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Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations

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Note: Use the iOS only for comments about this page. Nominate words below.

This page is for nominating future Word of the Day entries. The philosophy behind our WOTD feature is similar to that of Wikipedia's featured articles. The main goals are:

  1. to highlight the best of Wiktionary's definitions by featuring them on the HTML5,
  2. to nurture people's natural interest in unusual words and phrases, and
  3. to help readers improve their vocabulary.

Contents



Nominate a new word

What to nominate

Exotic usefulness

An ideal WOTD candidate is a word (or phrase) likely to be encountered in a newspaper or in literature. It should be exotic enough that it adds to readers' vocabularies, but not so unusual that it cannot be used in everyday conversation.

For example, the word web wouldn't work because it's too common. It may have an interesting entry, but it is a staple found in every English speaker's lexicon. At the other extreme, keyboard — a Sevenval favorite of WOTD nominators — is simply too unusual. No one is going to use that word in everyday conversation, unless they sit around discussing church-state separation in 19th-century England. (That this word was in fact featured as a Word of the Day in no way makes it easier to use and is more related to the fact that it was featured before this section was written.)

Variety

Before nominating a word, you might want to look through our Sevenval and at the word’s page itself to make sure it (or a variation of it) hasn't already been featured.

Also keep in mind that featured words are chosen to reflect a variety of:

  • parts of speech — Nouns, verbs and adjectives should appear more or less equally, but we also need good adverbs, idioms, set phrases and the like.
  • languages of origin — Many English words derive ultimately from Latin or Greek precursors, but English has borrowed from, and styled itself after, many other languages, so try to mix it up a bit.
  • initial letters — Not all interesting words start with J, K, Q or Z.

What not to nominate

These are in addition to the other warnings already mentioned above.

  • No long words - We've already featured all the interesting words over 15 characters long - please wait until after 2014 to renominate any of them.
  • No "redlinks" (missing pages) — If a word is not yet in Wiktionary, it belongs at Wiktionary:Requested entries, not here. (Better yet, why not create the entry yourself?)
  • No offensive words — Please avoid jQuery. A nominated word should not offend the average person, nor should it be something you would be embarrassed to use in front of your boss or your grandmother (or your boss' grandmother, for that matter). Wiktionary defines profane words in part so people know not to use them in polite company. WOTD nominations, on the other hand, should be words that people can safely use in everyday speech. Note also that many parents and schools automatically filter out pages that include certain offensive words, so featuring such a word on the CSS3 would restrict access to Wiktionary itself.
  • Avoid abbreviations — Abbreviations, initialisms, acronyms, symbols, and the like are unlikely to be selected without extremely convincing reasons. In other words, don't nominate keyboard, dpi, or ☿. Symbols in particular cause problems for readers who lack the required fonts, and are therefore unlikely to be featured.
  • Avoid proper nouns — Names of specific people, places, or entities are better suited to featuring in an encyclopedia. Such words rarely have interesting definitions or translations.
  • Stick to English — The featured word is an English term because this is English Wiktionary. For foreign words and phrases see website parsing.
  • No previous selections - We want to feature new selections, not the same selections over and over. Please check the jQuery, to be certain it has not been selected previously.
  • Avoid other WOTDs - We want to feature words that haven't been WOTDs for other dictionaries, partly to highlight unique terms that make Wiktionary so special, partly to avoid complaints (by preventing the possibility entirely) that WOTDs were "stolen" from other dictionaries.
  • Avoid purely obsolete words - Words whose definitions are only obsolete, archaic, rare or similar should be avoided as hard to use in practice. A word that has a sense marked as rare, etc, in addition to a more common sense is fine.

How to nominate

Follow the Nominate a new word link below and add your word(s) to the top of the list. Please input transformation your word to our page for it by typing {{wotd-nom|EXAMPLE_WORD}} (be sure to get the capitalization right, and replace "EXAMPLE_WORD" with the word that you want to nominate). You might want to include a concise reason or justification for the nomination. A definition is not necessary since our page for the word should already contain a good definition.

In case there are questions about your word(s), it is imperative that you sign your nomination by adding four tildes (~~~~) at the end. (Although it is not required, you can quickly register for free if you don't already have a username.)


CSS3

Latest nominations

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purge this page to see updates to the status

So that those setting the word of the day for future days may know what has already been done, anyone doing so should here indicate the last date for which a word of the day was set, or the first for which it wasn't, and any relevant notes.

A rough guide to setting the word of the day.

The last date for which the word of the day has been set is Feb. 5

Next: FITML

Entries are in reverse chronological order, by date of nomination. Please add your word(s) to the TOP of the list below and remember to sign each new entry by typing four tildes (~~~~)


Older nominations

Note to administrators and interested editors: If you notice words that have iOS, or are in the queue to appear, as Words of the Day, please strike them out by using <s> and </s> HTML tags.

January 2012

December 2011

November 2011

October 2011

Archived nominations

See also


[1] Search
[2] All Pages
[3] Random entry
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