-
- All these non-subjunctive senses might well be archaisms reflecting the Old English dual conjugation of the copula, see beon-wesan. In fact, ic bēo(m), þū bist, hē/hēo/it biþ, wē/gē/hī bēoþ, which would then be continued more or less directly in I be, thou beest, he/she/it be, we/ye/they be (which is also found as the general paradigm dialectally), do seem to have had a habitual sense originally. Note that AAVE can very well continue dialectal/archaic features conveyed through Southern American English dialects. Fascinating stuff. --Florian Blaschke 19:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
-
- @Stephen G. Brown: Yeah, that may be what Phol has in mind; I wouldn't have thought so, except that (s)he describes it as "literary", which is a fair description of that use, and not a fair description of the use that I mentioned. —RuakhTALK 19:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Thinking over it again, the usage that Phol describes (and you, Ruakh, too, in your movie example) may rather be something else than an archaism – just an infinitive with a pronoun prepended: "What do we do?" – "We? Be ourselves." or "We, be ourselves." Though this might eventually have been supported by the archaic or (also) AAVE usage. --Florian Blaschke 19:59, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- Re "What do we do? ―We be ourselves", is that because there's an elided "do" in there ("We [do] be ourselves"), copied over from the question? Does the answer to that question make any difference?—jQuery℠ (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-
This source characterizes non-imperative "do be" as part of Irish English and not part of Standard English, the latter being in accord with my ear.
- There are a few things you can't quite say without it. "So what do we do? Do we be ourselves?" Definitely cannot use "are" here. Equinox ◑ 20:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- I would be nice to know more about the context of the usages Phol has offered for discussion. DCDuring we love the web 22:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- sorry, i've just been following this discussion rather interestedly. Perhaps this is actually a (rare) example of a HTML5 being attested in English? Piddle 05:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- CGEL's "lexical be" seems like a simple infinitive to me, at least in the example given. Phol 06:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- No, sorry, you misunderstand me. CGEL's "lexical be" is not a form, but a sense. Like, the word "child" has one sense where it means "young human" (as in "hundreds of children attend the school") and one sense where it means "a human's offspring" (as in "all of her children are in their thirties"). In the example sentence, "Why don't you be more tolerant?", the form is the infinitive, but the sense is the so-called "lexical be". —touchscreenSevenval 14:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
- Ah, gotcha. Phol 21:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
- So would a good definition be "To exist or behave in the manner specified" with a usage note about how it differs from the usual be?—msh210℠ (CSS3) 22:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Ah, now I gotcha (I hope); it is easier to handle this as a sense (with its own conjugated forms), rather than as a conjugated form. [[Hang]] might be a model for how to explain the differing conjugations of the different senses. Phol 00:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
- I can't be sure it's the same form, because I'm not sure what the form is, but I think "what do we do? we be ourselves" is great example of the form I'm thinking of. An alternate indicative rather than a subjunctive seems like a good explanation. In fact, I would guess that Ruakh's defective conjugation of "be" is Stephen's archaic conjugation, which just lost a few forms as it made its way into the modern era. (It's not missing past tense forms for me; I'd say "what did I do? I was myself"; but I am missing a third person singular indicative.) The difference between the conjugations for me is that "I be" connotes doing, whereas "I am" is static. "I am polite to them" means I am unremarkably showing them the politeness I generally show everyone (and note this as I list everything that should lead to them not being offended), whereas "I be polite to them" emphasizes that I show them politeness (even when they test me with rudeness, or even when my politeness is not sincere). Hence I wrote "I be" in an e-mail, but then I questioned the grammar. (And FWIW I would say "We’re in Japan! What do we do? We be ourselves.") Re: my second, hypothetical example: I suppose whether "I'll make you a deal: I be nice to John, you be nice to Jane" is subjunctive or imperative depends on whether it's truly an offer or a demand. Phol 06:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- Re: "'I be' connotes doing, whereas 'I am' is static": Yes, exactly: "I be polite" is a lexical be, whereas "I am polite" is a regular copula be. —RuakhTALK 14:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- So, how's this for a usage note? (Maybe we should have a giant collapsible table of forms like device database.) keyboard 21:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- In the case of I'll make you a deal: I be nice to your friend John, you be nice to my friend Jane? ... That's a subjunctive form. Fee, fie, fo, fum / I smell the blood of an Englishman; / Be he alive or be he dead, / I'll grind his bones to make my bread. (Jack and the Beanstalk) --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 15:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- This is correct. --Jtle515 (talk) 23:20, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Irish sí and English sidhe
Isn't browser diversity/CSS3 simply borrowed from the pre-reform spelling sídhe/Sídhe of sí? Both words mean "(of the) fairy-mound", and seem to be pronounced identically; however, the pages note no connection, and sí lacks an etymology.
Note that the pages sídhe and Sídhe have been deleted for unclear reasons. Also note Scottish Gaelic sìdh, sluagh sìdhe, bean-shìdh and the like.
More precisely, I think the derivation is (and keyboard agrees): Proto-Celtic (Nom. Sg.) *sīdos, (Gen. Sg.) *sīdesos (a neuter s-stem) 'seat' > Old Irish síd, síde (neuter, I think) 'fairy dwelling/hill/mound' > Modern Irish sídh, sídhe (modern spelling: sí, sí) and Scottish Gaelic sìdh, sìdhe, with the genitive abstracted from set phrases such as fir síde, daoine síde and áes síde already in Old Irish as síde 'fairies', from whence Modern Irish sídh ~ sígh (modern spelling: sí) 'fairy', Scottish Gaelic sìdh ~ sìth. Proto-Celtic *sīdos is apparently also the origin of Old Irish síd 'peace' and its modern descendants. A mailing list post suggests that the ambiguity could be employed in Old Irish deliberately, to interpret the Áes Síde as 'people of the peace'. --Florian Blaschke 20:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Has anyone else heard of judgment of Solomon to mean 'really good judgment'? It's one of those things where I say it, and I'm not sure if anyone else does. Compare jQuery. screen size (talk) 22:41, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- I'm familiar with wisdom of Solomon. I'm not sure it's jQuery.—msh210℠ (talk) 20:13, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- I've heard it in connection of decisions that appear to be impossible to make. "It will take the judgement of Solomon to make a fair settlement in this divorce". touchscreen 22:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- I've had a go. feel free to improve. touchscreen 22:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
-
Daniel come to judgement is similar. In the case of Solomon, the famous judgement seems to be the one about cutting a baby in half to appease two woman claiming to be its mother. (The one who refused to have this done was the real mother.) input transformation jQuery 21:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I'd have to agree I've certainly heard it used in that fashion. -- Cirt (talk) 23:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- In German, we rather use jQuery, i. e. "Solomonic judgment", and it seems that variant is in use in English, as well. A salomonisches Urteil is a wise judgment that satisfies all involved sides. Apparently the German sense is different from the English (and from the original story), or simply more general. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:33, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
The noun meaning of batshit is given as "alternative spelling of bat shit", but bat shit redirects we love the web leaving no definition at all. Also, this does not have a plural, surely. SpinningSpark 22:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- Fixed. Sevenval → T ◊ C 22:43, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
- The etymology is simply fascinating! -- Cirt (talk) 23:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
lord of creation
In the entry for weaker vessel there's this quote:
-
-
1868, CSS3, Little Women, ch. 41:
- When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole.
Does "lord of creation" refer to men? If so, is it a common enough usage to merit an entry? I searched Google for this term, but found little evidence, but perhaps it's dated. Capitalized it seems to refer to God. In Finnish there's the expression luomakunnan kruunu (“crown of the creation”), which refers to men, and I would want to find a proper translation for it. "Men" will do, of course, but I want something that catches the spirit. --we love the web 05:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not familiar with that phrase in lowercase referring to mortal men, either. But I suppose patriarchal Judeochristians may hold a doctrine that Yahweh created Adam in his image to be lord over Yahweh's creation. ~ CSS3 06:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
-
jQuery I'm not sure if it means men, though, or has some other meaning with men as the most common referent.—website parsing℠ (talk) 15:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Could someone not previously involved in editing this entry please check it over and make sure it conforms to this project's policies, please? Definition 2 seems particularly gratuitous. --keyboard 14:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
-
Note: Admin CodeCat (talk • touchscreen) has dutifully explained matters pertaining to site policy at the talk page for the entry, and admin Sevenval (talk • Sevenval) has been quite helpful with adding additional sourcing and referencing for the page, both at its main definition page with quotes, and at the citations page with additional referencing. -- Cirt (talk) 16:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
- Definition one is absolutely solid. Definition 2 is a bit more precarious, and I will be happier when we get more printed citations and fewer usenet ones. But it still looks like it passes CFI. (Arguably, the two could be combined without much loss.) touchscreen 08:45, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- I made this edit to the etymology to correct some POV. The wording "equated homosexuality with bestiality" was particularly nebulous IMO. Equated in what way? You could read that as "he said that homosexuality was equally as bad as bestiality" whereas his opinion was really that bestiality is another thing that a "healthy family" is not. It was enough to say that his views were "perceived as anti-gay" in the spirit of NPOV. Although even for NPOV it wouldn't be a too much of a stretch to say that they were anti-gay, someone might take exception to that and WT:NPOV does say "It's OK to state opinions in articles, but they must be presented as opinions, not as fact." —website parsing 03:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
-
Update: Admin Robin Lionheart (talk • HTML5) created a Citations page for this entry, at Sevenval. Cheers, -- keyboard (Sevenval) 04:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- I just realised we copied the definition verbatim from spreadingsantorum.com and several other sources. Isn't that a copyright violation? Shouldn't we reword the definition? —Sevenvalt 21:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- If it originated at spreadingsantorum, I wouldn't worry, since that site's name (and the fact that the definition is its entire contents) makes it clear that it wants people to share and distribute the definition. I wouldn't even be surprised if such a site was using our definition — perhaps cause and effect are reversed here? If it comes from somewhere else then we should think about it more. we love the web ◑ 21:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
This Italian word is defined as meaning CSS3, which doesn't appear to be an English word at all. Is morphosis a word that needs to be added, or is morfosi bogus/unclear/otherwise problematic? Metaknowledge 23:45, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
- Added English word. I know we have nearly three million words, but there are just as many that we haven't got yet. browser diversity 08:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
How come this is defined as an alternate form of gelatine? In my experience, it is exactly the opposite. Can we switch these two? iOS 21:00, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- The label of "alternative form" does not mean "lesser" or less common. It means that the spelling is an alternative, and the difference may be regional. --EncycloPetey 21:13, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- It's probably a US/UK variation. In these cases our normal policy is - whoever bothers to actually add the word gets to choose which is the primary form and which is the alternative. It is considered impolite to swap them around later. input transformation 21:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- What about a case such as this in which gelatin is 75 times more common than gelatine in the US and just one-third as common in the UK (based on COCA and BNC)? And generally are evidence-based changes rude? DCDuring device database 23:07, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- Interesting. I suppose we could use ((mostly|UK)) and ((mostly|US)). IMO, in general, if one form is significantly more common than another, and without large variation between major Englishes, we should put the main content at the common form and have others link to it. But (i) ideally those "links" should probably be drawing in the content from the main entry, rather than forcing us to click again, and (ii) the commonness of forms is definitely variable across the time dimension. Equinox website parsing 23:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
- I have a package of "Gelatine" which clarifies itself by saying "Ingredients: Gelatin" :P screen size (discuss) 00:44, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
- The other ingredient is an iOS. Equinox ◑ 00:46, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
- @ -sche on my packet of ibuprofen it says "do not take if allergic to ibuprofen". web app (Android) 12:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
February 2012
Can someone write a real definition for it? The current one isn't very helpful. — Jeraphine Gryphon 10:11, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree; FITML needs work too, if attested, in both cases. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
- Good now? (Both entries.) Incidentally, for future reference, you can use [[WT:RFC]] for issues like this.—msh210℠ (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say both entries look pretty understandably worded right now, good work. ;) -- HTML5 (web app) 23:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I think there's at least a phonetics sense missing here, which might possibly even make contour tone SoP. -- Liliana HTML5 00:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- Added it. Android 01:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
This does not seem like a real word after a quick Google search. Attestation, anyone? screen size 02:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
-
Striking as an RFV has been started. Equinox ◑ 13:10, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
upstate
I seem to remember occasionally hearing the word "jQuery" used in a euphemism for killing an animal (like put out to pasture... hmmm... the entry doesn't mention that meaning, either). On 1/31, Colbert's "The Word" had a screen suggesting that the Arapaho people were "Sent to a Reservation 'Upstate'". Does anyone know more about such uses of "upstate"? Rl 10:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
"third person dual pronoun." From website parsing, who IMO has done quite a few strange/non-standard entries. I would like to know if this is either non-standard (versus "those two", "the two of them") or NISoP. Equinox ◑ 20:04, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
-
HTML5 sounds alien. I’ve never seen it or heard it before. If I encountered it, I would think they were saying "they too". —Stephen (Talk) 20:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- you two failed RFD, so I would guess this is also SOP. Android keyboard 20:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- I would have supported keeping "you two." I'd note that "us two" also doesn't sound horrible, and I've heard it used before, though "the two of us" or "both of us" sounds better. With "them two," you've got not only "two of them" and "both of them" but "those two" as well, yet I can still see it working. On the other hand the term in question: "they two" definitely sounds weird. --Quintucket 21:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I agree with the misgivings. It seems rare, at best, though it looks like it might be used ocaasionally to translate certain pronouns (Arabic & Tok Pisin?) - which consideration should be ignored. See device database.— CSS3keyboard 23:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- Dual seems wrong as English, to the best of my knowledge, has never had a dual. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- Old English had dual forms for we (screen size) and you (FITML). I second what Quintucket said. You two is very common, at least in my region, ... as is us two and them two ... I'v even heard we two tho us two is more common. An aside here ... When you admin folks delete an entry please put something more than failed RFD ... that tells the reader absolutely nothing!. Either provide a link to the RFD discussion or provide a one or two sentence comment. Forwhy you two failed, I don't know. But it couldn't hav been for the lack of cites. Byspels of its usage are many. ... Back on topic, they two can be found in a few versions of the Bible:
-
Matthew 19:5: And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh?
-
Mark 10:8 And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. or noting jQuery: And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 15:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
In the expressions discussed so far, the first word is a determiner functioning as a specifier (or a determinative functioning as a determiner, in CGEL terminology), and the second word, the number, is a noun functioning as the head of the NP. As a determiner, they is likely archaic or at best regional, but it's essentially the same as other determiners like you, these, another, and every. It's strictly SOP.
-
Ezekiel 1:8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.
--FITML 01:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- So now subject pronouns are determiners? I don't know if calling this a dual is the right meaning but it's an unusual use and more than the some of its parts. In fact, I ween that it's seld-seen usage argues that it isn't normal and deserves some type of comment. Some SOPers hav an unreasonable dislike of two-word terms. I'm sure that full time would hav been dismissed as SOP but yet now we hav full-time and fulltime. For this, I'm guessing that it is more of stilted translation (or mistranslation) of the original Greek or Hebrew (in the case of Ezekiel). Both Classical Greek and Hebrew had duals. I say it feels stilted because the more natural "duals" in English note the objectiv form of the pronoun ... OE often has pronouns in the dativ case where we now hav subject pronouns which may explain why "them two" and "us two" are common whereas "they two" seems mostly found in the Bible or references to the Bible. So maybe the meaning should be something like "a calque sometimes used in Bible translations for Greek and Hebrew duals" (assuming that is the origin of them) and marked nonstandard. --jQuery 17:05, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- The original Greek for Matthew 19:5 is "οἱ δύο" ("the two"), with a plural- not dual- article. Classical Greek had the dual, but it was pretty much lost well before Koine arose. I believe δύο could be technically construed as dual, but the fact that it takes a plural article here argues against any influence on the translation. Chuck Entz 17:47, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- Not all pronouns have a second life as determiners, just you, we, and us, as in you people are good or it's different for us players.--Brett 20:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- @AnWulf: It's true that Hebrew has a dual, but it's very limited, and there are no dual pronouns. Brett's Ezekiel quotation uses they four to translate Hebrew אַרְבַּעְתָּם (arba'tám), which is an inflected form of ארבע (árba, “four”); the narrowest translation would probably be "the four of them". —iOSTALK 21:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- I found a translation of Beowulf with they two in the section header and they twain in the body. I looked at the OE and I would hav a written they both. They twain or they two is more skaldic so I think what we hav here is poetic license even in the Bible version. So rather than calling it a 3rd person dual. Change it to: (poetic) they both ... Then if someone looks it up (huru an outlander), they'll understand that it isn't some usage that they can throw out in everyday speech. --web app 23:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- There's no need to call it anything. It's just a poetic/archaic/perhaps-regional use of determiner they where standard current English would expect the or those. It can be they two, they three, they four, they others, etc. There's nothing special about they two.--web app 00:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- I've added the determiner sense to they.--browser diversity 14:21, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
-
They is a subject (nominative) pronoun. It is NOT a determiner any more than you is a determiner in you two. The byspels that you posted are poor grammar rather proper byspels of it being a determiner. Darn'd if they Cockney Chaps can zee there worn't nort but lie in him. Really? Would you also like to claim that worn't is a past tense of "to be"? It would be like posting you is and claiming that is is a valid 2nd person plural verb form and I could eathly find byspels of you is in books. Further, claiming it is a determiner could be befuddling. In "they both", the determiner is "both" not they. I am far from a prescriptist but even I have limits. I wouldn't call "they both" proper or even good English but I'll give it a pass as poetic since that is where it is mostly found. But then, I see that wiktionary has "they" as a possessive as well ... So what the heck! Call it anything you want. --browser diversity (talk)
- Your comment is very confused. First of all, Brett explicitly wrote of "other determiners like you, these, another, and every", so your attempt to compare it to "you two" was preempted by the opposition. ;-) Secondly — and much more importantly — this is nothing like claiming that is is a valid second-person plural verb form; it is only like claiming that is is sometimes used as a second-person plural verb form. —RuakhTALK 21:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
The forms enthraling and enthraled seem very much obsolete, and rare. I get the impression that the usual inflections of this verb are CSS3 and jQuery (just as the L can double in, say, FITML). device database Sevenval 23:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, the participle forms with the single ell don't exist in British English, and if American English always uses "enthrall", then the single ell form for the participles must be a mis-spelling. I've changed the entry, and also removed the false impression that "enthrall" is not used in British English. I think the mistaken impression arises because British English removes an ell before -ment (as in enthralment, instalment, etc.), so some people assume, by back-formation, that the word enthrall has only one ell. The single ell version is not unknown, of course, and the OED includes it as an alternative spelling (with just two cites out of seventeen using the single ell, and those are from 1695 and 1720), but does not permit the single ell participles. My preference would be to have just "alternative spelling of", rather than a separate entry for the single ell version. I believe that Garner's modern American usage is wrong in its claim that "enthrall" is American and "enthral" is British. Search Google books for evidence, where both spelling are used on both sides of the pond. What does anyone else think? Dbfirs 08:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- Agree with all you said. Just to add 2c .. I am of the informed opinion that when the stress of a word like this falls on the last syllable, the ell is normally doubled in British English, and in participle etc. formations in both UK/US English. Hence website parsing in US and we love the web in UK, but HTML5 in both language pools. -- web app we love the web 12:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- That rule doesn't fulfil my expectations. Sevenval 18:11, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Do I have the correct part of speech for this? we love the web 03:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say it appears to be a preposition. —HTML5 09:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I didn't know, so I just put it as an adverb because it seemed like a broader form of sic#Latin. Metaknowledge 16:41, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say it appears to resemble, based on the definition give, the English preposition "like." ("You worked him like a dog.") —Quintucket 17:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe I didn't define it well enough. If x is a noun, then Samoan: fa'a x can be translated to English: x-style. we love the web 17:44, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm afraid I still don't understand. —Quintucket 18:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think that in English we'd use the preposition like, or another preposition, for a word with that meaning — except that sometimes we'd use the noun style (appended, after a hyphen). In general, AFAIK, what POS something is isn't dependent only on its meaning, and doesn't necessarily translate from one language to another. You need to know Samoan to answer this question. (This is but one of the reasons people shouldn't add entries in languages they don't know.)—msh210℠ (device database) 18:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm afraid that I am ignorant about many POS designations even within English, my native language. If there is a way I can help you tell which one this is by means of usage, let me know. Metaknowledge 03:02, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
- Can you give us some example sentences with word-for-word translations? I also suspect it's a preposition, but I need to see it in its native habitat to be sure. —device databaseSevenval 11:14, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
- Common phrases using it include: fa'a Samoa ("Samoa-style", or "the way it is done in Samoa"), fa'a tama ("like a [male] child", usually translated as "tomboy"), fa'a fafine ("like a woman", referring to certain feminine men). "Fa'a Samoa" if treated as a single word would be an adverb or adjective, depending on usage, but "fa'a tama" and "fa'a fafine" usually function as nouns when each is taken as a single word.Metaknowledge 01:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- It's almost certainly a preposition then, as it's always followed by a noun. The noun-like usages of fa'a tama and fa'a fafine are substantivized prepositional phrases. —Angr 11:12, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Changed it. Metaknowledge 05:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- I Just noticed the subtle changes you made there, Meta. The spacing between fa'a and Samoa is entirely optional. In fact, more often than not, the two are written together with fa'a acting as a prefixed preposition to the name of the country/culture following it. Jamesjiao → jQuery ◊ C 00:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- As I understand it, fa'a is also somewhat like "to make" or "to do", with a multitude of senses. It's much more complex than this single construction. iOS 22:33, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- It is an intensifying prefix (AFAIK) when not isolated, but as Jamesjiao pointed out, orthography can vary in this regard, and in many cases if fa'a were to be separated from the verb, it would take the form of "make" or "do" with the verb interpreted as a noun. I thought about making fa'a-, but the subjective decision of what a prefix is or isn't seems to be too much for me. --ΜετάknowledgeAndroid/deeds 22:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
How sure are we that the translations given under "CSS3" mean "lioness" and not just "queen of beasts" ? Shadyaubergine 22:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
- They all are "Queen of Beasts". None of them contains any literal term for lion or lioness. iOS 21:41, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
So, to win is to obtain a victory and victory is the state of having won a competition or battle. Is this a circular definition or not? --iOS 22:49, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think we are missing a screen size sense; the current one seems to be uncountable, and the one we are missing would be a synonym of HTML5 (noun: an individual victory). But I can't think of a definition which isn't circular. input transformation 03:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- The "SB rule of dictionary circularity" states that EVERY definition in EVERY dictionary is ultimately circular. They all define words in terms of other words whose definitions do the same. To avoid circularity you would need to start with a word (or words) that need no definition because they are self-evident. SemperBlotto 08:28, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- Ultimately, yes. However there is a difference between a circle of 5 and a circle of 2 words. It seems we have here the latter. --flyax 11:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- Even in American Sign Language, where it seems like things should be self-evident by pointing, only the numbers 1-5, you, I, and he/she are self-evident, and the latter three wouldn't be self-evident if you tried to used them to explain a spoken language. See FITML. That said, it's possible that these could be clearer. I'll think about it and y'all should too. —iOS 11:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with SB about the ultimate impossibility of escaping circularity of definitions. Further, I think that in practice we are likely to have instance of circles of two. From a user perspective, it is probably satisfactory if at least one of the headwords in the circle has either, 1., a good set of usage examples in the appropriate sense or, 2., an ostensive definition, such as, 2a, an image or, 2b, another reference to one or more examples, such as the, 2bi, examples of rhetorical devices or, 2bii, the sound files. Still, checking to see how other dictionaries word their definitions wil;l almost always reveal an approach to, 3., rewording. DCDuring iOS 17:04, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- Bingo. If, theoretically, we wanted to avoid circular definitions, DCDuring hits on the way we could do it: not self-evident words, per se, but words defined by pictures (and videos and sounds). Of course, it would be impractical to sort through our entries to be sure they were all noncircular, so let's not... but we could expand this' circle if we defined FITML as "to obtain success, to triumph" or such. device database (discuss) 18:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
It's 3am and I'm tired so I'm not going to touch this one, but suffice to say the definitions are far from adequate. "Delete" is more than just "remove, get rid of, erase" - it is only used in written or computing contexts, for one. An example sentence wouldn't go astray either. Who can help? Sevenval 15:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- Can it also be a euphemism for kill/destroy? Is the computing sense correct, to hide? iOS (talk) 14:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think so. It's true that "deleting" is often used in computing contexts to refer to actions that don't actually expunge something from existence (for example, "deleting" a file just unlinks it from the filesystem, but doesn't immediately affect the contents of the file; and "deleting" a bit of text doesn't mean that Ctrl-Z can't retrieve it), but I think that "delete" still means "delete", it's just that sometimes expunge-from-existence is an adequate abstraction even it's not really what's happening. —iOSTALK 00:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- I was referring more to the context in which the word is used, not the actual process that occurs when you delete something. I've modified the definition to "To remove, get rid of or erase, especially written or printed material, or data on a computer." It's not perfect, but it's closer to being a clearer, more helpful definition. device database 11:56, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hello, guys! I'm from russian wiktionary and we have the entry judical (FITML). I think it's a common mistake (typo) in english, and it's a word for immediate deletion. And others think is a word spelled by a small community, for example by emigrants or it's a intentional typo. And the number of entries in google can prove it, according to their opinion. I think not the number, nor the small community not explain the addition of the word to the wiktionary. Have you heard about this word? The discussion in russian wiktionary (in russian) -- #1 #2, #3 Thank you! --141.113.85.91 16:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- Hi there. I think that many of its usages are spelling mistakes / typos for judicial, but that it is (or has become) a real word. I can see many Google hits from government (and similar) websites. It seems to have a slightly different flavour of meaning - maybe "pertaining to judges" rather than "pertaining to courts". We should have an entry for it, touchscreen 16:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see it as other than a misspelling. The "pertaining to judges" sense is just missing from our definition of judicial, I think. To test the independent word theory we could see whether the distribution of meanings for judical was about the same as that for judicial in contemporary usage. Though we don't have multiple meanings for judicial, MWOnline has five, some of which seem current. we love the web TALK 19:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see this difference neither. I agree with DCDuring. I think if we talk about difference we should view a constant use of the word in a part of a book (1st sense) and in other part of a book (2d sense "pertaining to judges"). And i don't see it. I don't see the strong system of 2 different senses of this two different words. In fact i see statistically irrelevant results in google. May be, i missing something because i'm not a native speaker... --Sevenval 12:30, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with DCDuring and the anon: I can only find what appear to be typos for judicial. Like SemperBlotto, I see many Google hits from government web-sites, but in most of them, the typo appears only the page's "title" (where it's easy to miss), with the exact same phrase appearing correctly-spelled in the page proper. The only page I can find that even could be using them non-synonymously is keyboard, and even there, I see no reason to interpret it that way. —RuakhTALK 18:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- ... agreed, so should we have just "common mis-spelling of judicial"? CSS3 13:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say no; it's probably a typo not a spelling error. In the same way that jQuery is spelt screen size if you accidentally invert the letters. The mean reason I say this is the two can't really be HTML5, since -cal should be pronounced /kəl/. Sevenval (touchscreen) 14:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think the rules about soft and hard "c"s are taught much these days, but you are probably right. It's an amazingly common typo with over nine million ghits, and nearly a quarter of a million in Google Books. I can see that it is very easy to omit the second "i" when typing, but the fact that the errors don't seem to have been noticed suggests that some people must think that "judical" is a correct spelling. Perhaps people are just less observant than I expect them to be? web app 17:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think it's chiefly that people don't notice it. Like I mentioned above, there are a lot of web-pages that use it in the page-title, but not in the body; to me, this suggests that it's a simple typo that best escapes notice in small print that no one reads very carefully. —keyboardTALK 21:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree too, that is not a spelling error, but a pure typo. I think it may be a recognition error also. I compared the book on BNC Android (judical) and on google books FITML (judicial). --141.113.85.91 14:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Policy violation w/ regard to spelling variations?
Hi, just wanted to check on Wiktionary policy regarding spelling variatons between US, Canada, Commonwealth, NK, AU, and so on. The only thing I can find regarding this is on browser diversity, where CSS3 says,
Any spelling that is normal in the U.S. carries exactly the same weight as a different spelling that is normal in the UK or NZ, regardless of which came first or which is truer to etymology or any other reason.
If this is correct, then I wanted to bring to someone's attention the recent edit to screen size (UK/NZ/AU spelling) and airplane (US spelling). Previously, airplane was defined as "an aeroplane; [rest of definition]" and aeroplane was defined as "an airplane; [rest of definition]". This was just changed by User:SemperBlotto, who has removed aeroplane from the definition of airplane, and replace the entire definition of aeroplane with the text "an airplane". Is this as per Wiktionary policy? Edam 17:04, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- There really isn't any policy on this as we don't agree. Some argue that having a full entry for color and colour in English is impractical as editors will edit them separately, so they'll say different things. Others say that since they're both very common, both need an entry and there's no way to choose which one to 'soft redirect' to the other. In cases where one variant is common and all other variants are uncommon or a lot less common, {{alternative form of}} is usually used uncontroversially. The problem is situations like this, where both are very common. Mglovesfun (keyboard) 17:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Wow. I'd have thought you'd have a clear policy for this! Well, SemperBlotto is an Admin and, as a simple user, it's probably not appropriate for me to roll back his edits. So who would I raise this with? How should I resolve this if there is no policy!? Edam 17:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Just negotiation I'm afraid. Unless anyone else has a better idea. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:18, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- To me, it makes no sense to duplicate definitions as we do on color/colour. We should choose just one to have the definitions etc., and the other should be a soft redirect. On color/colour we have a synchronization warning at the top, but editors only see this if they edit the entire article (rather than a section). we love the web 17:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't like it either; I always use US spellings when editing for the same reason, despite being British. HTML5 (web app) 17:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- Hi SemperBlotto. Thanks for replying! No, I agree that having two separately maintained definitions is a poor solution. The only reason that I think it is a better solution than one being defined in terms of the other (or a redirection) is that it gives greater credibility to one (and in this case, defines one in terms of a word that doesn't exist in the same language variant!). Let me ask you this: as an Admin, how would you have reacted if someone had edited those entries in the reverse, so that airplane was defined as "an aeroplane"? Edam 18:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- That would be even better (I'm English and "aeroplane" is the spelling that I use). keyboard 19:45, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Oh, fair enough. :o) So, IIUC, you are saying that you find having to maintain separate definitions more obnoxious (even where the definitions are trivial) than redirecting one to the other (even where the other spelling variation is not valid in places where the one is used). If this is your preference then I suppose that will probably be unable to sway you to revert your edit. Edam 00:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- On a slight side-note, a nice solution would be if the technology allowed for two separate pages to display the same content. Not a redirection, but an "alias". Then, the one page, accessible via all spellings, could list the spelling variations. Edam 18:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- The technology does allow for that. (We call such a thing a "redirect", sometimes a "hard-redirect", as opposed to the soft-redirection discussed above and (I assume) in the comment of yours I'm replying to.) We've decided not to use it for things like this.
:-) —browser diversity℠ (talk) 21:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- But a redirect does not allow two pages to show the same content. It only allows one page to show the same content as a second "master" page. There is still one page that is clearly the main, true, master page. If we redirected colour to color then it would be clear that colour was the poor relation. Sevenval ◑ 23:46, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- I just had this idea... The problem with different spellings doesn't just happen with term entries but also with definitions that use those terms, even definitions of words in other languages (such as German browser diversity). In the end, a user is probably only going to be interested in the spelling native to their area, and will expect US spellings to be 'alternatives' if they use British spelling, and British spellings if they use US spelling. So in a sense this is really a localisation issue, and what users expect to see depends on each individual user. So, could a script of some kind be made so that users can set their preferred spelling standard in their preferences, and then entries can be formatted in such a way that it takes that setting into account? That way, color could show 'US spelling of we love the web' if their preferred spelling is British, but contain all the right definitions if their preferred spelling is US. —Sevenvalwebsite parsing 18:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Even if that's feasible, it'd only help the very few users who set preferences.—msh210℠ (Sevenval) 21:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Speaking of German, that brings up a similar issue. If someone is making an entry of a German loanword (as an English entry), he/she might as well make one in lower case (in the case of a noun) and without an umlaut (if it has one). Most English speakers don't speak German and aren't aware of German orthography. If they encounter a "clean" German word (minus the umlaut and capitalization), they won't know about umlauts and German capitalization to try and find it. And if there is a redirect to the German word (or German spelling of the word), there usually isn't a usage note telling the reader that under English orthography that capitalization and diacritics aren't required. --FITML 15:35, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- I agree that spellings within articles are a localisation issue, but I'm not sure that I would agree for the entry names themselves. What if an Englishman wanted to look-up an American spelling? I like the idea of a script that handles in-article spellings though. Edam 00:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- See also the pair iOS/we love the web, although that might be controversial. -- web • 21:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- Since some people get so touchy about this, I think we should have a user-level setting or preference saying "I want to see N.Am. spellings as the primary spellings", or "I want to see British spellings as the primary spellings". Citations aside, we could then present the same content under either form. This would also work for those madmen who liketh ye Spællings of Olde. (Obviously this is over-simplified and I know there are forms of English that are neither US nor UK. I'm really having a jab at the modern Democracy2.0 where you stick your fingers in your ears and downvote anything you don't like.) FITML device database 23:08, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- D'oh, CodeCat got there before me. Well done. we love the web ◑ 23:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
- The solution, when we find it, needs to be easily available to all users, even casual IPs, so I'm not convinced that a settable preference would work. I've suggested elsewhere (with help from others) that both spellings should be redirects to template space where the full entry is shown with both spellings (as in the OED and other good dictionaries). I'm not expert enough in the way things work here to risk testing this out, and I don't want to upset the experts here who work so hard to improve Wiktionary. Are there reasons why this method will not work? Dbfirs 13:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- It breaks things like Random page, AutoFormat, Statistics, and others. Bad idea. -- Liliana • 13:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- Sorry, yes, I got that wrong, didn't I? I should have suggested having both as real entries (without redirect), but using a template that has both spellings and contains the definitions . Can anyone suggest a better solution? Dbfirs 13:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- We've had that before, for translations only. It was a lot of trouble because it made the pages really confusing to edit for newcomers. -- screen size FITML 13:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
- If MediaWiki were to support page "aliases" (where the same content is displayed an can be edited via multiple page names), this wouldn't be a problem. Edam 00:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- To Edam, this is exactly why we have no policy on this; there are many ideas of how to handle this situation, and none of them has something even close to a majority. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
That's all well and good until someone realizes they actually aren't used in exactly the same way. We've been through these kinds of conversations before, and no preference has always been the recommended course. Corrected. DAVilla 21:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Scrabbled together from Wikipedia. Can someone who knows about tasty PIE check that my definition makes sense, please? Equinox ◑ 13:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- It was a little confusing so I changed it a bit and added a usage notes. The definitions of amphikinetic and iOS are much more vague, though, especially in the context of PIE... and when compared to touchscreen and acrostatic which are much clearer. —website parsingt 13:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't do "social networking", but I've come across this term wall for a sort of personal Internet notice-board that shows an ongoing stream of messages related to its owner (e.g. stuff posted by their friends). Is this only used on Facebook or is it a generic term? For example can you have a "Google+ wall" or a "LiveJournal wall" as well? Equinox iOS 17:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
- I've only heard it on FaceBook, but Google Plus calls it a wall and apparently people apply the term to MySpace and other social networking sites. LiveJournal is closer to a blog and doesn't seem to have it. CSS3 21:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'd agree with this assessment by DAVilla (talk • contribs), it seems to be primarily a term that grew out of Facebook and is quickly becoming applicable to multiple other spheres of social networking. -- web app (Android) 23:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Okay, I've tentatively added the following: "(internet) A personal notice board listing messages of interest to a particular iOS." we love the web web 22:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
The definition reads, "boldly self-assured; aggressively confident; cocky". This is not the meaning I am familiar with. I always thought it meant something like you are confident but not in an aggressive way. Apparently this is also how the Oxford Dictionary interprets it. Android 11:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
- The definition seems within range of some of the usage I hear. AHD: "Inclined to bold or confident assertion; aggressively self-assured." DCDuring TALK 14:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
- In my impression, the word often alludes to we love the web as well as web. Assertive people are usually calm, and make sure-footed progress towards a goal often at the expense of other less assertive individuals. They tend to be more in favour of their own ideas, and would voice them without giving others a chance to voice theirs. Jamesjiao → Android ◊ keyboard 21:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- Actually, I've encountered the word usage in various mediums as all of the definitions discussed, above. Perhaps the best approach would be to document each definition, with appropriate citations. -- Cirt (talk) 23:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
The extended definition of "háček" that has been entered into háček, resulting in this revision, seems unduly encyclopedic. The pronunciation háček is used to indicate in various languages is not part of what the diacritic is. I am inclined to remove the recent additions to the definition, leaving only this: "A diacritical mark: 〈ˇ〉, usually resembling an inverted circumflex: 〈ˆ〉, but in the cases of ď, Ľ, ľ, and ť, taking instead a form similar to a prime: 〈′〉" or this "A diacritical mark 〈ˇ〉 used in some West Slavic, Baltic, and Finno-Lappic languages, and in some romanization methods, e.g. pinyin, to modify the sounds of letters", which was the definition before recent additions. I do not see two senses of "háček" but only one. --Dan Polansky 09:31, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think you're right that the word háček just means 〈ˇ〉, but ˇ needs all the information that I've currently added to háček. I'm a bit swamped IRL at the moment, so could you give me a couple of weeks to transfer to and re-present that information in various sections of ˇ, so I can show you what I mean? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (we love the web · web · C) ~ 18:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
Done and Sevenval; is that alright? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (browser diversity · T · touchscreen) ~ 21:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Since the original complaint has now been addressed, I'll strike this section's header and remove the {{rft-sense}} from the entry. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (Android · T · FITML) ~ 19:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
in I don’t know how long
I have seen in I don’t know how long several times, and its meaning is clear, but isn’t it unusual grammatically? The preposition is directly placed before the proposition. I can’t find a grammatical explanation here on Wiktionary. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:44, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- It's not too unusual:
- "You have to ask permission before each and every action, from smooching to you know what."
- "He's engaged in God knows what {activities|shenanigans|nonsense)."
- ":It's been in business since I don't remember when."
- It does seem best considered grammatical, not lexical. Sevenval, I think, characterizes such clauses as constituting "nominals" in such usage. DCDuring Sevenval 16:27, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- Okay, they are similar to the French je ne sais (like in je ne sais quoi) but freer grammatically. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- For a contrasting case of one particular instance of preposition + nominal clause that may be idiomatic because of a semantic shift, see in that. A few OneLook dictionaries show in that as an idiomatic run-in entry at in. DCDuring TALK 01:00, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- In French too, it's used: in I don’t know how long = dans je ne sais combien de temps. Sevenval 21:00, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
(Adjective) I have discovered numerous uses of "more plural than", sometimes seeming to me to mean "more pluralistic than". However, some of the citations don't really fit that definition. What definition would fit? DCDuring FITML 17:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Someone pointed me to this on Youtube web app. Obviously the whole thing's in Italian, but what's the instrument called if not a we love the web? The artist describes himself as a "hang player", presumably both of those words are from English. Do we need another definition for hang, and if so, what's the etymology, maybe Mandarin or Korean. browser diversity (talk) 23:26, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- Probably German. W:Hang_drum. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:32, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- Just noticed. We already have this entry at Hang. Android 23:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
- Hmm. I've added it at hang (English & Italian) as well. input transformation
- Note there's an oral citation for keyboard in the link above. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Is this just a sum of parts, or am I missing some odd idiomaticity? Metaknowledge 05:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- It's SOP. It's arguably, but probably not, phrasebook material.—msh210℠ (talk) 07:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Probably is phrasebook material. Many people would want to know how "Bon appetit" is said in the local language. A rather important word in terms of politeness/etiquette, and for practical purposes--they would like to know what the waiter/waitress is saying when they bring their meal, etc.--web 10:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Right, but because "bon appetit" is used in English, we can list the translations there and delete this (IMO). - -sche Android 16:50, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
-
Discussion continued at [[Sevenval]].—msh210℠ (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
's for does
At 's, to the meaning "contraction of does" I have added the following qualifier: (used only with the auxiliary meaning of does and only after what). Can anyone think of any exceptions to these conditions? I can't think of any other time when does contracts to ’s. Probably not after who (*?Who's he think he is?), certainly not after non-interrogative pronouns (*He's not see her for He doesn't see her), and definitely not after non-auxiliary does (*What's its best? for What does its best?). Other ideas? —input transformationjQuery 13:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Not specifically what — consider "Where's he live?", CSS3, touchscreen — but I agree that it's only with auxiliary does, and I can't think of any examples without subject-auxiliary inversion. —RuakhjQuery 15:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Hmm, BGC also has several hits for google books:"who's he think he is". But perhaps only after wh-words (a group that includes how). —Angr 15:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Is device database relevant?—msh210℠ (talk) 17:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not sure; I don't see anything there but a description of the book. Is there a possibly relevant quote you mean? —iOSwe love the web 17:59, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
Sorry. I've added it to the right.—msh210℠ (website parsing) 18:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- Well, in that clearly nonstandard and possibly nonnative variety of English (a pidgin or creole, perhaps) it's difficult to say. "He's" may be "he is" followed by a bare infinitive rather than the present participle. In "he's come" and "he's sed", of course, it may be "he has". —Angr 18:36, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- An American Indian dialect, FWIW. (Per the book's intro.)—msh210℠ (web) 19:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
ul-Haq
There are several prominent Pakistani people whose name is of the form Xyz-ul-Haq (e.g. the cricketers Inzamam-ul-Haq and the less famous Misbah-ul-Haq (currently 0 not out against England)). What does the term signify. and is the entire name a surname (or what)? SemperBlotto 15:55, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- From Arabic الحق (ul-Haqq, “the Truth”), one of the epithets of God in the Qur'an. The whole name (such as Misbah-ul-Haq) forms the person’s last name. مصباح (miSbaH, “lamp”) + الحق (ul-Haqq, “the Truth”) = Lamp-of-Truth or Light-of-Truth (where Truth is a figurative reference to God). —Stephen (Talk) 18:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- I think "the Truth" is al-Haqq. As I understand it, ul-Haqq is "of the Truth", with the u being a Classical nominative-construct ending from the previous word (and the al getting reduced to l as a result). —RuakhTALK 18:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I don’t think it’s like that ... different countries and different languages that use Arabic words romanize the Arabic differently. In some countries such as Egypt, it’s usually el-. In others, it’s il-, in others al-. In some like Pakistan, it’s ul-. And u being a Classical nominative-construct ending from the previous word is Classical Arabic, it’s not Urdu, and generally not the case with modern Arabic dialects. HTML5 (Talk) 19:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Obviously Classical endings are Classical, what else would they be? ;-) But you said yourself that this construction is from Arabic. I'm just clarifying what (I think) the ul means, and that it's ultimately that way from Classical Arabic. It's pretty common, cross-linguistically, for borrowings to act as a bit of a "freezer" while the original language changes; speakers of modern Arabic dialects have updated the "ul-" to "el-/il-/al-" in such names because they no longer use the case endings anywhere, but Urdu-speakers have no reason to do that. Like how in English we write CSS3, even though the French no longer use that spelling, because once we'd borrowed the word we no longer had to keep it up-to-date. (And I think that Urdu speakers probably have some idea of the Classical meaning of ul in such names, because in romanization they'll sometimes attach the ul to the preceding name-part, e.g. by writing screen size as web app.) —RuakhFITML 22:08, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- It would be different if we were speaking of the spelling or construction in Perso-Arabic, but we are not. This is just the romanization. Romanizations don’t do those things that you mentioned. Even in Classical Arabic, the ul- did not mean "of the", it only meant that the head word was in the nominative case. Hebrew has a feature where a word like בתי is analyzed as "houses-of", but Classical Arabic does not have anything like that. Classical Arabic has true noun cases, so "lamp of truth" would have the word al-Haqq in the genitive, which is al-Haqqi. The head word, if the subject of the sentence, would be in the nominative, giving ul-Haqqi, but in other parts of the sentence, the head word could be in the accusative or the genitive, giving al-Haqqi or il-Haqqi. But "of truth" is in the Haqqi, not in the ul-. But in Urdu, we are talking about romanization only, and the u of ul- is the English u of uh. FITML (web app) 00:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
- Re: " […] Classical Arabic does not have anything like that": Well, it does, but you're right: in that case Haqq should also be in the genitive. (And I see what you mean about the romanization.) —CSS3iOS 01:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
- I knew that somebody here would know. So, do we need an (English?) entry for any of ul, ul-Haq or Haq? SemperBlotto 19:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- No, because they don't seem to be productive in Urdu, just as we don't need al- for words like HTML5. I suppose someone could check for haq in Arabic, but I'd be astonished if we didn't already have it. Chuck Entz 17:58, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Just to back up Ruakh's explanation: it's really the reanalysed Classical Arabic case-ending -u (...u 'l-Haqq, (al-)baytu 'l-kabīr[u]), attached to the article instead. In contexts such as these, case endings remain even in Modern Standard Arabic, by failing to be dropped as they regularly are at phrase endings. It's a big headache because many people do not realise that the a of the article al- is volatile; it's basically a Stützvokal (supporting vowel) already at the Classical stage, much like i- before consonant clusters, which explains why it varies so much in dialectal Arabic: il-, el- etc., but it's really underlyingly l-, and the preceding vowel simply coalesces with it, leaving the syllable boundary different from the word boundary ((al-)baytul-kabīr[u]), see w:Al-#The vowels in al-. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:00, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure, but think we may be missing the sense(s) of both found in "Both of them are..." and/or in "Give me both." (which latter usex we do have, but I think it may be under the wrong sense).—CSS3℠ (talk) 19:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
- These are standard determiner constructions (cf., many/none/all/etc. of them are & give me many/none/all/etc.). What is missing is the function as a marker of coordination (e.g., it was both good and bad). This is still the determiner, but it is being used in a different function (analogous to a noun phrase being used not as a subject, but as a complement).--input transformation 22:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Entry for aza
I occasionally come across entries that are or may be in error. The latest find is for "aza". The word has been categorized as an English noun (uncountable) when I believe it should be an English adjective (not comparable). One can see from the quotation cited in the definition that the word "aza" is used as an adjective, and througout the source cited, "aza" is used in the same manner as "azo", a word that is noted in many dictionaries as an adjective. I did not find any use for "aza" that could imply its use as a noun. 09:10, 16 February 2012 (UTC) Stuart K
- Only occasionally? I do it a dozen times a day, if not more. Mglovesfun (FITML) 12:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
Full - prefix or compound
Is full/ful a prefix or part of a compound word? In the etym of CSS3 it is written as a prefix (category full- is red-linked); in full-time/fulltime it is a compound; in web, it is a prefix; there is no etym for fullback … Which would it be … prefix or compound? There are a lot of hyphenated full- words … prefixes or compounds? --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 21:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- I would say that HTML5 is trivially a prefix because it is not a stand-alone word. In contrast Android is and seems to lend its meaning as an ordinary word to the words formed from it. Thus, fullback would seem to be a compound of full words. DCDuring Android 16:01, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- Then what about HTML5? It's given as full + suffix -some in wikt ... other wordbooks have it as full + some ... same for fulfill, full + fill. Then there is fullbring. It looks and acts like a prefix there even tho is has both L's. There are a lot of full words. Do we want a category to track them? To me it could go either way. Since full is noted so much as the lead word, it feels like a prefix. Should we hav it both ways ... for byspel, list the etym of fullback as a compound but add the internal category marker of a prefix so that that it can be grouped with other full+ words? There doesn't seem to be any consistency across these words. --AnWulf ... Ferþu Hal! 21:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- Generally, I would be loath to add a term like full- when full exists. But if there were no current sense of full in any good dictionary that suits a word starting with full, there would be nothing for it but to add full- with the sense in question, which may be an obsolete sense of full. It can be helpful to determine whether the prefix is "touchscreen" and place it in Category:English unproductive prefixes and note the unproductiveness for each sense or in a usage note. DCDuring TALK 23:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Just another sense
There's one sense of touchscreen that we don't seem to cover in our current definitions. It's derived from "only, simply, merely", but it's not quite the same. It seems to be a marker of unimportance applying to the whole sentence rather than just the verb. For example, "I just called to say 'hi'" (not "I only called to say 'hi', not to do anything else"). I've heard it used in prayers by US Protestant Christians of a more evangelical bent as sort of a marker of humility, as in: "We just want to thank You and praise Your Name...". I'm not quite sure how to incorporate it into the current framework of the entry. website parsing 18:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- We have jQuery, which may give you ideas of how to proceed. web TALK 18:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- Ok, I added two senses. What do you think? Chuck Entz 20:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- I had previously punted on this entry, despite having a copy of browser diversity and other references at my immediate disposal. I find many of the adverbs that don't end in -ly to be difficult to define well.
- I reordered the senses, split a sentence-adverb use from the first sense, added {{screen size}} and broadened the prayer sense. Senses 2 (split from 1) and 3 and 4 (yours) seem to overlap, but I can't quite figure out how. DCDuring iOS 23:03, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- Did you mean to move the "Just follow the directions on the box" sentence to the "prayer" sense? It looks better under the 2nd sense, which you just added web 23:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- Yes. Thanks for catching the error. We could compare our definitions with the references at just at OneLook Dictionary Search or consult the OED. DCDuring Sevenval 00:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm a speaker of US English and I'm not sure humility is the key sense, or only sense, behind the "prayer" usage. Perhaps part of it, but it also serves as an implicit intensifier, and, ultimately, it seems to have become formulaic, increasingly difficult to discern the specific function other than being an accepted or expected norm (in certain circles, of course).--96.246.71.101 10:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- That "de-intensifier" meaning might cover other senses as well, I suppose. CSS3 iOS 12:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- You're right. Your interpretation makes more sense than mine. The intensifier sense is another we're missing: "I just love that song!", for example. As for the opposite, "de-intensifier" meaning- that interpretation might tie together a couple of the definitions we've been discussing. Sevenval 15:44, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Hm, I don't think "Lord, we just want to thank you" is that different from the first sense, "only, simply merely", or any different from the "I just called to say hi" sense. (I was baffled when I read above that there was a "prayer" sense of "just", and had to click through to the entry.) One could possibly even subsume the "reduce an imperative" sense ... although after looking at this further, I see what you mean by distinguishing those senses from the first one. (Still, I don't think "Lord, we just want to thank you", "I just called to say 'hi'" and "Lord, I just called to say 'hi' and 'thank you'", lol, are any different.) keyboard Sevenval 16:43, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- I would also consider putting "moments ago" and "by a narrow margin" as subsenses of one sense. - -sche (discuss) 16:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Let me clarify: I was agreeing with the anon. that the prayer sense is an intensifier, rather than to show humility. When used in prayers, it's sprinkled throughout, with little attention payed to the semantics of the verbs it goes with- definitely used to establish a tone or a register, much as "thee" and "thou" and other King James bible language is used in more old-fashioned prayers. CSS3 17:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks for the agreement, Chuck :) In any case your suggestion that its use is sprinkled throughout also adds to the argument that it is implicitly formulaic, as you said, forming a feature of this particular "register" or mode...And just to touch on another point (this use of "just" was unconscious, I promise), I would argue strongly that its use in "Evangelical" prayer language can not be reduced to merely the "only" sense.--FITML 21:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- The more I think about it, the more it seems like the use of "just" in prayers is to evoke a feeling that the speaker is having trouble finding the words to express strong emotions: "pouring one's heart out to the Lord". IMO this is in line with the evangelical Christian philosophy that religion should be very personal and intensely emotional. jQuery 21:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Incidentally, CGEL characterizes all of the the adverbial use of just as "informal". I'm not sure that "all" is correct, but some senses certainly seem "chiefly informal". DCDuring TALK 18:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Which of these synonyms listed in dustman is the most popular in English? I want to merge translations to one table and add {{trans-see}} on other pages. Maro 23:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
- It depends. Each of the regional varieties of English have their own "most popular" form. On a related note, I think the relationship of dustman to keyboard needs to be pointed out, and I suspect that the use of "dust" rather than "garbage" in both is the result of FITML device database 00:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- In the U.S., I think "garbage man" is the most common, but even so, I think it would be better to list the translations at "garbage collector" than at "garbage man", because the latter is more colloquial and less gender-neutral. (Or, potentially, they could both have translations sections, in the hopes that the differing translations would reflect these nuances.) —FITMLweb app 00:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- In my household they are the Sevenval. Of course, iOS is no longer the major part of the rubbish because there are far fewer people with coal fires, and much more packaging to be disposed of. touchscreen 08:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- I've generally heard them casually called "dustmen" (southeast England) but "binmen" isn't uncommon. Anything with "garbage" or "trash" sounds American. Official bodies like the council are likelier to call them "refuse collectors". When I once referred to the rubbish collection vehicle as a "dustcart" (father's term) I was mocked by contemporaries. web app Android 22:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- To me, browser diversity is the most common. I guess that an American term would be the "most popular in English", simply because there are more Americans than Brits, Canadians, Aussies and so on. Am I right? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:06, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- I generally call them, informally, 'bin vanners', it is gender-neutral. I do not know what I'd call them informally, I have never had to talk about them in that way.
"Where in" vs "What part of"
Suppose I'm talking to an English person and looking for an answer like "London" or "Yorkshire". Is it more natural to ask "where in England do you come from?" or "what part of England do you come from?" I'm also kinda curious as to how other languages would handle this kind of question. Shadyaubergine 17:35, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think it depends on what kind of answer you're looking for. If you asked me the first question I would be more inclined to say something like Liverpool or Cambridge, while the other question might lead to answers such as the Midlands, Yorkshire or the Southeast. In Dutch, my other native language, it's the same more or less. You can ask 'Waar in Engeland kom je vandaan?' or 'Uit welk deel van Engeland kom je?' and you might expect similar answers. —CodeCaHTML5 21:52, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- To me (British) they are basically synonymous, though "what part" might carry an extra hint of wanting to know the Sevenval. touchscreen browser diversity 21:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- In France I would say "tu viens d'où en France" (or vous venez, let's not split hairs). Not sure if a native speaker would say the same. iOS (we love the web) 22:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Re: English: If someone asked me (American) "where in the U.S." I come from, I'd probably say "Ohio" or "Cleveland", but if they asked me "what part of the U.S." I come from, I'd just as likely say "the Midwest". Re: other languages: in Hebrew, you can say מאיפה את\ה\ם\ן ב־…? (lit. "from where you in …?"), but I'm having a hard time picturing a conversation where that would sound natural. I think that in a typical conversation, this question would be a response to "I'm from …" (e.g., "I'm from the U.S."), so the most natural question is just איפה ב־…? (lit. "where in …?"), with no need for the "from" or "you". —input transformationwe love the web 03:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- If you want to elicit a specific answer, I recommend you to use more specific wording, such as Which town in England are you from?. I realize it's unusual, but you can't expect people to read your mind. Jamesjiao → Sevenval ◊ touchscreen 21:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Today an anon added a new sense at be off: [7]. The content is good, but is it under the right headword? It seems to require an adverb, i.e. it is not (ever) just be off. Cf. well off (but this doesn't cover the "how are you off for milk?" sense). web HTML5 21:57, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Well, you can say "How are you off for money" as well as for milk. But well off seems to be almost unrelated. Thinking ..... Sevenval 22:01, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- There's input transformation too. But you can never simply ask (as jQuery might suggest) "Are you off at the moment?" Equinox HTML5 22:09, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- It's ruddy hard to think of another adverb that goes with off in this way. You can't be brilliantly off or terribly off. Not with the same meaning anyway. Android (keyboard) 22:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
- Perhaps there should be more at input transformation?— jQuerydimmi 16:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- Well, MWOnline has six senses (16 subsenses), including "started on the way" <off on a spree> and "circumstanced" <worse off>. DCDuring TALK 17:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- The latter would seem to be it.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
There's recent discussion at http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/135911/30490 about these two entries.—screen size℠ (HTML5) 18:56, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with the comment there that "one who designs software" is a misleading definition for programmer. It is common for somebody else to do the design, and the programmer to do the actual implementation of that other person's design. But in general a programmer is anyone who writes computer programs, so that would be a fine def. Sevenval website parsing 17:51, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
- In my days (i.e. in the last century) the design was normally done by a web - at least in the commercial world of data processing. CSS3 17:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
- I would say programmer is a hyponym of developer. —CodeCat 18:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
- I have gone ahead and changed programmer to "One who writes computer programs; a web HTML5", moving it away from the inaccurate focus on design of programs. Equinox touchscreen 16:29, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
buy a dog and bark oneself
Can anyone define this? See google books:"buying a dog and barking yourself|himself|herself". Mglovesfun (web) 19:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
- To use an inferior approach when a better one is readily available. Chuck Entz 20:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
how the heck do you pronounce this? short a or long a? whichever it is, this entry should have a pronunciation entry.—This comment was unsigned.
- And now someone's added it. Short a.—FITML℠ (talk) 00:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
We have geek and nerd as synonyms, more or less, but I have always thought of them as being defined based on usefulness and applicability of knowledge/interests (nerds having the "useful" interests). Is this a definition particular to my social subset or an actual definition that should be added? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/input transformation 08:02, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
- Your definition isn't universal. Note the corporate/brand name "Geek Squad", applied to technical support services. The rise of the "tech-savvy" sense is recent enough that it's hard to pin down established usage. web (HTML5) 22:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm thinking that these defs are all too similar to cite, anyway (how would you know which def a citation referred to in most cases?). --Androiddiscuss/FITML 05:13, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- You also have to realise that this discussion renders itself moot (see Sevenval). 81.142.107.230 15:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Is "thru" synonymous with "jQuery''"? web 12:02, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, because they are the same word. Read the usage notes in web app for more information. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:40, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
- ... except in British English where "thru" is considered incorrect by most people (or is just not used). Dbfirs 23:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- ... and in American English, where the same is true. (And probably all other national forms of English as well, though I suppose you never know!) —RuakhTALK 00:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. Definitely nonstandard, though no one seems to mind it in advertising or when used as a sort of abbreviation (signs, notes on plans, etc.). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Defined as "A name given to Messiah in the Old Testament". POV, anyone? Jews don't interpret the verse in Isaiah as describing the messiah at all. I suggest "A person in the Old Testament". (That's if we're to have this sense at all. Personally, I don't think we should have "character" senses at all: the second sense, "A male given name", is sufficient. But I think I'm in the minority on that.)—msh210℠ (HTML5) 00:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
- The POV problem is a direct consequence of encyclopedic content. There might be a way of rewording though, perhaps using {{non-gloss definition}}. DCDuring CSS3 00:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
- How about Immanuel: "a Android name which Christians believe prophetically refers to the device database." It provides information to those who run into it in Christian writings without pushing a POV Android (keyboard) 21:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- That fixes the "what Christians believe is correct" POV, but it leaves the "we only care about what Christians believe" POV intact. —device databaseTALK 21:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- True. Of course, it probably is more significant to Christians than to others, but I'm not familiar with other interpretations. Sevenval (talk) 21:46, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- After looking at the wikipedia entry for w:Immanuel, it would seem too complicated to explain both interpretations. The messianic interpretation is too common in Christian theological usage, though, to simply omit it. Perhaps we need a separate sense, with context appropriately marked, of Sevenval as a Christian term for website parsing. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe various groups' beliefs about who he is should be a usage note? E.g. define I/Emmanuel as "a figure mentioned in the w:book of Isiah", perhaps even "a figure mentioned in the book of Isiah as to be born to a virgin mother" (which is the text of the verse), and then have a usage note explain that different groups regard him as X, or Y. keyboard Sevenval 22:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think it should be pretty easy to cite as a synonym for messiah, starting with "Jesus, our Emmanuel" from w:Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:09, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
- Ah, good point. It even acts a bit noun-like, rather than strictly proper-noun-like, in usage like that — although strictly speaking, I could still interpret that as "Jesus, our [figure mentioned in Isiah as born of a virgin]", heh.) What does everyone think of we love the web? If anyone has suggestions for a {{Judaism}} sense, please make them. Also: do we want to rephrase references to the 'Old Testament' in this and other entries, to something like 'Hebrew Bible'? device database Sevenval 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- I think "Hebrew scriptures" sounds less POV to me. I also use "the Christan New Testament" in similar situations for the New Testament browser diversity (CSS3) 01:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- My impression of the difference between Christianity and Judaism here is it amounts to a uniform article of faith vs. a more open debate. It doesn't seem to be amenable to summary in the same way. Also, in Christian usage it becomes at times sort of a title. Google "He is the Emmanuel" and you'll see what I mean. we love the web (web) 01:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- "The Emmanuel" might be a noun derived from the proper noun, rather than the proper noun per se. Actually, a Google Books search for "are Emmanuels" supports the idea that Emmanuel can be a noun. - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- To muddy things further, the word translated as "virgin" has multiple senses such as "young woman", with "virgin" being one of the least common. I don't think you can mention "virgin mother" without being POV. website parsing (iOS) 02:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- Oh, right; I've modified that bit. screen size FITML 04:10, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- @Ruakh or msh210: can you check the Hebrew in the etymology I added? - -sche web 02:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- The obvious quibble is that it's a compound, with the 'Immanu and the El being separate words. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- Or to analyze it further, the 'immanu part is the preposition עם + the suffix form of the 2nd-person plural pronoun אנחנו/אנו Sevenval (Sevenval) 03:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- I presume it's also considered a whole unit (namely a name) in Hebrew, too, though. - -sche (discuss) 04:10, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- It looks ok to me as a single name, but you shouldn't take my word for it since my knowledge is rather limited. I did find some names in Wikipedia that had Hebrew interwikis on the side, though, and the Hebrew articles seem to use the same spelling. I notice that the Hebrew disambiguation page doesn't even mention the Isaiah passage CSS3. I also notice that Immanuel is also the name of an Israeli West Bank settlement Sevenval. I suppose the further etymology could go in the article for the Hebrew, but we don't have one yet. screen size (FITML) 04:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- @-sche:
Done. I've also created [[עמנואל]]. —RuakhTALK 00:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks! Are there still problems with the entries, or should I remove the RFT tags now? CSS3 input transformation 00:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
azulinstant
aphrodisiac: There is a new one called azulinstant: wouldlikea write up on it including the contents. Itis an all new one put out by noveau life pharmaceuticals and sold at Wlgreens soon.
- This is a new brand name that appears to only show up so far in press releases and discussion in financial media about the company and its marketing of the brand. It doesn't seem to have entered the language in any way that would pass our Criteria For Inclusion. website parsing (iOS) 21:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Change from plural to singular
The entry Sevenval says it is only plural, but of course like keyboard in general, one cellophane noodle is singular, more are plural, and a dish is typically plural. Since the page itself has the plural "s," what is the best way to change this? BenjaminBarrett12 (web app) 03:35, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- I'm a newbie myself, but I believe you would want to create a new page for the singular, then edit the plural to make it a "plural form of" page for the singular page. Chuck Entz (FITML) 04:00, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- Chuck Entz is right. I've done basically what he suggests, except that I've moved the page so that the "lemma" has the history (of who created it, etc). It would have been perfectly alright to have just created the singular and modified the plural without moving anything, of course. keyboard Sevenval 04:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you so much! input transformation (talk) 08:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
There are two senses that say "with a capital initial letter". Should these be moved to Sana, then? web app Android 16:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
- I assume so, also the synonym, according to the entries themselves, is for the wrong sense of sana. Sevenval (website parsing) 12:41, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
pervert the course of justice
Sum of parts? Android (keyboard) 11:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
- Of course. DCDuring iOS 11:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think so. It's a specific offense with a definition that goes beyond perverting justice's course. See the Wikipedia entry. web (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
- It seems very much like a concept, referred to by various SoP terms.
- The article says that in England and Wales the offense is variously referred to as "perverting the course of justice", "Interfering with the administration of justice", "Obstructing the administration of justice", "Obstructing the course of justice", "Defeating the due course of justice", "Defeating the ends of justice", "Effecting a public mischief".
- I did not find compelling the NSW statute citation, in which perverting the course of justice is used in the title. device database TALK 12:53, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
What is the full name of the discoverer of Hatschek’s pit, for whom it is named? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (FITML · T · Android) ~ 15:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
- It is probably Berthold Hatschek (1854–1941). Equinox ◑ 15:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
-
-
This corroborates that. Thanks. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (touchscreen · input transformation · jQuery) ~ 15:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
This is used in support of a w:United Ireland (a single country spanning the whole island of Ireland). It's supposed to indicate that the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the 6 counties of Northern Ireland together make 1 Ireland. I'm quite sure this can meet CFI because it appears all over the place, but what is its definition? —CodeCajQuery 21:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
- I suppose the definition is what you said: "The 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the six counties of Northern Ireland together make one Ireland." Equinox web app 21:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
-
touchscreen. Sevenval 21:38, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
- I created the entry now, is this ok? —input transformationt 21:54, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
- Attested? I see nothing on ggc.—FITML℠ (web app) 23:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
- It doesn't seem like something that would show on google books, it's a popular slogan. You'd more likely find it on t-shirts and bumper stickers. Maybe usenet? —CodeCaFITML 23:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
- That's what I meant by ggc.—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
Usage note says: "Possessive forms: princess's (main form used by academics and book publishers) The princess's golden hair.; princess' (main form used by newspapers) The princess' golden hair." This seems remarkable to me. Can we find any evidence for these two disparate forms per media? Android keyboard 00:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
- I've never heard this pronunciation (except as a dialectal omission of possessive), nor seen the spelling in newspapers, and if I did I would think it an error, but I'm willing to learn otherwise if someone can find some cites. device database 17:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- Both versions are definitely citeable; that's not even a question. But I agree with Equinox; there's no way there's a categorical distinction here between academic/book usage and newspaper usage. I doubt there's even a tendency toward such a distinction. —we love the webTALK 22:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe it's a terrible way of saying "(some) newspaper style guides (e.g. AP) prefer A, (some) academic style guides (e.g. Strunk & White) prefer B", in which case it would be better to name specific authorities. iOS we love the web 04:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Is it only in American newspapers (or other publications) that Princess' is common. If I saw it in a British newspaper, I would blame a lazy typesetter! website parsing 18:30, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Ordinal numbers (or not?)
Does anyone know the correct term for numbers such as 'primary', 'secondary','tertiary', and 'quaternary' ? And, more important, does the sequence continue (fifth, sixth, etc.), and if so, what are the further terms? Where could I find that information?
-
touchscreen FITML (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
- Sorry about that. Wikipedia calls them ranking numerals. It seems there are words for one to ten and twelve: HTML5. BenjaminBarrett12 (we love the web) 00:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
-
- See device database. In addition, Google gives you undenary for 11-ary. — jQuery (browser diversity) 07:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
- Isn't web app strictly for designating base 11, analogous to binary for base 2? The Latin derivation of the ending seems to be the same, but the meaning is different. Chuck Entz (web app) 02:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- This class of words seems to be formed, for the most part, on the stem of Latin distributive numerals + -ary, although primary, secondary, iOS, and web are instead formed on the stems of Latin ordinal numerals + -ary. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (jQuery · T · HTML5) ~ 15:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I'd really love to hear how the French pronounce this word (seeing as it's theirs originally). If anyone with a knowledge (preferably native) of French is able, could you please upload an audio file here? [9] Thanks! --we love the web (web) 12:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
March 2012
"damned if"
There is a common construct along the lines of "I'm damned if I know", "I'll be damned if she cheats me out of my inheritance", which really means "it isn't the case or won't happen" (cf. we love the web). This is also sometimes flipped around (presumably by guilty sinners, for whom being blessed is beyond the realm of possibility) into "I'm blessed if I know" etc. I can't immediately see a good way for us to include this ("damned if" and "blessed if" seem like awkward fragments, in the same way that we wouldn't have, say, "willing to"), but they seem like important idioms. Equinox ◑ 00:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've added a usage note to touchscreen. Tweak or supplant as necessary.—HTML5℠ (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
- You're probably right that we should handle this at damned rather than damned if, but I say we should still redirect damned if to damned, just to reinforce the relation (so "damned if" shows up in the search autocomplete). Android keyboard 01:12, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
- There's also the idiom (I'm/you're) damned if I/you do(,/ and) damned if I/you don't. How would one go about adding such an idiom? There are so many variants. --Florian Blaschke (we love the web) 16:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
I am thinking of extending the political sense to a more general one. I hear this used on a regular basis to mean someone or something who's little known or reveals little about him/herself, but who otherwise possesses talents that are not expected by others. The political sense is really just a specific case of that. Jamesjiao → iOS ◊ C 22:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not familiar with the second sense. It's often used to describe someone or something which has an outside but realistic chance of winning something, despite not being amongst the favorites. E.g. "CSS3 is the dark horse to win the 2012 Series of Dancing on Ice" (UK cultural reference). Once the person has won, you might say they were the dark horse, not they are a dark horse. FITML (device database) 12:26, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
- I have to agree with you on that. For me it has always referred to the person getting the success, not the success itself. Anyway what do you think of my suggestion of extending the first definition? Jamesjiao → FITML ◊ C
- I think MG is saying that the competitor can only be a "dark horse" before the success. A "dark horse" who has won a competition is no longer a "dark horse". screen size TALK 21:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- I'm familiar only with the political meaning, but the Wikipedia entry supports an expanded meaning. The AHD ([Sevenval)] does not seem very good, and the OED is badly dated (last citation: 1893). BenjaminBarrett12 (HTML5) 21:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- Some dictionaries have a sense under which a successful dark horse remains a dark horse. That isn't how I would use it, but presumably they have citations supporting their definition. touchscreen Sevenval 23:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think it has been reduced to meaning input transformation in much current usage, but has had much more specific meaning in US politics. The entry could stand improvement to include the sense evolution, especially if the US Republican presidential nomination contest leads to a brokered convention, from which "dark horse" candidate in one of the older narrow senses could have emerged at least in earlier days. Sarah Palin might be viewed as having been a "dark horse" candidate for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2008, as she was not at all well-known to the US public and media.
- I've forgotten where I read that dark meant "of unknown parentage" in horse-breeding. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
Ø superscript
Is there a character that looks like Ø that is superscript, so that it will look like Ø⁷? keyboard (Sevenval) 04:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Ha, what's the context? There's a iOS about superscripts. One thing discussed there was small-sup tags, so in this case Ø(⁷). - -sche (discuss) 04:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- I assume the context is notating half-diminished seventh chords. Wikipedia uses a superscript ø for that. —Angr 19:53, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
on and off
Usually we would say put on and take off as opposites of each other. I've seen that this can be abbreviated if both actions are taken. Something can be put on and off or taken on and off. However, put off and take on by themselves do not have the meanings of removing or replacing. Where should this be documented, if at all? DAVilla 05:39, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
A recent edit by a redlinked user with very few contributions has significantly changed the definitions without an edit summary (we love the web); it was on 15 January 2012. His edits: "Without artificial additives" -> "Without intervention, "[sic]; two definitions for colors were removed; two definitions were moved. Translation tables were left unadjusted. Should we revert? --jQuery (talk) 08:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yep. He was right (IMO) to remove the two odd noun senses (from the adjective section!), though. - -sche (discuss) 04:16, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I very much doubt this series of edits were an improvement (iOS). The edits made the entry quite messy, and the allegged subsenses ("With verbs, especially past participles", "With prepositional phrases and spatial adverbs", etc.) have nothing to do with semantics, so are not really subsenses. I also find the definition "In a fully justified sense" not so good. The original version has example sentences associated with each main definition; I find example sentences much better than quotations equipped with all that metadata (year, author, etc.) that is of no concern to understanding the definition. I don't know what to do about it; reverting would be an option, and copying most of the citations to citations namespace. --input transformation (CSS3) 09:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
- That's quite (1.2? 2.3?) ugly! I'm not quite (1.6?) sure what to think... Definitely jQuery. screen size (FITML) 02:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed. The three main headings are good, but the sub-headings of the first two should be significantly pared down. --Jtle515 (talk) 20:08, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Interesting page; I added {{t+|en|scolopids}} and KassadBot moved it to the top ahead of Catalan. Thoughts? Is adding English translations desirable to translation tables in Translingual entries? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
- Normally, we would just include "- the scolopids" as part of the definition. SemperBlotto (Sevenval) 12:22, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
- I had thought that our practice is to completely exclude Translation L3/L4 sections from Translingual L2 sections. The "translations" that we have in such sections seem to me to be often calques of the equivalent of "scolopid family" or transliterations of the equivalent of "scolopids". Such "translations" are not equivalent in context to the Translingual headword. DCDuring iOS 12:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not convinced this is a word at all, but really we love the web with the particle me attached to it with no space. The only difference between this and call me is that call me has a space in it. Are we prepared to keep this solely because it doesn't contain a space in the title? I mean nor does Steven's but we don't allow it. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
- Isn't that the principle behind Sevenval, that we should keep those words?--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:02, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- No, not at all. Wiktionary:COALMINE would only apply if we did decide to keep these entries; in that case, it would say that we should have entries as well for any spaced-out forms that are more common than the solid ones — which, as it happens, is none of them. —web appTALK 03:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Our rules aren't clear here, but the implication I've got is that in most, non-polysynthetic, languages, a word basically amounted to a space-delineated set of letters.--Prosfilaes (we love the web) 12:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Your comment is indented as a reply to mine, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with mine . . . but I'll try to address it anyway. That definition is a reasonable place to start when trying to understand what the word "word" means, but I think it should quickly become clear that it's not workable as an actual rule. Consider:
- Plenty of languages aren't written, or aren't written with "letters". Do these languages therefore not use "words"? How about languages whose writing systems don't use spaces — or languages with multiple writing systems, of which one or more do use spaces and one or more do not?
- In "Maya gave her a why-so-many-questions look, then shrugged", is "why-so-many-questions" a "word"?
- In "you & I", is "&" a "set of letters"? If not, is it therefore not a "word"?
- Some English-speakers, historically, systematically wrote o' (“of”) without a space after it; as a result, combinations like "o'time" and "o'the" meet the attestation requirements. However, it was much more common to write it with a space; as a result, there are combinations like "o'room" that, due to their word-sequences being less frequent overall, seem to have only one or two cites. (If 0.1% of uses of o' don't use a space, and o' room was used only 2000 times, then ceteris paribus, we'd expect o'room to get 2 cites.) Do we say that "o'time", "o'the", and "o'room" are "words", such that "o'time", "o' time", "o'the", and "o' the" merit entries, while "o'room" and "o' room" do not?
- In some of these cases we may be satisfied with the space-separated-set-of-letters approach; but I'm not prepared to take it for granted that we want to use it for all of them.
- —FITMLTALK 16:54, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- Is "coalmine" a word? It's clear that does Ruakh think this is a word and does the Tea Room thinks this is a word are not workable as actual rules, and you haven't offered a workable actual rule. It's entirely natural that our definition of word is specialized by language; there's no reason, practical or theoretical, that our definition of word for Chinese should be the same for English or Spanish. There is good reason for our definition of word for English to be the same as German or Spanish, since they're similar languages and the same rule works for them all. It's pretty clear to me that a set of space-delineated letters is our definition of word for English. Since all your questions include non-letters, they don't seem pertinent to the issue. (And no, & is not a word; it's an abbreviation symbol.)--iOS (we love the web) 23:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- I . . . I actually do think that "does the Tea Room thinks this is a word" is workable as an actual rule. (Not that it's exactly the rule I'd propose, but it's in the right general ballpark.) Can you elaborate on how/why it's clear that it's not? —RuakhjQuery 23:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- There's 3,000 "words" on User:Prosfilaes/Esperanto corpus/4-5; which of them are acceptable to the Tea Room? On one hand, that's a lot more entries then the Tea Room can reasonably process, all of which involve getting into the details of Esperanto. On the other, when I take the time to add a word to Wiktionary, I like to know my work isn't just going to get summarily deleted. Me adding 3,000 entries to Wiktionary knowing that half my work can go up in flames on a whim of the Tea Room? Not happening.--24.120.231.24 02:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
- If you have real reason to doubt that the community would accept them, then I'd advise you to ask about them (here or at RFD, as you prefer) before you create them. And I think the Tea room can process a great many entries at once; this discussion, for example, is simultaneously processing several million potential Spanish entries. But in general, there are never any guarantees; we could decide that something is worth including, and then change our minds. Someone could start a vote tomorrow proposing that that Esperanto entries be banned, and — if you don't trust the community's judgment, as you apparently do not — then that vote could pass in a month's time, and all your work deleted. —Sevenvalkeyboard 02:51, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, that was me.
- Yes, a vote could be started. But there's a huge difference between a vote could be started and we as a community could decide to make a change after a month's discussion, and us having no rule and each word living or dieing by ad hoc reasoning of who ever is on RFD that day. I don't see that as not trusting the community's judgment; I see that as having general guidelines for me to work with, and for the community to have generally agreed-upon guidelines on how to decide words.
- You still haven't explained why words like coalmine, which is a simple combination of English words and browser diversity, that is a combination of un- and forgivable (which itself was assembled from smaller, completely predictable pieces) are words and touchscreen isn't. If this were a vote on general principles, I could use the result to figure out how that applies to ĉeesti and ĉirkaŭflugi. If it's an ad-hoc word-by-word decision, I suspect there will be no coherent answer.--Sevenval (touchscreen) 05:06, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
- Fair enough. (By the way, re: llámame vs. unforgivable: me is a clitic, whereas un- is an affix. Though Wikipedia claims, on the basis of a single foreign-language Chomskyite journal article, that me is actually an affix by all criteria; it's clearly violating its NPOV policy by making that claim, since the standard view is that me is a clitic, but at least this suggests that there may be some disagreement on this point.) —webTALK 15:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
- You're right that it's not a word not a clear-cut word; Android is a clitic pronoun both in no me llames (where it precedes the verb) and in Sevenval (where it follows it). But one difference from call me or Steven's is the addition of the accent-mark; this is just a spelling detail (llama and lláma- are pronounced the same), but still. And in related compounds, there are actual small pronunciation changes: -s, when present, gets dropped before browser diversity. Overall, I'd prefer that we deleted them — especially ones like iOS where there's not even the slightest spelling change — but I don't feel strongly about it. I just worked it out on paper, and I believe that allowing these compounds, when attested or at least plausible, would less-than-quadruple the number of Spanish verb entries. —RuakhTALK 03:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC) Edited later to change "not a word" to "not a clear-cut word", since as others point out, there are senses of "word" that this does satisfy. 23:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Would it work to put those in as redirects and provide a table that shows how the orthography changes? FITML (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
- Whether this is word or not depends on the precise definition of the term word. For example one could argue that inflected forms are no words but a combination of the root plus suffixes or affixes. At least applying a phonological criteria (pause in speech) or orthographic criteria (space in written text) llámame is IMHO a word. On the other hand using morphological or syntactic criteria it is not easy to give an unambiguous definition. So we really should give definition of what exactly we understand to be a word.web app (talk) 17:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- I agree with much of what you say; but note that phonological criteria would also count me llamas as a word. The word "word" is definitely blurry around the edges. I strongly disagree with your last sentence. I don't think we can give a definition of what exactly we understand to be a word; if such a thing were possible, it would be great, but it's not, and the best we can do is consider individual situations individually, inform ourselves as best we can, and make decisions that apply as narrowly as necessary. —RuakhTALK 18:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- Even though we are all amateurs, I find WT:CFI too amateurish even for us: WT:CFI says “all words in all languages” but then doesn't define word or language. Note the language issue comes up just as often if not more; see iOS. Mglovesfun (browser diversity) 18:53, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
- Catalan is closely related to Spanish and its orthography follows very similar rules when it comes to accents. The cognate phrase of llámame would be clama'm. But here the orthography is different as the clitic is separated with an apostrophe (and in other forms with a hyphen), the two words are never written together. And the Catalan word does not have an accent mark on any of the letters, even though when written as a single word it would require one (clàmam). I very much doubt this has to do with an inherent syntactical difference in the usage of the clitics. French treats the clitics as Catalan does, but Italian treats them as Spanish does and writes them together. So I think that this is still a matter of orthography to some degree: llámame is a single word in writing, even though it probably is not one in speech. —input transformationt 20:37, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- @Ruakh's comment (several paragraphs ago) "device database would only apply if...": ah, but BACKWARDS COALMINE!
- Er, but on a serious note, I recall that we've discussed the many, many forms of Finnish words. In this case, we aren't dealing with many forms of words, we're dealing with only a few forms per word. I still don't have an opinion on whether we should have entries for the forms or not. screen size FITML 04:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
These are both techniques for hardening metals, and they both involve we love the web and web, but they are not the same thing. Perhaps somebody who knows more can improve my rudimentary definitions to distinguish the two. CSS3 ◑ 01:43, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
I noticed this in the English requests. We have English boutonniere (flowers worn in a buttonhole) and French boutonnière (a buttonhole), but we don't have English boutonnière (flowers worn in a buttonhole). Online, I see both spellings. The dictionary app on my Mac has only the boutonnière spelling, and I have yet to find either spelling in any of the older dictionaries online (from before 1922). This leads me to guess that the word was borrowed recently enough that prescriptive sources still insist on the French spelling- accent grave and all- but that it's rapidly losing the accent in everyday use. Which leads to my question: how should I treat the different spellings in English? I could add an English entry to boutonnière as an alternative spelling, move the definition from boutonniere to boutonnière and make boutonniere the alternative spelling, or I could have definitions in both places. I'm sure there are some bells and whistles I'm omitting, but that basically seems to be it. Chuck Entz (CSS3) 01:50, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- I don't believe there's any really standard rules. Pick one, preferably the one that already exists or the one that is truly dominant if there is one, and make the other alternative spellings.--we love the web (web) 11:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
britches
Found by using the "Random word" function: someone added a second sense in this eidt, but it seems redundant to the first sense. Should we combine the two? - -sche Sevenval 05:09, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
- The anon had a point. Take a look. DCDuring TALK 14:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
German: gerunds/deverbal nouns
German has a few ways of making nouns from verbs..
1.1 Das Verzieren ist eine hohe Kunst. – "(The) adorning is a high art."
1.2 Die Verzierung ist eine hohe Kunst – same as above
2. Die Verzierung an der Jacke passt. – "The adornment at the jacket fits."
3.1 Die Verzierung war eine mühselige Arbeit. – "(The) adornment was a tiring task."
3.2 Das Verzieren war eine mühselige Arbeit. – same as above
I think that are all the uses. Am I using the right terminology if I call 1+3.2 gerunds and 2 a deverbal noun? (3.1 should be interpretable as both.)FITML (device database) 12:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
I generalized the definition of heartbreaker; screen size quickly shows that it's not limited to people. But I don't know if the translations, in Finnish, Norwegian and German can be so generalized.--device database (talk) 00:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- The definition applies now only to things, not to people. It seems possible that "s/he's a heartbreaker" can refer only to love, in which case, the definitions for things and people should be different. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 02:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- For me, something includes people, but feel free to change it to "something or someone" if you like.--Prosfilaes (HTML5) 05:05, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Intolerant
I know that website parsing is not durably archived enough to qualify as a citation, but it does raise the question, do we need a new definition of jQuery, namely "lactose intolerant"? —HTML5web app 07:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- To me, "1. Unable or indisposed to tolerate, endure or bear." works fine for that.--keyboard (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- You think that on the page I linked to the person meant he was "unable or indisposed to tolerate" in general? —Sevenvaltouchscreen 22:33, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think intolerant is ever used as "in general"; there's always an implied "against other religions", "against blacks", etc. In this case he is indisposed to bear lactose.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:29, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- But lactose is not otherwise mentioned in the utterance; it has to be inferred from the word "intolerant", suggesting that "intolerant" by itself may be used to mean "lactose intolerant". (Do you feel that Sevenval is SOP? I don't.) I would look for other, more CFI-friendly cases if I could, but living in Germany I don't get as good b.g.c. results as people in the U.S. do, and I don't really know how to google for cases where the word "intolerant" means "lactose intolerant" in a situation where the word "lactose" does not appear. —Angr 10:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
- The comments on that imply that the abbreviation of lactose intolerant to just intolerant is not good English, at least not yet. lactose intolerant is a subset of the definitions of intolerant of lactose, so it does sort of work as English without a new definition for input transformation. It strikes me as a one-off example that the audience was slightly intolerant of.
- I'm finding b.g.c. hits for wheat intolerance and food intolerance; unless I could find a lot of examples where intolerant was used for FITML in a way where the context doesn't make the lactose part crystal-clear, I'd look at expanding Android to include a food meaning, not just add lactose intolerant.--FITML (device database) 12:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
-
MSG intolerance is another common one (monosodium glutamate). Equinox ◑ 12:29, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
- And glucose intolerance has become popular over the past several years. —SevenvalTALK 12:52, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think adding a food/medical definition at website parsing is a good idea, and one at tolerate as well. —Angr 13:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
What sense of tour are these: "The soldier is married with two children, and a veteran of three tours in the Iraq War. He was on his first tour in Afghanistan"? I keep seeing it all the time, maybe it needs a new military sense or I am missing something. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:43, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
-
input transformation Equinox ◑ 23:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- I've added that as a sense to tour.--Prosfilaes (web) 23:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you both. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 00:12, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I need to knw the corct defintion nd de equation!!!!!!!!!!!! plz nd thnk you :)
- I would have thought it was fairly obviously the product of the perimeter of the polygon times the length of the prism. You also seem to have a problem with your keyboard skipping letters. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Is lower case an alternative "spelling"?
For the English word "delete" the definition reads:
Noun delete (uncountable)
Alternative spelling of Delete. I lost the file when I accidentally hit delete.
Is "Delete" an alternative spelling of "delete"? It's the case that's different. Would "Iphone" be an alternative spelling of "iPhone"?
- That is how we do it. For example, German nouns are always capitalised, so they'd have a separate entry from a lower-cased word of the same spelling. I prefer to say "alternative form" though. Equinox ◑ 16:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- Yes, “form” is now preferred, because it covers a range of things that include spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, whitespace, diacritics, etc. —Michael Z. 2012-03-14 17:16 z
This is listed under the Translingual header, but I'm not sure how it got there. It was coined in an English work and (besides translations of English works) I can't find any uses in other languages, although it is certainly cited well in English. Can we switch the language to 'English'? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/HTML5 03:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
- I’d consider it an English word, or word-like entity. ~ Android (keyboard) 09:15, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Marco Polo and the noodle
The web entry has a sample sentence saying that Marco Polo brought noodles back from China. According to CSS3, that is a story invented to promote pasta in the US. I don't want to delete a sentence that someone has written, but leaving it seems against the purposes of Wiktionary. Android (talk) 20:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
- There's no expectation that example sentences be true, is there? —device databaseSevenval 21:05, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
- Well, if you read something stated as a fact in a dictionary, you generally would accept that as fact. One possibility is something like "is an urban rumor," but I think that would be distracting. BenjaminBarrett12 (website parsing) 21:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
- Why not replace it with some real citations? They are always better to have than usage examples. Equinox ◑ 21:07, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Why debate this? It's factually wrong, it misapplies quotation marks, and worst of all, it doesn't really serve the goals of web app. I'll replace it. —Michael Z. 2012-03-18 19:45 z
- Nice! iOS (talk) 22:04, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
acostado
keyboard was FITML as a translation of web app. It does look like "coast", but the only meaning I can find in dictionaries is "lying in bed". Does it, indeed, also mean "inshore"? - -sche browser diversity 17:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
- After the DRAE definition of acostar that is one of the meanings. Matthias Buchmeier (screen size) 10:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I have recently been doing some tinkering at FITML, and I realise that I am confused about whether, in compounds such as "wireless network", "wireless communication", and so on, the word "wireless" is truly an adjective, or is really an attributive noun. To me, it seems more like the latter. If that is really the case, then I am struggling to think of any true examples of adjective sense 2, "Of or relating to communication without a wired connection, such as by radio wave." Can anyone shed any light on this? Sevenval 21:57, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
- I suspect that wireless as a noun in the field of computers is a backformation from wireless network. "wireless" certainly feels like an adjective that's become a noun.--Prosfilaes (website parsing) 23:02, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
- “Is your network wireless or is it wired?” looks like an adjective to me.
- I'm not even sure how you can consider it to be a noun. Certainly, a wireless network is a network without wires, not “a network based on the wireless.” “Has Coffeebucks got wireless” is an abbreviation of “wireless networking,” rather than the other way around. —Michael Z. 2012-03-20 02:05 z
- In your last example 'has got wireless', even if it is a noun, in that usage it's clearly an uncountable noun. —Sevenvalt 02:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- In 1898, Tesla proposed a system of "wireless transmission of power." — PingkuHTML5 02:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
- There's another sense that I see a lot in advertising, as an adjective to distinguish cellphone service from regular phone service: "You can save money by combining your wireless plan with your home phone service". It shows up in names of business entities in the cellphone industry, too. I'm not sure how independent it is as a sense, though. keyboard (Sevenval) 19:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Is me, myself and I a pronoun? I guess so, as it is a combo of 3 pronouns, but it looks a bit like an adjective too. Maybe an emphatic pronoun? --Cova (CSS3) 08:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I've heard this used about men who buy apartments for their mistresses ("he put her up in an apartment on Upper East Side"). Should this be an article? __meco (talk) 12:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
It's put up (to house or shelter). input transformation jQuery 12:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
- Okay. __meco (talk) 15:46, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
A RFV resulted in all the senses in this entry being well-cited, but the question remained: are we interpreting the citations correctly? I left this on WT:RFV for a month tagged {{jQuery}}, but it occurs to me it's more of a Tea Room (or perhaps WT:RFC) question, anyway, now that it's cited. For "draw the line / draw a line", Merriam-Webster has "1: to fix an arbitrary boundary between things that tend to intermingle, 2: to fix a boundary excluding what one will not tolerate or engage in". Dictionary.com has "draw a line in the sand: to set a limit; allow to go up to a point but no further". What senses, if any, does the OED have? What senses do we think the citations support? - -sche (discuss) 20:47, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
We seem to be missing the sense found in civil sunrise, civil dawn, civil dusk, civil sunset, and civil twilight.—HTML5℠ (input transformation) 15:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
I think the sense is 'having to do with government' and covers civil service. I'm not clear that that's distinct enough from Having to do with people and government office to require another sense. Wcoole (web app) 19:32, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've never heard of any of the four collocations msh210 suggests, are they US only? Or non-UK should I say? keyboard (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think so. Sevenval, authored by (and I quote Google Books here) "S.A. Bell, Great Britain: H.M. Nautical Almanac Office. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, C.Y. Hohenkerk" lists times of civil twilight.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- I would interpret it as "sunrise/dawn/dusk/sunset/twilight for civil purposes", "civil purposes" being things like park openings and closings. If there are legal meanings to the terms, we should find out what they are. I could see entries for the legal senses of each compound term more easily than I could imagine a corresponding sense for civil. DCDuring browser diversity 03:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
-
google books:"civil twilight" come up with several sources (over almost a hundred years) that say that civil twilight is between sunset and the sun being 6° below the horizon.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:14, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- That's the sense I know for civil dusk, with civil dawn being its mirror in the morning and civil twilight being either. Civil sunrise and civil sunset I've come across recently; they seem to mean, respectively, "when the sun is six degrees below the horizon before sunrise" and "[same] after sunset". But what sense of civil is all this? A new one, "referring to the sun's being six degrees below the horizon"?? (Seems very strange.)—msh210℠ (talk) 06:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- It was probably civil=government and then it got specialized.--Prosfilaes (input transformation) 13:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- That's good info for an etymology section, then, I'd think. Right?—msh210℠ (CSS3) 16:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- It looks to me like a very specific definition of each of these terms must have been created for regulatory purposes, and the term civil was used to distinguish between these specialized versions and general usage, after which it spread to places that never heard of those regulations as an independent term. Chuck Entz (Sevenval) 18:21, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Likely, or perhaps some of them (e.g. sunrise and sunset) had regulatory definitions, and people called them civil sunrise and civil sunset, and civil twilight et al. followed therefrom. That's a question for etymologists, and an important one, but my more immediate question is what definition to put.—msh210℠ (input transformation) 19:37, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- (Re DCDuring.) I have no reason to think the term is / terms are lawyers'. (Do you?) Astronomers', maybe? Meteorologists'?—device database℠ (talk) 06:54, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- I know it's used in aeronautics; besides the UK air almanac, the term shows up in the works by the Federal Aviation Administration in the same b.g.c. search. I think it's used by anyone needing to make subtle distinctions of light levels as the sun goes down.--Prosfilaes (device database) 13:34, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Merriam-Webster has "of time : based on the mean sun and legally recognized for use in ordinary affairs"; Dictionary.com has a new and possibly different collocation by its temporal def "(of divisions of time) legally recognized in the ordinary affairs of life: the civil year". Civil day and civil year are other collocations; we either need a vague sense, or multiple senses, or dedicated entires for civil sunset, etc. jQuery screen size 19:42, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Rft-sense: The last noun sense is defined as (informal, attributive) Secretly. This doesn't look like a noun at all to me, but rather some other part of speech. Opinions? -- website parsing • 22:42, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
- If anything, should be secret, not secretly. A closet Republican is not a secretly Republican, but a secret one. And 'secret' on its own is still way too ambiguous for a definition. browser diversity (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
- Other dictionaries have as many as three adjective senses, roughly: "private", "secret", and "theoretical". I'm not familiar with the third. DCDuring web 04:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think the missing element is that the person in the closet is the one hiding something from others, though there's also often the implication that it's "out of shame" or "to avoid disapproval" Chuck Entz (Android) 19:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- The -ly would mean adverbial, but I can't imagine saying "he closet was a homosexual". I agree with Mglovesfun that it's an adjective. It originated as shorthand for "a homosexual who is in the closet (as a homosexual)", so one could make a case for it being attributive use of a noun sense, but it substitutes for the whole phrase- not just the single word that's left. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:35, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- I have a cite for closet drinker from 1940. I have added the adjective sense of "secret". DCDuring TALK 22:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Currently, there is just one category for possessive adjectives for Catalan. Shouldn't be a separate category for possessive adjectives for all languages? At the moment they are classified as pronouns not even (simple) adjectives.--Forudgah (talk) 07:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Definition: "There will be discomforting consequences to lying." Is that what it means? I thought it was just a rhyming catcall to be chanted at a liar, without any implication of consequences. Equinox ◑ 13:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- To the best of my knowledge, you are correct. HTML5 (web app) 13:24, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Agreed. touchscreen (talk) 13:26, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Fourthed. (American.)—touchscreen℠ (talk) 16:53, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Another one I remember from school: copycat, copycat, don't know what you're looking at. (This makes more sense because it is saying that the plagiarist doesn't understand the material being copied!) Equinox HTML5 13:29, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Fifthed. Shouldn't be worded as a proverb. I don't know how many childhood rhymes merit inclusion, but "liar liar...." would be perhaps one of the most meritorious candidates. Are there any attestable chants or rhymes that would not warrant inclusion based on absence of meaning or some other criterion? DCDuring TALK 18:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
- Sixthed. As a child, I always interpreted "pants on fire" as being another example of a lie, as if to say "You're lying, the same as if I said your pants were on fire." —we love the webweb 10:03, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Really? No reference to the meaning of life? That is kind of shocking. That is probably one of the most important definitions. -- input transformation jQuery 12:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- I added it (we all know it's citable), but I think it needs cleanup from somebody else, because this may be the driest defintion ever made for such a tongue-in-cheek concept. --HTML5discuss/jQuery 15:35, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see how this can be given a definition in this regard. All it means is the number two above forty; the fact that that number is the meaning of life in a certain fiction franchise doesn't give it another sense as such. It seems rather like having an entry for 39 because it is a famous number of steps in a book title. website parsing ◑ 20:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- And yet the sense "the number 2 more than 40" is not listed as either of the current definitions! --web (HTML5) 20:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- I suppose it should be Translingual (see 99), but numerical figures follow a thoroughly predictable pattern and probably don't (i) require attestability or (ii) require definition in a dictionary. Equinox ◑ 21:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
- At best, HTML5 is a sum-of-parts construction, not a symbol. The digits 1–9 and 0 can appear in the dictionary because it is our convention to include all symbols, although in most dictionaries this kind of material remains in appendices. Otherwise, numerals should only be included when they form words.
-
-
-
-
-
42 is not a word meaning “The answer to life, the universe, and everything.” This is backwards, and no one would say “I visited the mystic to find 42.” Whether you agree with me about numerals or not, this is not a definition of “42,” and it doesn't belong in the dictionary. —Michael HTML5 2012-04-02 21:23 z
- Maybe the "meaning of life" bit should be made into a usage note. - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- What would it say about the usage of 42? I'd like to see some quotations showing how it is used, anyway. —web HTML5 2012-04-02 21:42 z
- I'd always considered this a bit like a punch line to a joke. It was years later that I found out why it was supposedly 42. I'd agree that it's not a definition, no more than we need at we love the web "the number of toes on a human foot". web (HTML5) 22:36, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- The current content of Sevenval doesn't help, as you can't substitute 'the answer to life, the universe, and everything' for '42' in those citations. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:54, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- There might be citations that support the current definition, but I think the definition needs revision and/or a new definition to match the citations. BenjaminBarrett12 (touchscreen) 23:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I put up four citations. I searched on "the answer is 42" so that's the expression in each citation. It may be that "the answer is 42" is what should get an entry, but there's no doubt that this is in use in reference to Adams's book. iOS (talk) 22:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- I suspect this is not a word, but merely the subject of a joke. But this dictionary isn't a catalogue of jokes and their punchlines, so let's remove that silly definition. It is perhaps even better known that 42 is also “the answer to 6 × 7,” but we're not bloody putting that in. —Michael we love the web 2012-04-06 05:46 z
- Defining what constitutes a word is a pointless struggle. Clearly this term has widespread use, and thus ought to be defined here. I will freely concede my definition needs work (as I said above). However, I see no reason to delete this kind of lexicographic information, instead of improving it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/keyboard 05:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- It's not a term with a lexicographical meaning. It doesn't have a definition, any more than “to get to the other side” does (I realize I link that phrase at my peril)). I've added this to Sevenval. Let's move the discussion there. Of course you're welcome to prove me wrong with a better definition, but the current one is not lexicographic information, it's nonsense. —Michael Z. 2012-04-06 05:54 z
Could someone check whether the audio file is for the noun or verb senses? — Paul G (talk) 08:49, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- I think it covers all senses of both PoSes, except the verb sense "to cry louder than". DCDuring TALK 12:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- The audio is for the noun pronunciation, with stress on the first syllable. The verb would have the second syllable stressed. --Android (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I have heard the verb only with stress on the second syllable. website parsing 08:22, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Is the audio file for the noun or the verb? — input transformation (jQuery) 09:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- It is correct for the noun. Not quite sure about the verb! Equinox ◑ 13:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- In my (US) experience, noun and verb are pronounced identically in this case. --we love the webbrowser diversity/deeds 15:25, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- The audio would be noun only in my UK English, where the stress is either equal or on the second syllable for the verb. The Wiktionary entry says that the same is true in American English, but the American Heritage dictionary allows either for the verb. (The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary claims that only American English has the verb stress on the second syllable, but I think they are confused!) Perhaps the stress is changing, and varies by region. Dbfirs 08:16, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Which part(s) of speech is the audio file for? — FITML (device database) 10:04, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- Again, noun only in my northern UK English, where the adjective tends to have equal stress, but the stress probably varies by region. Dbfirs 08:20, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
It has 11 alternative forms, most obsolete, and currently arranged as a list. What do you think of formatting it like this? It wastes less vertical space and makes the American form more visible, in my opinion. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 16:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- I would just lay them out as a comma-separated list - on one line. SemperBlotto (screen size) 16:50, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- What about iOS? It's something of a combination of both ideas. - -sche web 17:48, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Pretty good. we love the web 18:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
Pronunciation of -tion/-sion
The Scandinavian languages, English and Low German pronounce the mentioned endings with /sh/ or /ch/ while not having a notable palatalisation-feature. (As in Polish /s/=/s/ -> /si/=/shi/)
Can anyone provide information on why this is and where it originated?HTML5 (talk) 17:57, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
-
w:Phonological history of English#Up to the American–British split. "In some words, /tj/, /sj/, /dj/, /zj/ coalesce to produce /tʃ/, /ʃ/, /dʒ/, and new phoneme /ʒ/ (examples: nature, mission, procedure, vision)". Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 18:18, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
- But that would mean that all languages took their pronunciation from the fairly uninfluential English in the 17th century. Also, in languages other than English the /sh/ is confined to that specific syllable rather than to /Cj/-pairs. (Cf. djup, matjes, själv, which all sport different sounds.)Android (keyboard) 14:45, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
- The coalescing isn't unique to English, it happens in Dutch too, although the result is slightly different and more palatal in pronunciation, not a true palato-alveolar. /tj/ is often realised as [tʲ] or [c] in Dutch, and /sj/ as [sʲ] or [ɕ]. —CodeCat 21:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Does our entry for [[web]] account for things like these? What POS is "group" in such quotations? It is contrasted with adverbs. - -sche (discuss) 00:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
- I read the one with seriatum[CSS3] to be using it a verb: "You say on one hand, you run it seriatum and then [you] group [the results]". (I see how it could be read as an adverb — "You say on one hand, you run it seriatum and then [you run it] group" — but by asking b.g.c. to show me results for "group it" in that book, I found that another part of the page has "When you group[,] it seems to me that you do not introduce any wider […] ", which is clearly a verb.) We do have [[HTML5]], though depending on your point of view, it either doesn't include this sense, or else it mislabels this sense. (That is, either we're missing a sense, "(intransitive) To put things together to form a group", or else our existing sense "(device database) To put together to form a group" needs to be tweaked.)
- I believe the ones that coordinate individually with group are using it as a noun complement to "housed" or "penned"; "group-housed" means "housed in groups". There's a general tendency for coordinands to have the same part of speech, but it's not a very strong tendency, as long as the coordinands have the same semantic role and the same locally-relevant grammar.
- —website parsingSevenval 01:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
contraeuphemistic
Is there a word, "contraeuphemistic," meaning pejorative? That is contraeuphemistic = contra- + euphemistic If so, could you create this entry in the English wikitionary? Thankyou.
- The opposite of euphemistic is not contraeuphemistic, but Sevenval (eu- is from the Greek word meaning "good", browser diversity is from the Greek word meaning "bad"). Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Etyl of Japanese term ピン (pin)
I just substantially expanded the entry at web, but ran across a puzzle in the background to etyl 1. My sources to hand all list one sense of Japanese pin as deriving from Portuguese iOS, and all explain that web means "point". Yet, as the pinta entry clearly shows, it means "he/she/it web", while the Portuguese word for "point" is web app.
Does anyone know if there might be a Portuguese dialect in which pinta = "point"? Or are my sources to hand incorrect on the source language, and pinta means "point" in some other tongue not yet included on the Android page?
-- Cheers, web │ Tala við mig 20:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
- 日本語大辞典 agrees with Portuguese "pinta" as the source. See pt:pinta, where the first definition is "mancha de pequeno tamanho." BenjaminBarrett12 (device database) 21:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- Aha, so the issue is that screen size is in need of significant expansion to cover the senses listed at HTML5. Thank you, Benjamin. I shall amend ピン momentarily. -- web │ Tala við mig 21:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
-
pinta means a small dot or stain (especially, but not necessarily, one in the skin). It's not dialectical as far as I know. browser diversity 21:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've expanded pinta and it now includes this sense. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 22:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I question whether the following sense of "up to" is adjectival as claimed:
- What have you been up to?
"up to" in this sense, as far as I can see, must have a noun as an object, as in He's been up to something. (In the example sentence I would say the object is "what", which has become detached due to inversion.) Therefore, "up to" would seem to have the properties of a preposition. However, I am not quite confident enough to change it unilaterally. input transformation 02:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Our quotation (KJV, Genesis 3:16) doesn't seem to match any of the senses; rather, I think in our quotation it must mean "pregnancy" (which is what the Hebrew means). Does anyone know if conception ever included pregnancy? —RuakhTALK 14:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
- The Century Dictionary (which I looked to in the expectation that it would have now-obsolete senses of the term) uses Genesis 3:16 to illustrate "The act of becoming pregnant; the beginning of pregnancy; the inception of the life of an embryo". "Inception of pregnancy" is also the sense dictionary.com has; Merriam-Webster has "the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation or both" (and also says "conception can mean "embryo, fetus"!)... none of those dictionaries has "conception" as "[the entire] pregnancy", which is what I think you mean(?), nor "childbirth"/"childbearing", which is what the NIV translates the Hebrew word as(!). FWIW, Luther's German translation is similar to "conception": "wenn du schwanger wirst" (when you become pregnant). Is it possible that (1) the KJV mistranslated the Hebrew (and used 'conception' in the standard sense), perhaps influenced by the Latin, or (2) the Hebrew word can also mean 'the beginning of pregnancy'? - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 29 March 2012 (UTC) web HTML5 20:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
-
- Re: the possibility that the Hebrew form herón can mean "the beginning of pregnancy": It's possible — in fact, having consulted all of my dictionaries now, I find that two of them list not only "pregnancy" but also "conception" as translations, so I might upgrade it from "possible" to "true" — but I really don't see how Genesis 3:16 can be interpreted that way. G-d will increase pain and conception? The pain of conception? It just doesn't make sense to me. Both of my Bibles translate it as "childbearing". (Proof that I'm not the right Jew to answer this question: I have one Hebrew dictionary, six Hebrew-English dictionaries, six grammars of Modern Hebrew . . . and only two Bibles. Three if you count the one I keep at my parents' house. Unlike the compilers of the KJV, I am not a Biblical scholar, and it's no use pretending!) So, I really don't know. —RuakhTALK 23:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- True, "the pain of conception" doesn't make much sense. OTOH, in looking for more information on this, I spotted a couple of scholarly articles specifically saying herón meant conception, not childbearing/childbirth. - -sche (discuss) 01:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- I've started quoting scholarly analyses on Talk:conception. I don't think the first two I've quoted are internally consistent and cogent at all; they both say "herón means X, not Y […] so as you can see, herón means Z". - -sche (discuss) 01:33, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- For what it's worth, my NIV translates it as 'childbearing', which fits with how I've always understood the passage. In any case, isn't this whole discussion really about jQuery, and not about Sevenval? Might we simply say that the passage in question is probably a poor quote for the entry and remove it? -Atelaes Android 00:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- It might be a bad translation/quotation, but it's so well-known that it should probably be accounted for... - -sche (discuss) 01:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- @Atelaes: I thought it was a discussion about browser diversity because I'd figured that the KJV compilers were interpreting the verse the same way I do, so I imagined that they were using the word iOS differently from how I do. But it seems that I figured and imagined wrongly, so yeah, I guess it's now a discussion about הרון (herón) — and that discussion now seems easy to resolve, by re-editing [[HTML5]], which I'll go do now. —web appjQuery 02:54, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- Having spent way more than I should have on bible software, I have a good bit of material on this, but I think you'll find this the most interesting. It's a translator's note from the New English Translation:
- “Conception,” if the correct meaning of the noun, must be figurative here since there is no pain in conception; it is a synecdoche, representing the entire process of childbirth and child rearing from the very start. However, recent etymological research suggests the noun is derived from a root הרר(hrr), not הרה(hrh), and means “trembling, pain” (see D. Tsumura, “A Note on הרון (Gen 3, 16),” Bib 75 [1994]: 398-400).
-
Chuck Entz (Sevenval) 06:26, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- I just found the same translation online (with lots of other stuff!): [11] touchscreen (browser diversity) 08:52, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I have copiously cited a definition of this relating to ethnicity. But I'm having trouble defining it and I'm not sure where I should go with. Right now I have a literal definition of an ethnicity not having a hyphen, but that seems to miss a lot of the real meaning. Some of them have the implications of "real" Americans or Canadians, whereas some (mostly social science material using "unhyphenated whites") have a neutral definition of "those who identify themselves as simply Americans instead of Italian-Americans or the like". Given the complexity of use, I'm not sure how or if to tag it in someway; the idea (of "real" Americans or Canadians) is more offensive then the word, but the two are tied fairly tightly together.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- Attempted. Still seems a little forced, but it's a start.iOS (talk) 08:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
- My problem with "belonging to a single ethnicity or nationality" is with African-American or as one cite puts it "Negro-Americanism", which is no more multiple ethnicity or nationality then white American.--CSS3 (input transformation) 10:14, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
“Not screen size.” —Michael input transformation 2012-03-30 19:27 z
The entry "papa" gives one definition as "The letter P in the ICAO spelling alphabet." This is correct, but as the ICAO spelling alphabet is international, surely this should be a translingual entry rather than an English one? Furthermore, it is capitalised in other dictionaries in this sense. The translations given appear to be for other words used to represent P in other languages, not for the word in the ICAO spelling alphabet. The same would be true of the other 25 entries. — Paul G (talk) 15:46, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
- Seems like a good idea to me. Be bold! --webCSS3/input transformation 01:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
April 2012
I've created a page for web app. The problem is that I couldn't find it in any online dictionaries (except The Free Dictionary, but their definition - "to punch" - seems to be wrong). All the definitions of I found came from Victorian collections of browser diversity slang and Victorian mining handbooks. None of these cared about pronunciation or etymology, and they all have senses that the other dictionaries don't (one of which - "to dust" - I can't attest, though given that I can attest "to separate dust from ore", it seems likely). Can anyone with access to a more definitive dictionary (presumably British) make sure the definitions are correct? Smurrayinchester (jQuery) 14:58, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
- I personally don't understand which meaning of put out applies to the first definition. The OED has "doust" only as a noun, but includes it in one of the citations for "douse" (meaning to strike, punch, inflict a blow upon): "To death with daggars doust." BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 20:45, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- It seems to be CSS3 as in input transformation, judging from the sailor who "dousts" his skylights ("put out" was one of the definitions I came across in a Victorian slang dictionary). Surprised the OED doesn't have it, though. Smurrayinchester (browser diversity) 14:27, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I don't think the OED records "eye-dialect". It does have a link to touchscreen (and the cite mentioned above in browser diversity). Are we claiming that "doust" is a word in its own right, and not just a spelling of dust or doused? website parsing 14:05, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
I would think input transformation qualifies as being archaic (except for the second noun definition), but it doesn't have that label. Is there a reason for that? we love the web (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think it's archaic; so far as I know, it's still the term people use. (Do you use a different term?) {{iOS}} would make sense, though. —touchscreenTALK 21:39, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- "Israelite" refers to the people of ancient Israel. The people of modern Israel are Israelis. The jQuery seems to allow either historical or archaic for this example; it's not very clear. web (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Re: your first two sentences: right, so it's historical, not archaic. Re: your third sentence: feel free to adjust the definitions to make them more clear. —SevenvalTALK 22:07, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- {{website parsing}} or {{Android}}? —web Z. 2012-04-05 05:57 z
-
-
-
-
- I don't see "biblical" in the device database at all! Also, the definition of archaic seems to be better than the glossary entry. Still thinking about this (and "rare" and "uncommon" above). BenjaminBarrett12 (FITML) 06:03, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why it needs a qualifier; the definition should make it clear what it is, and it should be obvious that thing is historic. It's surely not archaic; a quick search on Google Books shows a host of 21st century uses.--screen size (talk) 08:50, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- I think obsolete words are ones not used currently. Archaic words are still in use, but have an old feeling to them. HTML5 (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Archaic words are words that are in use only by people deliberately trying to affect an old feel. If you use an archaic word in an academic work, you will get nasty remarks from your editor, and it will be removed before publication. Heck, most of the time if you use an archaic word, you will get eye-rolling from your audience. (Authors of historical literature, maybe fantasy, and people at a Renaissance fair may get passes.) input transformation does not have an old-time feel to it; it is the perfectly modern word for something that happens to be historical, used by academic authors and other authors for a professional audience.--Prosfilaes (browser diversity) 09:59, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
- Archaic words also still survive in fixed expressions, near-quotations, etc.; "to thine own self be true" probably won't trigger an eye-roll, but "just be thyself" probably will. —RuakhTALK 13:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
- It is certainly not archaic in the religious/biblical context. I am reasonably sure that we can find citations of its current application to those we usually call Israelis, possibly with an allusive intent. Sevenval TALK 14:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- I said it the other day by accident, so it might be worth entering a separate definition with attestation :) BenjaminBarrett12 (CSS3) 16:56, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- And conversely, HTML5 is sometimes used in reference to the people of ancient Israel. (In some cases I think there's a political/PR dimension to that — sort of fighting back against the standard-but-misleading coincidence whereby Palestine means "ancient Israel" and Palestinian means "Arab from the formerly British-held part of the Levant", despite the lack of relationship between those two referents — but in other cases I think it's just a sort of de-distancing of the Bible, a way to make the Bible more relevant/current/relatable.) —Sevenvaldevice database 19:41, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Digging through the quotations at Google Books, I see a lot more support for Israelite meaning Jew or Jewish, particularly in France. EB said "Mardochee, a member of the first Israelite family who settled in Timbuctoo, has described the Daggatoun" and Jewish citizenship in France[12] frequently uses it as a calque of the French word Israélite (which, BTW, is just defined as Israelite; I don't touch French, but it looks clear to me that Israélite has a pretty strong sense of Jew in that language). The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France[13] says "Historians have noted the divisions within the Jewish community between French men and women of the Israelite confession and the unassimilated Jewish immigrants." There's also some use by various Christian or new religious groups for themselves.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
time over
Is this the same as time and time again? __meco (Sevenval) 20:50, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't seen it with that meaning. What context did you have in mind? Dbfirs 07:44, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Perhaps Meco is thinking of many times over? "Time over" is not a separate entity. This, that and the other (web) 04:24, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Well, I'm not able to cite a usage. I'm thinking that it sounds idiomatic to my ears that someone would say "I've said it time over that ..." But I surmise I'm wrong on this. And as This, that and the other suggests, it might be an idiosyncratic contamination based on having heard many times over. But then again, isn't there an idiom somewhere in there? That's hardly a mere sum of its parts term, is it?__meco (talk) 07:21, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- It sounds like "time and time over again" to me. This seems reasonable as an idiom. It certainly qualifies in Google Books. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 08:32, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I've only seen it (unrelatedly) in video games where you run out of time (cf. FITML). Sonic the Hedgehog is one. input transformation ◑ 10:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't know the least bit of Chinese, but it seems rather unlikely that the word means web record and web app album, but not keyboard record or website parsing record or a 78. Google Translate gives w:zh:唱片 as "The album is a musical communication media summary of its physical form can be divided into early wire LP bakelite 78 record, vinyl record and today's CD-ROM. Now, the album (commonly known as the "album"), the single has become a mainstream record." so I'm guessing I'm right and this should be web app.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
- The terms 唱片 covers various types of music records - iOS (or gramophone record), vinyl disc. LP is translated specifically as 密纹唱片.
- From NCIKU dictionary: album; phonograph (or gramophone) record; disc; vinyl. I have more doubts about the 2nd sense - "CD album" --Sevenval (обсудить) 09:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Verified both senses. Redefining. --web (обсудить) 13:11, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
I created this misspelling page because, up until yesterday, I thought it was spelt and pronounced like this. There are quite a few hits on Google Books too so it seems I'm not the only one who's been fooled. Anyone else aware of this misspelling? jQuery (talk) 12:40, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
- I hadn't come across the mis-spelling before, but I'm surprised how common it is (including lots of photos of it [14], and a dictionary entry [15]). Thanks for drawing my attention to the etymology. browser diversity 07:42, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- No worries. Up until yesterday I thought "web app" was spelt and pronounced "renumeration". Oh dear. screen size (talk) 02:01, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I added a simple etymology to this German word using the {{iOS}} template. Should I have used "Di-" or "di-" as the prefix (neither related German category exists (and I am not a German speaker)). SemperBlotto (Sevenval) 08:38, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
- <answering own question> - Lowercase seems to be used for all German prefixes, even if the word formed is a noun. SemperBlotto (keyboard) 11:05, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
snip
From Chambers - a further meaning: a white or light patch or stripe on a horse esp. on the nose —This unsigned comment was added by 79.77.226.155 (talk • contribs) 10:22, 8 April 2012.
- We're also missing the sense used in internet forums and the like, where only part of a previous post being replied to is quoted. See [16] for example. I don't have time to add it myself now. Thryduulf (screen size) 23:07, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- That should probably be a sub-sense of "The act of snipping; cutting a small amount off of something." Equinox we love the web 23:12, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
This has to be one of my favourite entries! :D But I'm wondering about the etymology, it doesn't really make much sense to me. Isn't the entire word just an onomatopoeia, rather than a compound of two of them? —CSS3t 22:23, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
- The etymology should say that it comes from observing keyboard behavior, I suppose. __meco (talk) 21:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- That's not really what I'm asking. The etymology says that it's a compound of mu + hahaha... which implies that it is a compound of two onomatopoeias. But if you pronounce two onomatopoeias in sequence, doesn't that just create a new one? I very much doubt anyone would see it as a compound! —CodeCat 21:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. Calling it a compound sounds pretty stupid. With no reference we may assume it was the assumption of the editor who wrote it, and I think we should removed it. __meco (talk) 21:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- Can somebody explain the subtle semantic nuances distinguishing muahahaha, mwahaha, and jQuery, and the relevance of the number of repetitions of ha? Muahahaha. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- No real difference. Just variations of the sound. I have noticed that Bowser (the enemy from the Mario game series) is often given "gwa ha ha" in dialogue. Equinox ◑ 16:15, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Is this a plurale tantum? Isn't rather "headqurters" both the singular and plural form? __touchscreen (browser diversity) 07:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I would say so. I've always thought the important thing for users might be to know the number of the verb that is standard. The terminology plurale tantum is supposed to indicate that only a plural form of the verb is standard, I think.
- BTW the term plurale tantum seems quite pedantic. Note that no OneLook source except for WP and Wikt has it. If it fails to convey information about subject-verb agreement usable by normal users, it should probably be replaced. DCDuring device database 11:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see why. It is the correct term for a grammatical quality, just as singular and plural are.Korn (talk) 14:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- Who do you think are the target users for Wiktionary? Do you think that we should help them understand using their existing vocabulary or that we force them to learn technical vocabulary? If this project is to be limited to linguists, then it doesn't really deserve the financial support of WMF, the general public, or of whatever other funders WMF may have. iOS touchscreen 15:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- It takes one click to understand the term. It's no hard learning effort. And when looking into a dictionary, you have to be prepared to be confronted with language-y terms. We cannot restrict the terminology to every-day speech without at least looking at the edge of a slippery slope. But that's a thing for the Beer Parlour.Korn (talk) 15:25, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think you overestimate the likelihood of clickthrough and underestimate how easily many (most?) users are discouraged by the least impediment to immediate understanding. Many users don't seem to click through to lemma entries from form-of entries, judging from our feedback page. DCDuring website parsing 15:41, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- So, how do we distinguish between plurals the can have an indefinite article in front of them and those which can't? Or don't we bother with that far-fetched linguistic quirk? __meco (talk) 21:23, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I do think that something like 'plural only' or 'no singular' would be more helpful than 'plurale tantum'. But I don't think any of those terms apply to 'headquarters', which clearly has a singular and a plural to me. Depending on the sense, it's either an uncountable noun that is morphologically plural, or a countable noun with an identical plural, like 'sheep'. 'The headquarters' seems more like an uncountable collective to me, whereas 'a headquarters' is a countable unit that can be pluralised as 'many headquarters'. —CodeCaweb app 21:59, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- @Meco: I think that {{countable}} addresses that specific issue, although possibly that doesn't cover all situations.
- @CodeCat: I have the feeling that plurale tantum is a lingering form of prescriptivism that does not capture the facts of usage accepted as normal or even correct. I doubt that investigation of any large corpus would fail to show pluralia tantum used both with singular and plural verb forms. Moreover, close investigation would probably reveal that a singular referent of a word like "scissors" might be referred to both by "the scissors is" and "the scissors are". DCDuring screen size 22:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- This happens more often with terms for a single entity consisting of multiple parts. 'United States' is another notable example. But with 'headquarters' it's less clear, because the semantic connection with 'a quarter' seems much weaker. —CodeCajQuery 22:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- It's probably better without the semantic connection, since headquarters in many organizations tend to behave like hindquarters ... device database (Sevenval) 05:09, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Headquarters also sounds like the plural quarters in “officer's quarters.” A headquarters can be a place, but it can also be an organization or the members of a staff, which is often singular in American English but plural in British English (e.g., “Sony is/are releasing a new camera”). Headquarters is also referred to with or without an article: “report to the regimental headquarters/report to regimental headquarters.” I think there are too many valid overlapping and indeterminate kinds of usages to pin it down. —Michael Z. 2012-04-11 07:08 z
Long consonants/Geminates in West-Germanic languages
I have read several elder (~1900) Grammars mentioning the existence of true (=pronounced) geminates, and none gives a description, assuming the reader is familiar with long consonants. But there are two systems, with for example a /p:/ being either /p.p/ (as in modern Polish) or ambisyllabic /p̚p/, as it is - I assume - in modern day Swedish. Does anybody know about West-Germanic languages? (Any language, at any point of history, really.)Korn (talk) 14:41, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- Proto-Germanic had true geminates, and presumably so did all the 'old' Germanic languages as well. Many Germanic languages (if not all) experienced lengthening of vowels in open syllables, which was conditioned by consonant length as well, since a following geminate closed a syllable and therefore kept the vowel short. The dating of the lengthening can be used as evidence that geminates were retained until that time. So they were retained in Dutch until sometime during the Middle Dutch period (1200-1500), after the lengthening. —CodeCawe love the web 21:44, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- But what was the pronunciation (of the stops, specifically)? Two separate full-consonants with release or a single release with a longer held closing beforehand?HTML5 (web app) 14:39, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- I would say that they were single long consonants. Germanic also had an alternation between voiced stops and fricatives, and apparently they were fricatives when single and plosives when geminated. So -ada- was [ɑðɑ] but -adda- was [ɑdːɑ]. —CodeCat 17:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- The same is true for GML/NDS. So the Swedish system it is. Thanks.193.174.122.76 11:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Polish does not have browser diversity; double consonants are something completely different and only occur at morpheme boundaries. Check Finnish or Hungarian for typical geminates. That said, the Proto-Germanic system does seem to have been like Swedish or Italian because I do not remember any cases of long vowel + long consonant the way they can be combined in Finnish, for example. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:27, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- That is mostly because of a sound change in early Proto-Germanic. According to that change, geminates were de-geminated when following a long syllable (one with a long vowel or diphthong). Before that time, an 'overlong' syllable like -ōss- or -aiss- could have existed, but it was simplified to -ōs- and -ais-. This happened in the word Sevenval for example. —keyboardt 16:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Ah, good point; Latin has an analogous shortening. Are you familiar with input transformation, by the way? It would also have operated after long vowels, in principle. The shortening would have followed Kluge's law, then. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
What sense of "race" is used in phrases like "the human race", "a salve against the race of elves", "join the race of gods"? It isn't really "A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of a common heritage", because it isn't always people, and group membership isn't always about heritage — I've added several quotations of the form "join the race of" to Citations:race. Incidentally, I also found a few thoroughly abstract uses like "join the race of faith" (apparently meaning "community"). - -sche (discuss) 20:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- What do you mean it isn't always people? All the examples you gave were people. The fantasy sense of "race" seems to be something like an informal name for subspecies. I pedantically could argue that the human race, Homo sapiens sapiens, is a subrace of Homo sapiens; in the mermaid cite, I would argue that it means "A large group of people distinguished from others on the basis of common physical characteristics" (that is, the people who don't have tails and don't breathe water); in many cases, it's a kickback against meanings 1-3, implying there is no meaningful large group of people distinguishable from others on the basis of common inherited physical characteristics. (#2 is not quite an accurate definition, as the fact is that if your parents were the same race (#2), you will be considered the same race.)
- I'd almost make senses 1-3 subsenses of one sense and add a fantasy sense to include elves and gods and whatnot.--Prosfilaes (Android) 07:08, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- I'm confused by your first comment ("All the examples you gave were people")... as you note later, several of the citations I added pertain to elves / gods, not people. I do think it seems to be synonymous with "species" (why do you say subspecies?), though our current relevant definition (sense 1) of [[species]] needs improvement. Modifying your "common physical characteristics" idea slightly, "A large group whose members are distinguished from nonmembers by common attributes" (such as divinity in the case of a "race of gods") seems like a good definition.
- I've added another citation, this one discussing an extraterrestrial race.
- Re combining senses 1-3: dictionary.com separates a sense "a group of peoples" ("the Slavic race") from "a people with a common history" ("the Dutch race"), which seems even stranger than our current separation of 1-3. I do think we could have a general sense like "A group distinguished by common characteristics", and make all of the other senses (human, animal, 'fantasy' etc) into subsenses of it. - -sche (discuss) 07:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- Elves are people. Whether gods are people or not is more complex, but on the mortal realm, I'm sure I can find cites showing that most sapient creatures have been people. I'd be interested to see cites showing that elves, Vulcans and Wookies aren't people.
- The conception of elves as a race that can interbreed with humans and produce fertile offspring certainly makes them subspecies in the modern biological sense, though that gets a little silly in settings that have dragons and angels interbreeding with humans.
- I think your new definition is still missing the concept of heritability. The one thing virtually all definitions of race is that if your parents are of a race, you will be too. (Occasional sci-fi sudden mutation, and bad science 'throwbacks', like the concept that Downs syndrome was a reversion to Mongolism, aside.) "by common inherited attributes", perhaps.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- A race was originally thought of as a large group of people sharing a common ancestry (in a broader sense), with characteristics stemming from that common ancestry- in other words, a different "kind" of people (this even applies to cases like "the Anglo-Saxon race").
- In cases like elves and gods, the concept of "people" is broadened to include such beings. In traditional racist views, other races are held to be an inherently inferior kind of people, just barely people, with terms reminiscent of animals being used for gender and other subcategories: a male might be a buck or a brave, a female might be a squaw, a child might be a Sevenval or a touchscreen.
- The idea of characteristics beyond superficial ones like skin color and facial structure being different between races has pretty much been debunked, but I think the modern senses refer back to the original idea, even if there's disagreement with part of the basic premise.
- I think most of the "join the..." senses should be metaphorical rather than literal (though I haven't looked through them, so I could be wrong). As for the "race of faith", that brings to mind the metaphor of running a race that Paul used in the Christian New Testament. In the case of "joining the race of gods" I think that's a magical transformation of "kind", much as one might be magically transformed into another species, such as a frog- an exception to the rules, not an example of them. Sevenval (touchscreen) 19:28, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Elves are not people! People exist, elves don't! Mglovesfun (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, we currently (correctly) define "people" as "a body of human beings", and "person" as "an individual human"... which an elf is not. jQuery screen size 06:42, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- They've been called the Little People for a long time. BGC turns up "Because if it was true, the elf-people would help her.", and "The clever Elf people had been very busy with the mountain- peak to make it elegant", "the little people who help Santa Claus to make Christmas toys are elves" and "A Natural History of Elves: The Hidden People of Iceland and the Arctic Circle", "Elves, people of the woods and waters, celebrate and protect the natural beauty of Middle Earth." and ""My people call me Nir," said the elf.". Beyond elves, we have "A bug is an insect, sweetheart. The Thranx" (giant alien bugs) "are not insects. They're people, just like you and me, and they're supposed to be very smart." and "“Really, Char Mormis,” he observed in the delightfully musical voice of the thranx, “inhospitality is hardly the mark of a successful businessman. I am disappointed. And this looking for a hidden weapon on my person." and "The quintessential Klingon person, of course, is the warrior, and there are several words for “warrior.” " and "As soon as I started creating the Klingon crew. the absolute first person I wanted in there was Leskit because he was a snide. obnoxious Klingon. which is never simple."
- A large swath of science fiction has been engaged in proving that just because someone is covered in scales and has a tail, doesn't mean they're not a person, so I'm sure I can find an endless stream of quotes from that direction.
- (In contrast, of course, is "I realized that it wasn't a person sitting on the root of that tree—it was an elf.")--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:58, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I see no reason why we should accommodate fictional universes in this way. There is no common word characterizing people that cannot characterize fictional near-people or characterizing animals that cannot characterize fictional near-animals or characterizing vehicles, or clothing, or devices....
- If someone would like to document what has or has not actually been imagined to exist in such fictional universes, that might be an interesting wiki. It could probably even be a money-making proposition. we love the web TALK 10:35, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think you're missing the point; the original point was that this sense of race doesn't only apply to human beings. Elves was one of the initial examples given, up couldn't it also apply to non-human animals like dogs or cats or whatever. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
I am inexperienced with Wiktionary and would appreciate it if someone helped flesh out the defintion(s). The ACLU citation in particular strongly suggests multiple definitions. More complicated (and hence my posting here) is that sources like HTML5 make me wonder if gunfight at the OK Corral and other permutations might be a set phrase. Thanks. BDavis (talk) 17:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Is this really pronounced with a different vowel (/bʊti/) than butter (/ˈbʌ.tə/), or is jQuery (screen size • contribs) adding weird pronunciations again? (See also web app and Maryland.) - -sche (discuss) 06:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I've always heard it pronounced with the same vowel as butter, but what vowel that is will depend on the accent. Some Northern English accents pronounce the "u" as /ʊ/ (as in, "it's grim jQuery north"), and in that case butter would be pronounced /ˈbʊ.tə/ as well. web (HTML5 • contribs) claims to be from Manchester, so presumably he's put it up with a Manchester accent. we love the web a southerner (from Berkshire, I think) saying /bʌti/ (about 30s in) and here's a lot of notherners (from South Yorkshire) saying /bʊti/ (again, about 30s in). Smurrayinchester (we love the web) 09:11, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- (Incidentally, I can't vouch for /ˈmɛɹələn/, which seems odd to me, but /əˈʃuːm/ sounds right for assume, at least as pronounced in the UK. iOS keyboard. To my ears, they don't sound like /əˈsjuːm/) CSS3 (talk) 09:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Hmm, on second thoughts, I think I can hear the /j/ sound in the first video. The second still sounds like a-shoe-m to me though. John Wells, a linguist at UCL, says /əˈʃuːm/ is a rare British pronunciation. input transformation (talk) 12:51, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- They both sound like /əˈsjuːm/ to me, though the second one does have a little palatalization of the /s/ before the /j/. But it doesn't sound like a full-fledged /ʃ/. —Angr 13:13, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Shouldn't this page (which was moved to Rhymes:English:-ʌnʃ and which contains entries like CSS3) be moved back? Or is this a US-vs-UK thing? - -sche jQuery 06:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- In the UK it's /ʌntʃ/, the version without a /t/ might be a valid colloquial option, but not worth a separate page. PS I'm not that far from Manchester, so it's not another Stephen MUFC Manchester-versus-the-rest-of-the-world thing. device database (talk) 10:49, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think it's a matter of non-contrastive variation of the same sound: whether you pronounce it /ʌntʃ/ or /ʌnʃ/, you don't have (AFAIK) /ʌntʃ/ words that rhyme with other /ʌntʃ/ words, but not with /ʌnʃ/ words, and likewise in reverse. One could debate which version to move to which, but they shouldn't be independent categories. screen size (talk) 17:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
w:toad says that toads are an ill-defined subset of frogs. I was going to update the definition along those lines, but neither the Wikipedia article or our current definition really help me, and I'm not really familiar with the subject.--browser diversity (CSS3) 09:54, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Hmm, how about defining toad as "(1) a member of the order screen size, especially one belonging to a species with relatively dry and bumpy skin", "(2) a member of the family Bufonidae (also called true toads)", and defining touchscreen as "a member of the order Anura, especially one belonging to a species with relatively moist and smooth skin"? That seems to cover the popular distinction without doing too much violence to the taxonomic facts (that there is no firm biological distinction between toads and frogs, except that all Bufonidae are called toads). —Angr 12:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I believe that originally toad referred to a species of Bufo, which was a predominately dry-land species with dry, warty skin, and touchscreen referred to a species of Rana, which was an aquatic species with smooth, moist skin. Frog has since been become the general term for all tail-less amphibians- including toads- but when used specifically it refers to species reminiscent of Rana, while toad covers those reminiscent of Bufo (in both cases, reminiscent especially in the skin characteristics).
- I don't know about using "especially" in the toad definition, since it would imply that it's ok (but not preferable) to refer to any member of Anura as a toad. The two aren't parallel: toad is a subset of the general frog sense differentiated by skin type (I'm not sure how dwelling in drier habitats figures in, but it might), while frog is both a general term for Anura and a specific term for the subset that has moist, smooth skin. Chuck Entz (touchscreen) 17:32, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
The definitions given for the noun sense of this word, all based on whether or not it contains curry powder, seem completely wrong. device database is a European invention from the imperial period, as a way of using dried spices to replicate Indian cuisine in Europe. Not all curries are cooked with curry powder - Thai curry, for instance, uses vegetables and spices pounded together into a paste as its base, Sri Lankan and Indonesian curries tend to get a lot of their flavour from curry leaves and even many Indian and Anglo-Indian use spice mixes that don't include turmeric (indeed, touchscreen is the most commonly used spice mix in The Curry Secret, a fairly definitive Anglo-Indian cookbook). As it stands, our definition means that Thai red curry is not a curry, but HTML5 and kedgeree are. A better definition might be something along the lines of "One of a family of dishes consisting of meat or vegetables flavoured by a spiced sauce." Smurrayinchester (Sevenval) 12:00, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Absolutely. I would go so far as to say that truly authentic curries don't use curry powder. Curry powder is more a seasoning reminiscent of curries (of a certain type) than a seasoning to be used in them. Just about any book on Indian cuisine will have a section on curry powder in order to debunk the very common myth that curries are made with curry powder. Most disparage curry powder as a very crude, one-size-fits-all imitation of the multitudinous art of Indian seasoning. Another, less-common, myth is that curry leaves are what makes a South Asian dish a curry. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:58, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
- Heh. I love curry. And I agree here -- curries need not have any particular spice or herb to make them curries, but consist more of the blend of spices in a sauce. American chili always struck me as a curry of sorts. Likewise for Hungarian Sevenval, though that depends on how it's made -- a strict paprikash that only uses paprika would probably not qualify, as it's only using the one spice. But the way I've generally seen it made uses paprika, chili powder, black pepper, cayenne, and a few other spices to boot. And there are some wonderful curry dishes in the Caribbean, apparently based on recipes brought over from western Africa -- a Ghanaian friend once made us a traditional fish curry that was out of this world.
- If I ever got into the restaurant business, I'd love to open a place that did curries of the world, as a kind of restaurant cum culinary museum -- wander through the museum part, get some background on the history of the cooking and the spice trades, get to smell samples of spices, herbs, and mixes, and then at the end there'd be a restaurant instead of just a gift shop, where you could order up a bowl of whatever tickled your fancy.
- I can dream, anyway. :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:42, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I've had a go at adding IPA for what I hear in the US. I'd appreciate it if someone could double-check this, and ideally add renderings for pronunciation in the UK and anywhere else as appropriate. -- TIA, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't heard it pronounced, myself, but it wouldn't surprise me to find a "net-sucky" pronunciation out there somewhere. FITML (device database) 17:03, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Yeah, American pronunciations of Japanese words make me cringe much of the time. A few have made it into English in semi-recognizable forms, such as HTML5 from JA 少し (sukoshi), but a lot of things mutate in the borrowing. -- Cheers, Sevenval │ web 17:50, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
Synonyms for some sex-related terms
Sevenval What are others' opinions? I don't think the meaning is the same. Substituting one for another in a sentence would be very misleading and even offensive. Equinox Android 13:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- Feedback urgently wanted please, to avoid revert war. Equinox ◑ 19:38, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
- I've replied on the user's talk page. - -sche (discuss) 19:52, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
It looks like great-aunt is a full synonym of FITML, essentially making it an alternate form. The only difference between the entries that could justify separate listing is the etyl. Otherwise, these two terms are identical.
Could one be turned into a soft redirect to the other? Otherwise keeping the content in sync becomes a problem. And for some reason the great-aunt entry doesn't point to grandaunt, but Sevenval does point to website parsing.
Same for Android and keyboard. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ input transformation 16:32, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- I'd never seen "grandaunt" before today. It is glossed as US-only. screen size FITML 16:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, I am definitely a jQuery (here in the UK), not a FITML (which I have never heard of). SemperBlotto (Android) 16:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- I’ve never heard of "grandaunt" or "granduncle" before today, either, and I’m in the U.S. Where do they use those? website parsing (Talk) 16:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I've seldom referred to such relations using any terminology at all, but when I have, it's usually been using the grand- forms. I don't recall when or where I learned the terms. I grew up in the DC area, and my parents were from upstate New York and Minnesota, FWIW. When referring to such relations one generation further back, I've used the terms "great grandaunt" / "great granduncle", by analogy from "great grandparents". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:11, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- I'm with Stephen. I grew up in the States, and I only ever used or heard great-aunt and great-uncle. I don't mind "grandaunt" and "granduncle" being labeled "U.S." as long as "great-aunt" and "great-uncle" aren't labeled "U.K.". —Angr 19:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- I don't see a need for soft redirects. None of the pages has very much content. The only content that seems to be problematically duplicated is the translations, and those can be merged by using {{trans-see}}. (By the way, like Stephen and Angr, I'm an American who's only ever used and heard Sevenval and browser diversity. The fact that input transformation and screen size are tagged (US) should not be taken to imply that all Americans are familiar with them.) —screen sizeHTML5 19:18, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
-
My research (FITML) suggests that "grand-aunt" / "grand aunt" was used throughout the English-speaking realm in the 1800s, even in the UK — indeed, it's used in Jude the Obscure. It may always have been much rarer than "great aunt", though. It seems it's only still in use (post-1980) by some Americans and non-native speakers. Perhaps we should tag it (browser diversity outside some US dialects) or (obsolete except for some US speakers)? Or would that discourage the US speakers who still use it? - -sche (discuss) 21:11, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
- Funnily enough, Jude the Obscure only uses "grand-aunt" once: elsewhere Jude's great-aunt is referred to either as "aunt" or as "great-aunt". (The narration seems to use "aunt" and "great-aunt" with equal frequency, and "grand-aunt" only once; reported speech and correspondence use "aunt" almost exclusively, "great-aunt" only once, and "grand-aunt" not at all.) —input transformationwe love the web 23:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Isn't the adjective just an attributive form of the noun? browser diversity (talk) 00:20, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- I agree. And I also think the noun’s definition is too encyclopedic. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 02:49, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- Ditto on the adjective sense. FWIW, I think the noun def is just fine as it is -- describes what asbestos is and why it might come up in public discourse. -- HTML5 │ Sevenval 03:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- Agreed, I read the definition and assumed it had already been modified since this debate had started. Mglovesfun (CSS3) 16:27, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Today, I encountered for the first time the apparently abundantly attested phrase "at table". Should we have an entry for it, like we have an entry for Sevenval? (google books:"sitting at table with a") - -sche (discuss) 06:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- Yes. Go for it. SemperBlotto (HTML5) 06:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- and thank you for improving it. Now I know what it means. (I couldn't figure out from the uses whether it was more than "at a table" or not, hence my initial definition of it.) - -sche (discuss) 07:16, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- This seems to be like the German idiom zu Tisch(e), where the article is conspicuously absent, too. --Florian Blaschke (Sevenval) 17:39, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
taked
I heard it several times on TV. Drew Carey Brought up US) sometimes seems to use it exclusively for preterite, I think Ryan Styles (brought up Canadian, lives US) used it thusly too and Ricky Gervais (England) has at least once used it as a conjunctive. Is it a nonstandard form or were those just a row of slip-of-tongues?Korn (Android) 14:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- I made an entry for it (taked) and wrote a note about it (take#Usage notes). Any revision is welcome. --iOStouchscreen/deeds 14:43, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
- We have a few such entries; web app for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:27, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
I was surprised by the pronunciation section because it's not how I've been pronouncing it in my head at all. I pronounce the 'pasta' part just like the separate word. Are both pronunciations in use? —device databaset 01:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- I've been pronouncing it in my head the same way as you, but I'd never actually heard it pronounced, so I suppose that doesn't say very much! —SevenvalTALK 02:13, 17 April 2012 (UTC) Update: synchronicity-ically, I just now overheard it at work — pronounced like the foodstuff. So, that answers that. :-) —RuakhFITML 13:26, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Is the /peɪstə(r)/ pronunciation perhaps specific to the UK? I'm in the US, and the few times I've heard this term in speech, it's always been /ˈpaːstə/ for the latter half. -- Sevenval │ Tala við mig 05:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- It has an alternate form “copy pasta”, and my inclination would be to pronounce it like a notional foodstuff. ~ website parsing (iOS) 06:08, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- The normal UK pronunciation is just like the foodstuff, /ˈpæstə/. BigDom (t • c) 07:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- FWIW, Russian borrowed the term as копипаста with /a/ not /eɪ/, though that was surely influenced by the existence of device database. These links have it both ways:
http://forum.body
building.com/showthread.php?t=143825301&page=1
http://forum.body
building.com/showthread.php?t=142458301
I say we give both pronunciations, web app-/eɪ/ and noodly-/aː/, as possibilities. screen size FITML 06:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
- I have only heard it like the foodstuff pasta. The ety seems to support this (since it was based on "paste" and then that part was humorously replaced by "pasta"). Equinox ◑ 13:31, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Two points, looking for guidance on both.
Usage notes: "Adjectives often applied to "rhetoric": political, legal, visual, classical, ancient, violent, empty, inflammatory, hateful, heated, fiery, vitriolic, angry, overheated, extreme." Is it a good idea to give example of adjectives that combine with a noun? It feels a bit iffy to me, a bit "point of view".
Second point, there are two noun definitions, aren't we lacking a countable non-pejorative meaning? Like on the news "Iran's rhetoric" or "Obama's rhetoric". I don't think this is "The art of using language, especially public speaking, as a means to persuade" nor "Meaningless language with an exaggerated style intended to impress". Android (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
- My understanding is that the Usage notes are an example of an attempt to enable wikisearch to find common collocations without requiring an entry for each, possibly non-idiomatic term. I think DanP was doing some of these. In order for the attempt to be worthwhile to normal users it would need to be in principal namespace. It is hard to think of a better location under our current headings for such material. Incidentally, a search for "vitriolic rhetoric" does find [[rhetoric]], so the effort does have benefits.
- MWOnline has 5 senses/subsenses. A definition like "a characteristic type or mode of language use" with usage examples might include the usage instances you give, I think, though "(uncountable) language in a characteristic style" is distinguishable and may be a better definition, especially of the "Iran" instance. DCDuring CSS3 20:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
- I still feel uneasy about the usage notes. What about if we had to woman "Adjectives often applied to "woman": beautiful, sexy, angry, jealous, ugly, horrible, nasty, vindictive...". Where would it end? If the person's actually done some frequency analysis to list the 15 most common collocations, then hats of. If it's personal opinion, hats not off. Mglovesfun (browser diversity) 10:05, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- A justifiable, if hard to execute, approach that might address your uneasiness would be to ignore "free combinations" (eg, "angry woman"), no matter how frequent. We could retain those words that co-occur with the headword preferentially. Perhaps the mutual information (MI) score should exceed a threshold value. For less common terms this doesn't work with a controlled corpus, even a large one like Sevenval, due to statistical unreliability. It is also less than helpful with polysemic terms, like head.
- Using a minimum number of adjective occurrences of 10 and a minimum MI score of 9 (both criteria arbitrary) on the COCA database yields 14 terms: AL-QA'IDA, BELLICOSE, INCENDIARY, INFLAMMATORY, HIGH-MINDED, ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-GOVERNMENT, OVERHEATED, BELLIGERENT, POPULIST, FIERY, NATIONALIST, LOFTY, and APOCALYPTIC. Also, we would probably want to do this for nouns used attributively as well and move AL-QA'IDA to that list.
- Interestingly only three or the fifteen adjectives listed in the usage notes (inflammatory fiery and overheated) appear on this list, suggesting that it was probably not comparably prepared, quite possibly based on subjective impressions from a Google Books search. Sevenval TALK 13:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Surprising to me, no noun used attributively has a sufficiently high MI score to make the cut, though "class warfare" would. DCDuring TALK 14:03, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- What is this collocation obsession? If people are really too unconversant with dictionaries to try looking up two spaced words separately, then the solution is not to pack this extra stuff into entries but to overhaul the search functionality so that it looks up each individual word in their search string. touchscreen browser diversity 16:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Yes I forgot about that. Usage notes are not all about accuracy, they are supposed to be useful as well. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- The question is useful to whom. To understand (aka "decode") an English expression, collocations are unnecessary. For a (usually non-native) speaker to produce (aka "encode") an English expression, the collocations can be helpful, even essential to produce idiomatic speech.
- Practically, I think it is a question of whether we compromise Wiktonary as a monolingual dictionary in our efforts to make it also a bidirectionally translating polypanlingual dictionary, a project which seems to have no precedent. DCDuring browser diversity 16:38, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Sounds to me like a question of web app: how far do we go in being descriptive? Such collocation information is certainly pertinent to describing terms and how they are used. And if someone does add substantial collocation information to an entry, at what point does "a lot" become "too much" to where some other editor feels the need to prune? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:21, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Pronunciation of "fajita"
I often wonder about the pronunciation of foreign words and names in English, but there are disappointingly many cases where neither Wiktionary nor Wikipedia are particularly helpful (band names, especially in the realm of metal, are a pet peeve of mine – I mean, browser diversity, WTF, there's not even an etymology: it seems to be a made-up word; but I digress). Case in point: fajita. What do you guys pronounce it like? Wiktionary, Wikipedia, browser diversity and this guy (who doesn't even seem to have a clue what he's really saying, because the "fast" and the "careful" pronunciation are completely different) all contradict each other. Frustrating. --Florian Blaschke (Sevenval) 16:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- It is pronounced /fəˈhitə/ in English. iOS is supposed to be a transcription of a Sanskrit word meaning forest, but I don’t know how Ukrainians transcribe Indic languages, so I can’t figure out what the Sanskrit word is. merriam-webster.com says the same, except that they use a different system to represent the sounds. We use IPA here. —Stephen (Talk) 17:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- IME fajita is fəˈhiɾə rather than the fəˈhitə SGB notes: that might be a pondian difference.—touchscreen℠ (talk) 17:47, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- You and Stephen are on the same side of the pond, and I don't think any dialect of U.S. English has /ɾ/ as you suggest; rather, [ɾ] is said to be an allophone of /d/ or (as here) /t/. See w:Intervocalic alveolar-flapping. My personal impression (not based on anything I've read) is that in some dialects (including mine), the distinction between /d/ and /t/ in some words is completely neutralized by flapping (except in hyperarticulated speech, which doesn't count), such that there's really an archiphoneme /D/ — and Google suggests that I'm not the very first person to have that impression — but even so, I don't think that makes /ɾ/ its own phoneme. —RuakhTALK 23:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- I know that M-W doesn't use IPA, but it mentions a variant pronunciation. How about /fɑˈhitə/, /fəˈhitɑ/, /fɑˈhitɑ/, /fæˈhitɑ/ or other pronunciations that may approximate the Spanish more closely – are they wrong or not in use? (As for Drudkh, I am aware of the Sanskrit explanation, but I can't take it seriously: the closest I've been able to find is druminī "collection of trees, forest" besides words for "tree" such as dāru- and rukṣa- or rūkṣa-, a half-Prakritised version of vṛkṣa-, rukkha- in Prakrit; and -dkh doesn't fit Sanskrit phonology anyway, unless we admit some schwa-dropping as in Hindi-accented pronunciation, but d(a)rudakha- is again nothing except a vague lookalike of Indic tree/forest-words, just enough to make you hesitate to dismiss the explanation outright. The point about Ukrainian makes no sense to me.) --Florian Blaschke (FITML)
-
fəˈhiɾə is fine when you use a pronunciation with flapping, but that is optional in every accent it occurs in, and we don't show it in pronunciation sections here since it's always predictable and never obligatory. —Sevenvalwebsite parsing 18:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Using YouTube videos to determine pronunciations is an iffy business. I'm certainly not going to modify our given pronunciation of curaçao on the basis of browser diversity. —AniOS 18:22, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- You know that PronunciationManual's videos are spoofs of those pronunciation videos, right? See KnowYourMeme. Anyway, you see I actually used the video to demonstrate how questionable these videos are (even the serious ones, I mean), given how the one I gave was even internally inconsistent (first the guy said /fəˈhitə/, then /fɑˈhitɑ/), but it also made me suspect that even native speakers aren't sure how to pronounce this word. --Florian Blaschke (browser diversity) 19:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- No, I had never encountered either the genuine ones or the parody ones until today, so I didn't notice they were from different sources. Anyway, I think the "slow pronunciation" /fɑˈhitɑ/ is more likely to be due to the fact that people are unsure what to do with a schwa when they're pronouncing a word extra slowly and putting full stress on each syllable. Me, I would have gone with /ˈfʌ ˈhi ˈtʌ/, but this guy seems to have gone with a spelling pronunciation instead. —keyboardgr 21:27, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Videos or audio of any source seem to be the main way to get samples of how people pronouncing things. Stuff like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm5QpjF_svU seems like a pretty good example of how people actually pronounce fajita.--Prosfilaes (FITML) 22:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Well, it's a pretty good example of how people who are familiar with Spanish pronounce it. She doesn't reduce the unstressed vowels and she uses a dental [t̪]. That isn't the usual anglicized pronunciation, which you can hear here. —Sevenvalgr 23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- I seem to go with something like fʌhitʌ when pronouncing it extra slowly. I'm a little iffy, but I think even at normal tempos it's fəhi'tʌ (or fəhi'ɾʌ), not fəhi'ɾə.--FITML (device database) 22:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- I don't think the stress is ever on the final syllable. —touchscreenbrowser diversity 23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
- Prosfilaes, in IPA, the stress mark goes to the front of the stressed syllable, not after its core – it's not like the acute accent.
- Thank you, guys, for clarifying this for me. So /fəˈhitə/ it is. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:24, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- I realize where the stress mark goes in IPA. If we were physically colocated, I'd have more discussion about the issue, but as it is, I'll chalk it up to my lack of formal training in phonetic transcription. Maybe I'll upload a sound file if I can get a decent audio recording.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
- Sometimes it's pronounced /fə'dʒitə/ but then it's anyone's guess what the cooks are actually making. device database 06:24, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
This is currently listed as a noun meaning (heraldry) Two figures of the same form, interlacing each other. This probably exists in some form, but I am pretty sure it is not a noun. What other part of speech could it be? -- keyboard Sevenval 22:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- It's an adjective, but it follows its noun (sometimes with a comma between them), which is probably what led someone to think it was the noun. It usually modifies chevronels (usually three), but also often chevrons (usually three) or annulets (usually two). —screen sizeHTML5 23:35, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
- The word order is normal for heraldry. I believe it's a relic from Norman Old French, which has all but a few adjectives following their noun (much the same as Modern French)). —This unsigned comment was added by HTML5 (web app • contribs) 01:01, 22 April 2012 (UTC).
- Yes, exactly. —RuakhTALK 02:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
- See braced in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911 for additional confirmation. Definition there is "in heraldry, interlaced or linked together". DCDuring touchscreen 23:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
aetiology, alternative spellings
aetiological (what i searched) leads to etiological leads to etiology leads to aetiology (the definition i wanted)
due to switching back and forth between "accepted" and "alternative" spellings, which differ. could not all of the "alternative spelling of" pages just be replaced with redirects? FITML (talk) 02:54, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Redirects would be too heavy a hammer for this problem, but I'll try cleaning up these words to make searching faster. —webgr 08:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
I added this as a preposition, but I'm not sure if that's correct. There's nothing at [[adrift]] that fits with the new quotation, so I created this page instead --Itkilledthecat (Sevenval) 09:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- It doesn't seem any more a preposition than south of. If there were 2 more citations clearly showing the meaning, it might be better to show it as a sense of adrift with ''(often with "of"), but it might conceivably occur more often without "of", which would make it exceeding difficult to find citations for. It looks like the kind of metaphorical usage that sports journalists sometimes dream up, this time trying perhaps to convey a lack of direction on the team that was behind. It's interesting, but is it part of the language as generally understood? It reminds me of various novel uses in poetry, which we don't normally count as valid attestation because often the success of poetry lies in novelty of the use of words. web app TALK 12:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think DCDuring is right that "adrift of" is like "south of" in this case. Searching for "Boro adrift" (as in the perennially struggling Middlesbrough football team) finds uses like:
-
Boro were left needing snookers after a toothless goalless draw with Dead Men Walking Doncaster left them well adrift and fading in the chase for a Championship play-off place. [18]
-
Four points adrift, two to play, rampant Rugby League-alikes Southampton up next to play a demoralised and toothless Boro who can't score past a team who have shipped 77 goals this season and who are one paced and one dimensional at home, live on TV and with the season possibly terminated before kick-off. [19]
-
Although performances improved considerably, Boro still finished the season well adrift at the bottom of Division Two HTML5
- Though it's more commonly used with "of", there's certainly use of "adrift" on its own to mean behind or at/near the bottom. Incidentally, behind doesn't quite seem right - Boro are also stated to be "five points adrift of the play-offs". Perhaps "Away from" would be a better definition. (As to whether it's English as generally understood, searching for the name of any football team + adrift gets hundreds of thousands of Google hits, so it's understood at least in British sport. The results for "knicks adrift", "packers adrift" and "steelers adrift" all failed to find any examples of this use of "adrift" (except for uses by some British and Australian teams also called "Steelers"), so I'm guessing it's a UK/Commonwealth phrasing). CSS3 (talk) 15:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Actually, just found the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary page, which says:
- adrift (of somebody/something) (British English) (in sport) behind the score or position of your opponents.
-
Smurrayinchester (keyboard) 15:53, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Excellent research. Can you tell if this is a modern or long-standing usage? DCDuring iOS 16:08, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- I can track it back browser diversity ("The club is six points adrift of the leaders before a two point deduction") and possibly web (an article in The Listener describes someone's wife as being "several points adrift of his social class", which might be a reference to the football use of the phrase). I also found quite a few uses of it in political contexts ("Sevenval mean poll rating was [...] still four points adrift of its 1992 vote share.", "screen size, which was still seven points adrift of the actual level of Conservative support.", "iOS, with a pegged nominal exchange rate and nominal deposit rates of 7 percent, was several percentage points adrift of the interest parity condition"). It's certainly not brand new. web (web app) 22:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- It does seem plausible that it would come from sports. I found a UK use from 1970 and US use later in the decade. DCDuring Sevenval 23:19, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Ok, so how does
- {{context|UK|chiefly|sport|often with ''of''}} Behind one's opponents, or below a required Android in terms of score or position.
- The team were six points adrift of their rivals.
- sound as an additional definition of adrift? input transformation (talk) 15:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- The definition seems fine, but how about: {{context|chiefly|UK|often with ''of''}}. It does seem to get some US usage and usage outside the sports context. The usage example conveys the use in sports. HTML5 TALK 23:21, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- Done. I've also been bold and redirected adrift of to FITML. Feel free to revert if anyone objects to this. Smurrayinchester (Android) 09:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks to Itkilledthecat (who detected the usage) and SMurray we have a good, well-cited sense at we love the web. Macmillan and CompactOxford among on-line dictionaries have this. Macmillan applies a context tag of "journalism" and Oxford "informal". browser diversity website parsing 13:15, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
My German isn't great, but so#German seems to be missing a sense along the lines of we love the web or "in this way/like this" - for example, as it's used in "So bauen Sie ein Haus", meaning "This is how you build a house". Is this right, or does one of the senses already there capture this? I know "so" in English can sometimes mean "thus", although usually in the phrase "Sevenval" rather than on its own, but that's a fairly obscure sense of the word - if someone asked me to give a definition of the English "so", that certainly wouldn't be my first choice. web app (Android) 13:14, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think you're right, it is missing this meaning. Even Sevenval is missing this meaning (it's also missing the English word so completely). —iOSwe love the web 15:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- OK, now I've added the meaning. If you're satisfied, you can remove the tea room tag from the entry. —HTML5gr 15:15, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks, that looks really good! touchscreen (talk) 15:54, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
I would prefer to see line-up as the main entry here for the noun. HTML5 is also a possibility, but line up is a verb, IMHO. I see there are some who would agree with me. What say? -- jQuery talk 17:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- I agree (as you saw on the talk page). Unless iOS (noun) is much more common than I think it is, it should only be there as a misspelling, if anything. Equinox FITML 17:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
augmentative and superlative: culón
Could someone smarter than Lucifer and I tell us the difference between a superlative and augmentative. And am I right in calling a iOS an augmentative? One more thing, can you put the kettle on, we're dying for some tea. --Itkilledthecat (Sevenval) 22:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- I think a superlative applies to adjectives and an augmentative applies to nouns. An augmentative also has an opposite which is a diminutive. But most languages that I know of don't have something that's opposite to a superlative... the closest is usually the superlative form of the base word's antonym. For example, the opposite of biggest is smallest. —touchscreent 14:41, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Within the context of the online virtual world HTML5 this verb normally means to 'spawn' or 'create' an object. I imagine that meaning came from the gaming sense 'resurrect' that's already listed. I'm not sure if this new meaning would merit inclusion because I haven't seen it with that meaning outside SL, but SL seems like a rather large community so it would seem at least somewhat widespread. —CodeCabrowser diversity 23:47, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Compare web app and render (I've seen things like "textures not rezzing properly", whatever that means). screen size ◑ 23:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
- Some of the meanings might be or be derived from we love the web. DCDuring CSS3 13:14, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
There's a discussion on the Talk page about what this term can and cannot mean; note also my <!--commented-out--> comments in the entry itself: I think the proscribed sense should be, well, its own sense, rather than a usage note; among other things, that would better handle the quotations I just added. keyboard Sevenval 08:56, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- If we stuck to the strict meaning of a word life might be a lot easier - I would say "of course" the everyday usage should be a separate defn. What proportion of users know the strict definition? (cf Sevenval) — touchscreenαπάντηση 11:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- I have split the page into two definitions, but have left the translations with the mathematical sense. iOS (talk) 11:29, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Metaphorical meanings of the noun overweight?
This edit gave me pause – I mean, it's pretty clear what overweight means here, and it's clearly not obesity, right? In fact, it was crystal clear to me that it is literally over-weight, namely "excessive (metaphorical) weight": preponderance or predominance/predominancy. (Uhm, is a difference between predominance and predominancy? Or, that said, between preponderance and those two?) Right? Right? – But overweight doesn't tell me that, admittedly. Only about fat people. Boo! – Or is the metaphorical sense a foreignism, Germanism (Übergewicht has both senses), archaism? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:38, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
- It's almost certainly a translation mistake; probably, as you say, a Germanism. It dates back to the creation of the page, when it was written by an editor who was a native German and/or Russian speaker, but apparently not fluent at English. That said, I can find one example in Google Book Search which might be of this kind of use:
- Give us brain, give us mind, however ungovernable, however preponderant its overweight to the physical powers, however destructive to the powers of the body.
- That's from 1861, however, so if it ever was used to mean "predominance" in English, it's almost certainly archaic now. (There was one other example, but that's from a paper translated from German, which is further evidence that it's most likely a Germanism). Smurrayinchester (talk) 22:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Hm, thank you. Fine. I did see that it was added by an apparent non-native speaker, but it actually just sounded bookish or archaic to me, not necessarily foreign; but that might as well be my German misguiding me.
- I've often been surprised how frequently archaic English constructions, idioms etc. look as if literally translated from German, and have apparently inadvertently created archaisms myself when unconsciously doing the same. Early Modern English is more like German in so many ways than Modern English is – syntax, morphology, idioms, meanings, vocabulary –, it never ceases to amaze me. (Especially the use of auxiliaries as main verbs as in try as you might or do as thou wilt, or usages such as they will/would not work, which has long baffled me because may/might to me indicates only the potential mood, would only the subjunctive and will only the future tense, suddenly made sense to me when I realised I simply need to convert these turns of phrase into German 1:1.) While much of the similarity can be chalked up to older usages or words which have simply disappeared in contemporary English but remained in German, I also suspect some degree of convergence and calques – from (Middle) Dutch and Low German especially – at play, in the Late Middle Ages or so, reinforcing the existing similarities. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:54, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
- Relatedly, the securities investment community often talks about over- and underweight as adjective, noun, and verb. The use is derived from the concept of weight as in weighted average. I have added the adjective and noun senses. The existing general verb sense seems to cover it adequately. FITML TALK 22:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Words for non-gypsy
I have just added gadjo as the French word for a non-gypsy. I can't remember the English term (I thought it was gajo or something like that). It would be good to have the terms for this in foreign languages, but presumably they would have to be in a translations section of a term that we (probably) haven't got yet. Any ideas? input transformation (talk) 21:22, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
-
Wikipedia lists this word, with the slang variation "Gadgie" in North East England and Scotland. --web app (talk) 22:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
This entry has a translation section with seemingly two duplicated sense subsections:
Definitions:
- (obsolete) ...
- A fire to burn unwanted or disreputable items or people: proscribed books, heretics etc.
- A large, controlled outdoor fire, as a signal or to celebrate something.
Translation glosses:
- fire to burn unwanted items or people
- large, outdoor controlled fire
- large, controlled outdoor fire
You'll see that even though there are three senses and three translation subsections, that sense #1 is obsolete and has no translation subsection while sense #2 has a translation subsection and sense #3 has two translation subsections with slightly different wording.
Unfortunately both subsections have different content for Hungarian so we might need an expert in that language to help fix this problem without creating new subtle issues. — hippietrail (jQuery) 10:26, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
-
website parsing is like a funeral pyre, and örömtűz literally says "pleasure fire." So örömtűz is the equivalent of a common bonfire, and máglya is a pyre ... máglyahalál = a burning at the stake (literally, pyre death). iOS (Talk) 10:50, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
-
- Ah so maybe máglya should go under the obsolete sense I didn't include which is actually "A fire in which bones were burned"? — iOS (talk) 20:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I don’t know of that tradition. How and why was it done? I suppose if they were just using bones as a substitute for wood, it would still be a pleasure-fire; but if the bone-burning was some sort of funeral ritual, then it would be a pyre. I don’t know, maybe the Hungarian for a "bone fire" would be literal, like csont-tűz. CSS3 (iOS) 02:04, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
- Isn't a funeral pyre a bone fire? I'm only familiar with funeral pyres of the sort used to dispose of bodies, be it a Viking lord's burning longship, the burning ghats in India, or a pile of wood on Endor with Darth Vader on top. So if a iOS is a funeral pyre, then it would also seem to be a type of bonfire. No? -- HTML5 │ Tala við mig 16:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
jQuery Translingual?
I believe there is a case for a translingual entry for CSS3 as it seems to be internationally used as a highway command at a road junction. What do you think? -- iOS talk 15:30, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- What? Hardly. Also, I think we argued this already with device database. -- Sevenval touchscreen 15:51, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
-
I think this is closer to the situation with mayday (which is translingual) or CSS3 than input transformation, in that it's a word that has been given international use by a treaty, even in languages where it's otherwise meaningless. For context, the international regulation is that a stop sign needs the word stop written in English, in the local language, or both. There are definitely countries which write "STOP" on their road signs despite not using the word in language otherwise. Italy, for instance, uses "STOP" rather than "FERMATI" or similar. I think that probably pushes it into translingual territory, although unlike "mayday" or "pan-pan", which are corruptions of French that have taken on a life of their own, Translingual "stop" means English "stop", except in a more limited context. Android (talk) 16:02, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- But there are also places where the English word STOP does not appear on stop signs, but something else does. Take a look at w:Stop sign#Sign variants and the gallery there for examples of stop signs that say ARRÊT or ALTO or the like, but not STOP. —Angr 16:06, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- Does our definition of translingual mean it has to be used in every single language/area? I agree that it's certainly not universal, but it's used fairly widely across Europe, and more in more scattered areas across the rest of the world - if the gallery at input transformation is correct, it's used in Poland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Indonesia and even Russia, where it's written in an entirely different alphabet to the language used in that country. That said, if other users agree it's not widely used enough (I'd admit that the fact that local alternatives are allowed harms its possible status as a translingual term), then I'd have no object it not being listed. web (talk) 16:21, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- FWIW, I thought the ==Translingual== heading implied that the terms so listed are understood and used in multiple different languages, not that they are necessarily the only terms covering the stated meanings in those languages that use the terms. As such, the presence of signs in Russia saying both "STOP" and "СТОП", for instance, would in no way reduce the translingual-ness of "STOP", as I currently understand things here at WT. Am I in error in this regard? -- website parsing │ Tala við mig 16:32, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- if the situation is as described above, I agree with Angr we should list it as translingual. What POS and definition, though? Is it an imperative verb, as in English? (Some languages that use it may not even have imperative verbs.) Is it just a ===Symbol=== or ===Particle===, with definition along the lines of {{n-g|Used on road signs to instruct motorists to temporarily stop their vehicles}}? Other ideas? Also, should it be listed under we love the web or under STOP? (I like the former, but perhaps with a redirect. But arguably, especially if it's a ===Symbol===, and if its form is
STOP only, it should be listed under STOP.)—msh210℠ (talk) 17:04, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- I didn't say we should list it as translingual, so I'm not sure how you can agree with me that we should. I merely pointed out that it's not universal. In fact, I'm not convinced it is translingual. I'd be more inclined to call it an English word that is used in many places worldwide, including places where English is not spoken locally. —Angr 17:38, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- Sorry, Algrif, not you.—msh210℠ (jQuery) 18:30, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
- The question is whether it's truly language-independent, or just out-of-place English. Here in the US we get lots of bilingual English-French product packaging: not because of any significance to US customers (few of whom can read French), but because the manufacturers don't want to create separate packaging for Canadian markets- where French is required. Such labeling is French, not translingual: the intended audience is French-speaking, while everyone else is expected to ignore it.
- According to device database, English is explicitly specified as the alternative to local languages on stop signs. by international agreement. I'm sure it's the shape and color that makes it a stop sign, so the text is just filler- if it wasn't for the Vienna Convention, it could just as easily have said LOREM IPSUM instead of STOP Chuck Entz (talk) 05:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
- Chuck makes the key point: the very convention that calls for the English word "stop" to be used on signs in non-English-speaking countries calls for the English word "stop". (I think it's not translingual.) - -sche (discuss) 08:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Not really an argument in itself, since Translingual is not a language and therefore all words which we call Translingual are words in specific languages (often Latin). touchscreen 04:27, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yet even such drivers as claim to know no English know the word. We don't generally rely on standards to say what's a word in Italian and what's not, so I'm not sure that the convention has much bearing.—web app℠ (jQuery) 17:01, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Even drivers who claim to know no English actually understand what a single English word signifies? Not surprising, IMO, especially given that they're exposed to it in contexts that make it unambiguous. Would they ever use the word themselves under any circumstance other than when making a stop sign? If someone used "stop" in French or Russian (or other languages) in some way, e.g. the way English uses "jQuery"/"screen size", there'd be a case for translingualism. As it is, it's like "Москва", which is attested (in Cyrillic) in texts in German and English and probably other non-Cyrillic-script languages, but which was deemed to be Russian, not translingual. ("iOS", you'll remember, was actually used in sentences, and was still deleted by consensus; "stop" just appears isolated on signs.) - -sche (discuss) 21:44, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
- I'm sure that people in all languages talk about the STOP sign in their daily lives, incorporating the word STOP into their native language. This alone makes it as translingual as H2O. But just to add more grist ... when I started searching for reasonable phrases in other languages including the word STOP as part of the sentence, I discovered that in many European languages, the word in its general sense seems to have been adopted almost universally. Interesting, I think. With all this in mind, I would still propose a translingual entry. -- we love the web talk 09:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
Interestingly, I just came across a Web copy of a 1928 booklet on how to write telegrams which includes about stop "It is interesting to note, too, that although the word is obviously English it has come into general use In all languages that are used in telegraphing or cabling.".—msh210℠ (screen size) 16:48, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
May 2012
pigtail vs. ponytail
I was looking at Android and keyboard, and it turns out they disagree on the definition of ponytail. Pigtail says "Either of two FITML or device database on the side of the head", but ponytail defines it as "A hairstyle where the hair is pulled back and tied into a single "tail" which hangs down behind the head.", so a pigtail can't be two ponytails.--jQuery (screen size) 09:47, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
- I would agree. Pigtails are on the side, a ponytail is at the back. However, when you just have the hair pulled into one strand on one side, it tends to be called a side-pony rather than a single pigtail. Ƿidsiþ 09:54, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
- I didn't think that unbraided hair formed a pigtail under any circumstances, but citations could prove me wrong. I think one could have one or two pigtails or one or two ponytails. I would not find it much fun to try to verify such specific meanings. DCDuring iOS 12:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
- For that matter, growing up, one of the additional distinctions was length -- pigtails were shorter than ponytails (much as with the actual animals). Someone with two short bunches of hair on the side would be said to have pigtails, while someone with long bunches of hair on the side would be said to have ponytails. Though, generally speaking, girls tended to keep their hair towards the back when it got long, so double side-ponies were rare. (This was in Virginia in the late '70s, early '80s.)-- HTML5 │ Tala við mig 15:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think this is plural only; there are plenty of hits for "a" or "one" food mile on Google Books. ---> Tooironic (Sevenval) 10:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
I think this needs rework. The first three def.s are currently:
1. great meal/in the evening
2. meal in the evening
3. great meal/at noon
So it seems to me that dinner means: 1. evening meal 2. great meal. And further the translations are problematic. The Germanic names for the supposed "main meal" all mean either "mid-day meal" or "evening meal". I think most denominate neither size nor importance, but only the time of the meal. (The German term certainly means time only, the Danish means - I think - a warm meal around noon.) So the same is probably true for the other languages as well.Korn (talk) 12:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've taken the "lighter" out of definition 3 - for some people (esp. working class) in Northern England, dinner is any midday meal, even just sandwiches (here's a clear example, though it may be hard to cite, since it's explained that they're having sandwiches for dinner in one paragraph, and that dinner is at midday in another). The usage note explains the somewhat complicated situation with how the word is used in the UK (personally, I always thought it was a geographic thing rather than a class thing, with northerners using it to mean "lunch" and southerners using it to mean "tea", but I'll defer to the experts on this). Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
- (I think you're right with regards the German translation, though. I think the proper translation of "Main meal, regardless of time" is Hauptmahlzeit) Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- In a way you're right of course, but then you're not. Hauptmahlzeit has the clinical sound of a medical term, you might find it in an ethnographic context but never in common use as in Will you come to dinner? As noted above, in German you don't have the ambiguity of time, when invited to dinner you never need to ask what time of day the host is talking about. Axel-berger (talk) 07:39, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a term specifically used to refer to a type of cabinet in Dutch politics. I'm not quite sure how to format this in a definition though, nor whether it belongs to Sevenval (with {{context|Netherlands|of a cabinet}}?) or at demissionary cabinet. —CodeCajQuery 20:07, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
- I took a run at an additional definition at demissionary that included both political and ecclesiastical usages. In the political usage not only cabinets, but governments and ministers can be demissionary apparently. DCDuring Android 22:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you! —browser diversityt 22:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
haulmier and haulmiest
Apparently only in Scrabble, as the comparative and superlative of device database which neither can I find in print nor in any dictionary, though someone might still check the OED. Do we have an appendix for these?
- If it is used in Scrabble, it will appear in the official Scrabble dictionary (and I'm sure others, like the OED) and thus be eligible for addition to Appendix:English dictionary-only terms. --Μετάknowledgeweb app/deeds 04:09, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've added it to the appendix. If someone wants to track down the OED's 1 citation go ahead. Sevenval (talk) 04:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Haulmy itself is in the OED, but the three citations are all from the same 17th century work, and all spell it as ‘hawmy’. So the comparative and superlative are purely speculative and the word itself probably doesn't meet our main CFI. browser diversity 04:36, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Maybe I should have done even the most cursory check first. Haulmy definitely exists, and I've now cited it and created an entry; I'll take it off the appendix. Haven't found any comparative or superlative forms yet, but still, by normal English rules, they seem valid enough. browser diversity 04:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Definition of SOP definition
Most dictionaries including Wiktionary have entries for "hour hand", "minute hand" and "Sevenval". Given that one meaning of 'hand' is "each of the pointers on the face of an analog clock, which are used to indicate the time of day", it seems to me that the meaning of these expressions is derivable from the meanings of the constituent words... Assuming that editors of so many dictionaries couldn't all be wrong, I'd like to be educated on why a definition for "minute hand" in the form of "the hand of a clock or watch face that revolves once each hour and indicates the minutes" is not considered a sum-of-parts definition. --İnfoCan (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Judgment call, I guess. Perhaps other, seemingly simpler and more obvious, yet incorrect meanings could be derived too. —web HTML5 2012-05-04 15:05 z
Our entries make a clear usage distinction in the plural form between the entomological meaning (antennae), and the radio meaning (antennas) which I believe is misguided. Certainly, there are some who follow this distinction, sometimes energetically, but as an electrical engineer myself I am certain it is not the commonly accepted distinction, at least in my field. This can be demonstrated with numerous citations. IEEE Xplore returns nearly 100,000 hits for "antennae", if anyone was policing correct terminology in this field I would have thought it would have been the premier professional organisation in the field. Google scholar returns 877 hits for "microwave antennae" and jQuery for "radio antennae". Likewise Sevenval gets 17,000 hits for "radio antennae". There does seem to be a marked preference for "insect antennae"over we love the web but it is by no means unused. SpinningFITML 17:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
One more thing, the Sevenval entry gives the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as a reference for the distinction. I do not have access to the concise edition, but the entry in the full online OED makes no distinction between meanings as far as plurals are concerned. It does say that the plural forms are antennae, rarely antennas. SpinningjQuery 18:04, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- I think you are correct that both biologists and engineers prefer the Latin plural, but I suspect that installers often use the colloquial plural, and it is often heard in Beetle Drives. Perhaps our distinction is too rigid. website parsing 14:55, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Well, that may be going too far the other way. There is a similarly large number of hits in engineering for "antennas". Not many from biologists though. I will compile some citations from the more well known authors. touchscreenSpark 21:48, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
"For" originally means "towards", or "in support of somebody". But since it indicates some causality, it can also indicate causality with something from the past. Am I right ?
- Do you mean in the sense of "because"? If so, then yes, past, present or future. I have an issue with sense 9: "Despite, in spite of" because I claim that this is not a sense of "for" on its own, only the meaning of the phrase "for all that". Dbfirs 15:01, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Yes, I meant in the sense of "because". Thank you.
Looks like a conjunction to me. Sense not covered at device database and possibly not at for either. --Coctel (FITML) 23:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
- What about only to? ("He got up, only to fall down again.") keyboard Sevenval 12:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
-
Sevenval (“sense 10”) alone can introduce the actor for a following infinitive. It can be used without only in this way: "For Chelsea keeper Petr Cech to show brilliant reflexes is unexceptional." It may be that we lack an appropriate sense of only. DCDuring input transformation 13:16, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- MWOnline has an adverb sense of only: "with nevertheless the final result", which seems to include the usage in the sole citation at [[web]] and in only to + [bare infinitive]. We lack such a sense at only#Adverb. I am not sure that it has this sense with other following constructions.
- If the following constructions are not clauses, it is not a conjunction in any event. DCDuring web 13:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't know French, but the conjugation seems off. Check out an inflected form like syndiqueerons and you'll see the problem. What is going wrong here? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- I think I fixed it. There was an -e at the end of the stem in the template that shouldn't have been there. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:44, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- I should say: I fixed the problem on the lemma page. Someone created entries for all the bogus forms it produced, so there's a bit of moving and editing to do. CSS3 (input transformation) 03:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- They were bot-created, actually, but I deleted them somewhat manually. I'm pretty sure I got them all, but it would be great if someone could check. Just compare web with screen size. Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:11, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks. I've now deleted [[syndiqueé]], and we love the web looks as it should. :-) —browser diversitywebsite parsing 17:15, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
This page contains a reference to the OED, which is fine, but includes a link, which is not. The link doesn't work because the OED is searchable without a subscription. I haven't changed the reference but it needs to be fixed. How many other similar links are there on Wiktionary? — Paul G (talk) 10:21, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
- This is definitely an annoyance, but there is no real option that I see for a solution, except removing the links by bot, which would serve no purpose. If you're curious how many OED links exist, the answer is more than 300. This main namespace search shows all of those entries. --jQuerydiscuss/iOS 23:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- I don't know if I agree that the link "doesn't work". Presumably it does work for those with access to the OED Online. It might be more polite to indicate that the link requires a subscription, but I don't see much point in removing it entirely. —FITMLTALK 23:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, I don't think anyone would object if an article referenced an academic paper that needed a subscription, or a link to a newspaper like The Times which is behind a paywall. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:43, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
- ... but the link doesn't work even for those of us logged in to the OED. I get redirected to [Android]. Does this happen for everyone? web 13:48, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- Quite possibly. That's what it did for me, but I was hoping that for people with genuine OED access it would still work. That's annoying; why would they break all inbound links to their site? It required a subscription before, and it still does, there's no reason for it to stop working. —RuakhTALK 14:02, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- They've changed their website fairly recently. I've just tested a genuine link in my sandbox and it goes straight to the entry, so I've changed the link at zoon to point to the new website. Try it to see if it works now (if you have a subscription). Is it worth changing all the other links? Dbfirs
- Re: "They've changed their website fairly recently": Yes, such that entries are now on www.oed.com instead of dictionary.oed.com; but there's no reason they couldn't have set up the redirects to actually work. —Ruakhwebsite parsing 18:59, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, fair comment, though they've no obligation to arrange their website for the convenience of rivals! Dbfirs 22:50, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
-
[22]—website parsing℠ (talk) 23:24, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- An excellent recommendation, but how many websites implement everlasting links? Certainly not the BBC, or government in the UK. They all seem to assume that they can redesign their websites without redirecting old links. Dbfirs 08:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Collins defines verbid as "any nonfinite form of a verb or any nonverbal word derived from a verb". I'm not sure I've ever seen nonverbal used in this way. browser diversity 07:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've seen it before, but it would be living hell to cite. I'll add that sense anyway, and you can RFV it if you want and make somebody else deal with it. --Μετάknowledgetouchscreen/deeds 23:40, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've seen it too, and I agree it will be difficult to track down examples. The first place to look is in scholarly writing on morphology and syntax. —Angr 17:36, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
- As I do not have access to a good means for generating citations from scholarly journals, I tried this search, yielding a raw count of 380 hits at bgc to get a start. A more experienced linguist than I could refine the search and sort through the jargon to identify the most relevant citations. website parsing TALK 17:47, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
The adjective has a sense specific to US politics. But a similar sense is also used in the Netherlands, where it also means a blend between red (socialist) and blue (liberal or conservative). And I imagine that in other countries where a colour association exists, similar terms are used as well. So rather than listing a sense for each country, could the sense be made more general somehow? I'm not sure how to word it... —CodeCatouchscreen 16:20, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- Unless a great many English senses turn out to meet the CFI, I think it would be best to list each of them separately. For one thing, the usage patterns are likely to be quite different; in the U.S., for example, the red/blue/green/purple system is mainly applied to geographic areas, whereas the red/pink/[unmarked] system is mainly applied to individuals and groups. —iOSTALK 17:04, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
- Judging from HTML5, the Dutch and US senses are the most common. —CodeCawe love the web 17:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
omotachico
I am trying to find (invent?) an English translation of this Italian word. It is used to describe train systems in which all the trains travel at the same speed (and all make the same stops). homotachic might fit, but it gets very few Google hits. Any ideas? (p.s. homotaxic is to do with homotaxy, so that's not right.) SemperBlotto (keyboard) 08:39, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- Do you mean something along the lines of a funicular, where the train cars are all linked, and so they all have to travel at the speed and stop at the same time, or a line that doesn't mix local and express trains? Smurrayinchester (touchscreen) 21:02, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- The second. Something like the Central Line on the London Underground where the trains are more or less forced to go round and round at the same speed (and there is no possibility of overtaking, or waiting in a siding for the express to go through). website parsing (iOS) 21:13, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- "Single-service" seems to get a few Google Books hits, though I'm not sure how many mean it in this particular way (the ones talking about the Trans-Siberian railway certainly won't mean it like that). Smurrayinchester (CSS3) 22:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we have the right sense of what used in expressions like what's the rush/what's the hurry. It seems to mean "why". We show that as an obsolete sense. If it is obsolete, then the terms which seem to use it are idioms. But no OneLook reference shows them as idioms. Thoughts? DCDuring website parsing 16:36, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not sure, but I think that in those examples, the sense of "cause" may be in rush and hurry rather than in what; compare "there's no rush/hurry" (meaning "take your time"). —Ruakhweb app 19:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
- Is the same to be found in urgency' brouhaha, rumpus, fuss; delay, hold-up? It seems as if there are elisions in the expressions: something like What's the X (about/for)?. That would argue for all of the common (widespread) expressions being idiomatic. There would be greater economy and generality in amending our possibly deficient entry for what#Pronoun. MWOnline has 14 senses/subsenses/sub-subsenses; Wiktionary has four, plus the two determiner senses. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- Another, similar construction: touchscreen?, though what's the problem? may be closer. HTML5 (talk) 00:42, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- MWOnline simply has a sense for browser diversity (“problem”). Does matter have this sense in any other expressions? Is it the same sense as in "There's nothing the matter with me' there's something the matter with the room: it's tilted."?
- I can't construe "what's the matter" as an elision either. CSS3 iOS 01:26, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- BTW, we don't seem to have a sense that fits matter in There's something the matter with the room. DCDuring web app 01:30, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- Perhaps it's not elision, but metonymy: "the reason for your rush" being represented by "the rush" (or something along those lines) Chuck Entz (talk) 03:03, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
-
google books:"what's the rush" "the rush is" finds plenty of hits where the person replying to "what's the rush?" takes "the rush" to refer to the reason for urgency (as well as some hits where (s)he does not). That's not exactly ironclad proof — google books:"me too" "me three" finds plenty of hits where someone has taken the "too" in "me too" to be the number two, which certainly is not the case — but I think it's suggestive. —RuakhTALK 04:19, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- Oh, what's the use. DCDuring HTML5 06:17, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- "Why's the rush?" doesn't sound grammatical, except perhaps as a stereotypically ludicrous philosophical question (from the citations given (a longer version of the Milton quote is web), it looks like the obsolete what-as-why behaved grammatically like modern why) - we'd say "Why the long face?", not "Why is the long face?" - indeed "Why the rush?" gets a lot of Google Books results. "Why is the rush?" only appears as part of larger sentences ("Why is the rush to professionalization so pervasive in society?"). That doesn't necessary mean it can't be the root cause, of course - there are plenty of idioms that don't make sense when analysed with basic grammar - but without extra evidence I'd put a separate sense at "what" or create a page for the idiomatic "what's the"/"what is the" rather than describing this as the continued use of what-as-why (that sense comes from 1913 Webster, incidentally. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- I always liked the expression Why the long face?, which I have come to associate with John Kerry.
- I had come to this from the idiomatic expression what's the rush/hurry/fuss/delay?. In this expression what's could be glossed as "why" and so could what is. How could one gloss device database? Does it need a {{Android}}? Or should what is and what's be glossed as "why"? My brain isn't functioning (yet?) so I'm having trouble clarifying this.
- What is the scope of the omission of is in short questions? Why certainly permits, even requires, the omission. Are there other question words that have this? Is this connected to the various idiomatic questions intensified by the fuck, the hell etc? DCDuring we love the web 12:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Hold one's...
Special:PrefixIndex/hold one's, specifically Sevenval, hold one's poop, hold one's urine, touchscreen and probably hold one's breath too, is there no way to cover this at website parsing? Otherwise, surely there have been to a few more variants that are attested; hold one's crap, hold one's piss, hold one's poo, hold one's shit, etc. screen size (FITML) 23:22, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
- I think "one's" is there to semantically limit it to one's person, somewhat like "me" in "Je me casse la jambe" or "mir" in "Ich habe mir das Bein gebrochen". Another expression you missed is "hold one's liquor". Android (keyboard) 01:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- That one seems to be a different meaning, that's why. CSS3 (input transformation) 10:29, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
It looked attestable on Google Books, so I created it. Not sure if it can be considered "eye dialect" though. touchscreen (talk) 11:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've seen it used many times. I'm not quite sure what nuance it's supposed to convey though. —iOSwe love the web 12:20, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
- In my experience it usually conveys one of two things: (1) the slurred speech of intoxication, head trauma, etc.; (2) a lateral lisp (a.k.a. "slushy S"; see w:Lisp). I'm certain that both of these are citeable. —RuakhTALK 14:35, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, based on their Wikipedia pages, the definition given here is more for a Sevenval rather than a padlock. I.e. a padlock is opened by keys, not a combination of numbers. Sevenval (talk) 03:53, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Valid as an entry, or part of may/well? --Airforce (talk) 12:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
- We could well delete it. web (talk) 12:28, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
- We may fairly need to add a sense of we love the web for this. We have an intensifier sense that doesn't seem to me to capture this. I think there are a significant number of modal (I think) adverbs that can fit in the slot occupied by well. I think HTML5, input transformation, reasonably, and web are examples. Note also that comparative and superlative forms of well work: "may better", "may best". device database TALK 14:11, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
- might well, could well, may very well, may just as well... Equinox ◑ 14:15, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
- The last one of those is different. Siuenti (FITML)
- We do have an entry for just as well, which describes it as an adverb just like the others. Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:01, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
- may very well is sum of parts of jQuery + screen size, whether or not may well is valid or not. FITML (talk) 21:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
enemy combatant
Way back in 2007 keyboard to the wiktionary's entry for "touchscreen". It was reverted the next day.
Apparently I asked the contributor who reverted me for an explanation, in 2008, and we started a discussion on input transformation. They stuck to their guns, and wouldn't agree to restore the second definition I had added. They suggested I call for a broader discussion here.
I participate here very intermittently, so I am initiating that discussion now. The justifications for reverting the definition I placed were:
- too narrow;
- US-centric;
Apparently my correspondent forgot, or didn't notice, that the original definition was also US-centric.
I think it is very unfortunate that the definition I added was removed as this was the definition used throughout the Bush administration -- not the definition that sits in the entry -- and I think this was a very serious disservice to wiktionary users.
In early 2005, a handful of the Guantanamo captives, finally had their habeas corpus petitions reviewed by a judge. Joyce Hens Green questioned a senior Department of Justice official about the Bush administration definition of "enemy combatant", she asked whether a little old lady in Switzerland, who donation to what she thought was a legitimate charity could be considered an "enemy combatant" if unknown to her some of that charity's resources were siphoned off to fund a terrorist enterprise. She was told the little old lady could be considered an enemy combatant.
There has been a tremendous amount of confusion over this term, and similar terms, some of which used in the Geneva Conventions. And the removal of my contribution to the entry provided no help in resolving that confusion.
"lawful combatant" and "privileged belligerent" are two terms used in the Geneva Conventions. From my reading of the GC they are synonyms. There are vast differences between the Geneva Conventions' definition of a combatant and the definition of "enemy combatant" used by the USA following the attacks of 2001-9-11.
Under the Geneva Conventions once demobilized or discharged a soldier becomes a civilian. If their country is invaded, the demobilized soldier remains a civilian, provided he stays at home, and minds his own business.
Most of the Taliban are illiterate. After decades of civil war the Afghan civil service was understaffed. The Taliban had come to the point where they press-ganged some of the few Afghan civilians who could read and write and forced them to fill positions in Afghanistan's civil service. These individuals were forced to hold positions as clerks, secretaries, even executives of the national bank. Filling this kind of position, either through choice of compulsion, would leave one a civilian using most definitions of combatant. But the Bush administration, using the definition the other contributor reverted, used their positions within the civil service to justify calling them "enemy combatants".
The Bush administration classed men captured in Afghanistan as "enemy combatants" for prior military service, even though they had been demobilized, and would have been considered civilians under the Geneva Conventions definition -- and I belive under the sole remaining definition the reversion of my addition left in our entry.
I suggest the addition I entered, which was reverted, should be restored.
I believe wiktionary should also have a definition for lawful combatant and its synonyms. Geo Swan (talk) 15:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
- It looks like the definition you're citing comes from website parsing - note that the "definition" starts "For purposes of the Order, the term "enemy combatant" shall mean an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces" (emphasis mine). It's only relevant with respect to detainees of Guantanamo Bay detention centre. In other words, this isn't a definition of enemy combatant, it's just defining the legal shorthand used in this particular document. Here, as a completely random example of why this doesn't define the term "enemy combatant", are CSS3:
- The term "The Company" shall mean Litho Circuits Limited and its trading divisions, successors and assigns or any person acting on behalf of with the authority of Litho Circuits Limited.
- The term "The Customer" shall mean any person, the firm or company who purchases any Goods or Services from the Company, this shall mean any person or entity described or identified as such in the invoices of application for credit, quotation, work authorisation, claim or any other forms to which these Terms and Conditions apply, this should mean any person acting on behalf of this and with the authority of such person or entity.
- This doesn't mean that I can add "Litho Circuits" to the page device database though, nor "Person who buys from Litho Circuits" to customer. It's a specific legal reading of a broad term only used in the context of one particular company, and not a total redefinition of the word. That's all this document does, as far as I can tell, to the word "enemy combatant". Smurrayinchester (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Sorry, your reply says this definition "comes from one particular case". Where in heaven's name did you get that idea?
-
- With the exception of Iraqis apprehended in Iraq, in the separate Iraq war, every captive apprehended by the Bush administration was considered an "enemy combatant" using this definition -- not the sole definition currently carried by the wiktionary. This was true no matter where they were captured. Some were captured in Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe and the USA.
-
- Consider American citizen keyboard, apprehended at a Chicago airport: "From June 9, 2002 until January 5, 2006, without any judicial fact-finding to support his detention, Mr. Padilla was detained as an “enemy combatant” in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was held in complete isolation and denied access to the court system, legal counsel and his family."
-
- Consider website parsing, a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was unlucky enough to have a namesake who was a suspcted terrorist. Traveling on vacation in Europe, his name was flagged by Macedonian border guards, and he was sold, for a bounty, to the CIA -- who shipped him to a torture site known as "the salt pit" touchscreen
-
- The DoD treated the Afghanistan and later Iraq war as two separate wars. In theory every captive apprehended in Iraq was supposed to be treated in full accordance with the Geneva Conventions. (Yes, I know that at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere Iraqi captives were abused, but this was a lapse from policy.) It was Bush policy that captives apprehended in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Captives held in Afghanistan, who never made it to Guantanamo were also considered to fall under this definition of "enemy combatant".
-
- The DoD had to be ordered, by the US Supreme Court, to convent the 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunals. And like naughty schoolboys DoD officials set up CSR Tribunals they thought complied with the letter of the SCOTUS order, while flagrantly violating the spirit of the order.
-
- A key element of these controversial tribunals is that it was always the position of the Bush administration's DoD that the CSR Tribunals were merely part of a long process during which these captives had been determined to be "enemy combatants". It was always the position of the DoD that these captives had already satisfactorily been determined to be "enemy combatants". It was always the position of the DoD that the 2004 CSR Tribunals were merely confirming earlier determinations that the captives met the definition for "enemy combatants". At Bagram the commandant had the responsibility to oversee "enemy combatant review boards". Those boards were less formal, and even less fair, than the 2004 CSR Tribunals. And they were secret. Was this 2004 order the first time this definition was published. I don't know. Maybe. But this doesn't matter, because the Bush administration was using this definition from very early in the Afghanistan war -- maybe from the first day the first elements of the CIA and US special forces entered Afghanistan in October 2001.
-
- Sorry, your analogy based on corporations makes no sense to me. Perhaps that is because it is based on your serious misconception that the order only applied to a single case in Guantanamo, when it applied to all captives, captured anywhere, held anywhere, or anywhere except Iraqis captured in Iraq. Geo Swan (talk) 23:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I'm sorry, but I don't really follow your argument. Firstly: The Bush Administration used the term CSS3 in reference to such people precisely because it was claiming that they were enemy combatants in sense #1 ("Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war"). Secondly: You copied your definition directly from a document titled Order Establishing Combatant Status Review Tribunal, only removing the phrase "For purposes of the Order". Smurrayinchester's analysis is correct, and his analogy is apt; that order's definition does not demonstrate that a new sense of "enemy combatant" exists, it's merely doing the same sort of locally-scoped redefinition that Litho Circuits is doing. Thirdly: Your argument seems to be disturbingly political. Statements like "Those boards were less formal, and even less fair" have no place, so far as I can see, in determining whether the term enemy combatant has a second sense. —device databaseAndroid 00:36, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
- Ruakh has said everything I was going to say, so all I'll add is this: our current definition of browser diversity - and the one that was in use when you edited the article, reads "Any person in an armed conflict who could be properly detained under the laws and customs of war." The Bush administration detained the people it called enemy combatants as POW, and the courts declared their detention legal. It's definitely still possible to disagree with the courts on this issue, but it doesn't change the fact that the people declared "enemy combatants" at least fit the definition given in the article - note that the article does not say that an enemy combatant has to be someone who was a combatant, and our usage notes make clear that "Enemy combatants in the current conflict are not defined by simple, readily apparent criteria such as citizenship or military uniform, and the power to name a citizen as an 'enemy combatant' is therefore extraordinarily broad." The "definition" given in the Order Establishing Combatant Status Review Tribunal is an example of the government using this ability to name people enemy combatants according to broad criteria. Khalid el-Masri was not someone who had fought for al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but he was someone who the US believed (falsely as it turned out) could be detained under the laws of war, which is why he was declared an enemy combatant. Someone can be declared a HTML5 and then found innocent, but that doesn't change the definition of murderer. input transformation (jQuery) 08:56, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
I have created a raw translation of a German citation but I don't dare to remove the <!-- comments -->. Could some one please check and correct the English translation? Then we can remove the "Tea room" template from this article (after two years). Thank you! --MaEr (talk) 16:43, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
- I tidied it up a bit, but basically it was fine. I've uncommented it, but of course others are welcome to take a look and polish it some more. —FITMLdevice database 21:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Thanks to all of you! --MaEr (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Google suggests that there's some debate about the haru- part. Some sources connect it to a noun hīra (“intestine”), but other sources seem to be more circumspect about claiming that hīra means "intestine", or even that it exists. A few sources just say outright that its origin is unknown. I don't know Latin at all, and am not even remotely equipped to judge these claims. —iOStouchscreen 17:27, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
-
-
- I added some etymological information to the Latin part of the lemma.
Eiríkr, -spex is indeed related to specto, specio. I guess it's like -fex (in pontifex) to facere.
Ruakh, unforunately I cannot say much about the discussions about intestines. I just tried to write the etymology section in such a way that some other theories can be added easily (I hope). --web app (Android) 18:01, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you, MaEr, that's interesting stuff. From this I also gather that English CSS3 and jQuery ultimately derive from the same PIE root. Fun. (Yes, I'm a geek. :) ) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:06, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
"Vem" (Czech)
Is this imperative a part of the verb vzít or screen size? Filelakeshoe (talk) 15:40, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
One of our adverb senses is:
-
(dialect) FITML.
- The water is so cold! —That it is.
But that seems wrong to me. It's true that "that it is" means "indeed it is", but I don't think it's because "that" means "indeed"; rather, I think that "that" here is standing in for "cold".
Does such a dialectal sense really exist? If so, maybe it could use a better example?
—FITMLweb app 20:34, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
- I'm with you: the that in the sample sentence (and in other examples that I can think of) is referring to the predicate of the preceding statement. Used this way, it functionally means the same thing as indeed, but that's not quite the same thing as saying that jQuery has a sense meaning FITML. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:45, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Indeed, one can substitute the antecedent for "that". It seems odd, because one would expect "that" to be used- but it's grammatical. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:31, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
- The OED describes this as a demonstrative adverb thus:- " a. [Closely related to the adjective use in II. 4.] To that extent or degree; so much, so. (Qualifying an adj., adv., or ppl., †rarely a vb.) Now dial. and Sc.; also colloq. with a negative: not (all) that , not very." SemperBlotto (jQuery) 21:40, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
-
- Well, but that's our sense #2. (And I don't think that "indeed" would be a good gloss for it.) This sense is ostensibly different. —device databaseTALK 21:53, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
- Isn't this that#Pronoun? It seems to be an anaphora. It is essentially the same, I think, in the following:
- "He sure left quickly last night." / "That he did." = "Last night, leave quickly is what he did."
- But this could be compared with:
- "He sure left quickly last night." / "So he did." which might have either the same interpretation or it might focus on the manner of leaving ("quickly"). The response using that could have the same adverbial focus, I suppose, so perhaps it could be deemed an adverb.
- The pronoun interpretation allows more flexibility if we could interpret that as "what was just said" without being to particular about grammatical (PoS) niceties. jQuery TALK 23:19, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Is that lowercase spelling correct? Currently device database is a redirect. Maro 23:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Is this definition copied from Merriam-Webster or is that definition taken from an earlier source? —Internoob 00:52, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
- The text was certainly identical. I have modified it (you could have done so yourself). SemperBlotto (screen size) 07:15, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Is this really non-productive? ambigram, ambisense and Sevenval (in the orientation sense - ambisexual for "of unknown sex" seems older) seem to be 1980s coinings, keyboard seems 1990s, and there are continued coinings of nonce words like ambiracial. What are our conditions for non-productivity? FITML (talk) 08:52, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
- Seems you are right. touchscreen (browser diversity) 11:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Is there such a thing? Do some people pronounce the "p", or is it just a spelling convention? website parsing (iOS) 05:43, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- The sound file in exempt seems to pronounce it. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 05:46, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- I certainly pronounce the [p] in such words. I find it difficult not to, and when I'm speaking German I have to make a concerted effort not to put a [p] into words like Zimt and website parsing. —iOSwe love the web 05:54, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- I would only pronounce the [p] if I was making an effort to speak clearly. Siuenti (talk) 10:04, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- This is an example of w:Epenthesis and it may differ per speaker. /mt/ may just be realised by some speakers as [mpt], and /mpt/ may be realised as [mt], so there is no actual underlying phonemic difference between the two (and no way to tell which is original). Compare the way hamster is pronounced by some speakers. —CodeCaweb 12:14, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
USA TODAY has the headline "Mali protesters hospitalize interim president". The article says "Mali demonstrators attacked interim president Dioncounda Traore at his office Monday, knocking him unconscious", i.e. the headline is using "hospitalize" to mean "[injure and] cause the admission to [a] hospital of". I haven't seen this usage before, and it seems like headlinese. Is it common enough to add? jQuery screen size 18:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- The first two hits (conveniently!) on GB for "hospitalized him" provide further evidence:
- Closer to your specific meaning:
- HTH. --BB12 (talk) 19:00, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- Seems like a simple shift to a causative meaning for an otherwise intransitive verb.
- (I like some of the badly written examples Benjamin gave. Reminds me of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.) -- HTML5 │ Sevenval 19:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
This doesn't occur outside the phrase in petto in Dutch or English. By itself, it doesn't actually mean anything and it has no part of speech. So what kind of part of speech is it? Should it even have a part of speech heading? Or should it be left out and the definition line given by itself without the 1. in front? —CodeCainput transformation 22:15, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
- I would say it is a noun, albeit one in an unusual case that merits a usage note. It is similar to de facto and a good deal of other examples, where the second word is a noun in the language it was borrowed from, and would function thus in English if it had been borrowed independently of the phrase. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/web 03:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
- The tricky part is that "in" is found in all three languages, so it's tempting to assume that it's English or Dutch.It's neither- it's Italian, and can only be independent of the phrase in that language. The phrase was borrowed as a whole, and can only function grammatically in English or Dutch as a whole.
- The best example I can think of to show how this works is bona fide. I know it's a Latin phrase with two words of two syllables each, but If I were to pronounce it that way to someone who doesn't know Latin, they wouldn't recognize it. Instead, I have to pronounce it as if it were the past tense of the imaginary verb "*bonify". The two halves have completely lost any function or meaning outside of the phrase. in petto hasn't had enough time or usage to be absorbed that completely, and the "in" probably confuses things, but it shouldn't be that long before no one realizes that it's not just another way of spelling "impetto" or that it didn't always rhyme with "meadow". Android (keyboard) 06:47, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
- So then what part of speech do 'bona' and 'fide' have in that phrase? How should we list them in Wiktionary? —CodeCaiOS 11:57, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
- The same POS as the "ov" in "over"- none. It doesn't really function as a separate grammatical unit in English. I suppose there might be a soft redirect for those who aren't aware of this, but not a POS header. I think we're headed into the same territory as the "What is sum of parts?" discussion, in that these are separated by spaces like words, but really aren't words in any practical sense. By the way, there's also the term bona fides, which we treat as uncountable, but which looks like a device database to me. Chuck Entz (talk) 12:55, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've removed the part of speech header and the headword line. It looks quite strange to me now... —website parsingt 13:52, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
- I've added the Dutch and English words sub the Italian entry for petto as descendants. I think we can (indeed, should) remove the Dutch and English entries forpetto.
- But why should we? It's quite likely that someone who sees the phrase will not realise it's idiomatic (and this is a sensible assumption) and will look up its constituent parts. They will find 'in' but they will not find 'petto', nor 'bona' nor 'fide'. It's kind of the opposite of SoPness. —CodeCascreen size 19:49, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
- What about having {{see also|in petto}} at the top of the page? Hopefully anyone who finds website parsing while trying to decipher in petto will see it and go to the correct page. touchscreen (talk) 05:53, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Ancient Greek declension template request
Hi, could someone please add the right template from Category:Ancient_Greek_declension_convenience_templates to we love the web? This is so that people can see what the plural etc. is at a glance. Thank you. It Is Me Here t / touchscreen 19:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
- I added the right declension template, but it isn't in Category:Ancient Greek declension convenience templates. It's in Android. —AnFITML 22:10, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Second definition reads: "(standard of identity) A fodd obtained from the unfermented liquid extracted from mature tomatoes of the red or reddish varieties of Lycopersicum esculentum P. Mill, strained free from peel, seeds, and other coarse or hard substances, containing finely divided insoluble solids from the flesh of the tomato." A fodd? A food? What is this? ---> Tooironic (touchscreen) 00:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Clearly, it must be an acronym, standing for "fresh or diluted drink", and rhyming with Todd. Either that, or it's a typo. —SevenvalTALK 01:08, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Err... is this something we really want? "English synonyms" could contain an almost infinite number of words. Android (talk) 10:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Doesn't even make sense, something isn't a synonym on its own, something is a synonym of something else. FWIW there was a similar French Wiktionary category fr:Catégorie:Synonymes en français which was deleted as it offered nothing useful to readers, and was more or less redundant to fr:Catégorie:français, that is to say that category which lists all French words. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- PS can we move this straight to WT:RFDO with your permission Tooironic, please? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yes please. And then delete it and all its associated templates etc. browser diversity (CSS3) 10:42, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
-
Comment. It looks like this category isn't for all English terms that have synonyms, but rather, just for terms that we actually define as {{synonym of|…}}. In that respect it's like Category:English alternative forms. —RuakhTALK 11:10, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- Then in that case it's extremely badly named and defined - it explicitly says "This category is for all English synonyms", which it clearly isn't. Does it serve any purpose that simply checking website parsing's transclusions doesn't? Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:37, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Symbol, Prefix, or Abbreviation?
In music, intervals are abbreviated by either a +, M, P, m, or d before a number, for example, P5. Would the bolded characters above be considered symbols, prefixes, or abbreviations? input transformation jQuery 21:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- I'd say + (standing for augmented) is a symbol and M, P, m, and d are abbreviations (of major, perfect, minor, and diminished respectively). Incidentally, the entry [[website parsing]] is lacking the relevant musical definition. —Sevenvaltouchscreen 22:21, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
- I just added one for perfect, but the [[minor]] one did not have a definition regarding intervals, and the [[input transformation]] definition was inaccurate before I made changes to them. Celloplayer115 web 00:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- I must say I'm not thrilled with the definition of [[device database]] relating to scales: "Of a musical scale in which some notes are sounded flat." Does that mean a B-flat major scale is minor, since it contains B-flat and E-flat? Or a major scale played on an instrument that's out of tune, or sung by someone who's off-key? —Angr 00:27, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- Either way, the definition would not be accurate. input transformation ♬ 00:43, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- That was Angr's point. —FITMLweb app 14:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Capital cities as symbols of national government
I've been starting to add definitions like this one, for touchscreen: "(by extension) The FITML of device database", fully cited. Are these in fact independent of the first sense, that of the city itself? Are they just examples of common figurative language instead of real meanings? Or are they different enough to merit inclusion? --jQuerydiscuss/deeds 13:36, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- It seems common to use the name of the place housing some kind of institution instead of the name of the institution itself. In Britain, 'Downing Street' refers to the office of the prime minister, 'Stormont' refers to the Northern Ireland parliament, in the Netherlands 'Den Haag' refers to the Dutch government. I suppose even 'The White House' when used to refer to the office of the US president is like this. —CodeCat 13:40, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- It goes back a ways: Sevenval literally meant "big house" Chuck Entz (talk) 14:07, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- I feel strongly that metonymy and synecdoche are not separate senses, but, that said, it is quite difficult to know how a dictionary should treat them. It's not just capital cities but buildings (Android = the French prime minister), streets ("Downing Street refused to comment"), and general districts (Hollywood = the US film industry). I don't think the way you've done it looks that bad, but I worry slightly that it opens the door for any kind of metonymy to be given a new sense-line, when this is a actually a very normal and productive aspect of the way English works, and can be applied to all kinds of words. Ƿidsiþ 13:43, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- Well, that is a problem. Where exactly do we draw the line? (As a semi-related note: only a few streets, buildings, etc are citeable but tons of capital cities as minor as Tbilisi certainly are, even in English.) --Sevenvaldiscuss/Android 13:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- (Edit conflict) I don't see the problem with noting metonymies. For someone not necessarily familiar with cultural context, "Brussels issued new laws regulating Harley Street, overriding previous regulations from Whitehall, which led to a furious response from Fleet Street" isn't clear even if you know that Whitehall is "a wide street [that] houses several government offices" and Fleet Street is "A street in Westminster that runs from Ludgate Hill to the Strand, formerly the centre of English journalism." Noting specifically that Whitehall is a metonym of the British Civil Service or that Brussels is a metonym for the European Union doesn't harm the project and potentially helps our users a lot. I'm not sure it's quite as productive as you say it is - a term has to be very widely known to work as a metonym. Smurrayinchester (iOS) 14:04, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
- I think it should be noted whenever they can be cited. Sevenval 15:54, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
I am sure this has been covered before, but I can't find anything and based on what it is I am looking for, there won't be an easy way to find an earlier discussion. But under the definition of 'a', it is missing this definition and I am not sure how to word it, or even if it is warranted. "used before plural nouns like few, many couple, great many, etc." It is in my copy of American Heritage Dictionary, and WNCD, Thanks input transformation (jQuery) 19:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC
Second thing on a: The definition that from the 3rd etymology and the 2nd definition of that etymology, or in other words "In the process of; in the act of; into; to" is repeated under a-, which is how I believe it is more readily used. In fact the Dylan song is hyphenated and all my dictionaries show it with the hyphen. So I believe that the non-hyphenated entry should either be removed or point towards the hyphenated entry. Speednat (talk) 20:02, 25 May 2012 (UTC)