Talk:al

RFV discussion January 2011
Rfv-sense: Indian mulberry. (All the other senses are at RFD already.)

No apparent hits on b.g.c, and Wikipedia doesn't know about this either, which looks very suspicious. -- Prince Kassad 13:37, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Al and als are valid Scrabble words. So other dictionaries must have at least one noun sense for this. And searching for any two letter term (for a specific meaning) is an absolute nightmare. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:53, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The Scrabble-valid sense is an alt spelling of aal:, which is this same mulberry tree. As MG says, that means that a dictionary used in Scrabble validity (Collins, Chambers?) has an entry. Whether it's attestable is another matter. Equinox ◑ 18:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not in Chamber's, which is usually the Scrabble bible. Not in the OED either. < class="latinx" >Ƿidsiþ 19:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Chambers isn't the Scrabble word source any more (since about 2007). AFAIK it's now Collins. Anyone got a copy? Equinox ◑ 19:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The OED has aal but not al. Do scrabble players make up words and rare variant spellings?    D b f  i  r  s   20:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * pulls up interesting secondary sources, from which I learn that al is "Hindi" whereas aal is "Bombay (including Guzrathi and Mahrathi)", and that crossword-puzzlers love it as much as Scrabblers do. Few mentions treat it as really English, but rather, merely as an English rendering of the Hindi. —Ruakh TALK 16:35, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Here are some actual uses, finally. And here's one more. —Ruakh TALK 16:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Second link doesn't work for me, but the first one italicises the term, suggesting the author didn't consider it to have entered English. Update: I've just noticed that you already said that. But I am always hesitant to use italics as citations in Wikt. Equinox ◑ 17:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Cited, I think. Take a look: Citations:al. Note especially the 1872, 1881, 1917, and 1936 examples, which use italics for other words and thus clearly could have italicised ‘al’ had they wanted to. - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no evidence that al: is ever used as a true adjective, so all the evidence supports the attributive usage being of a noun and, as you say, it is sometimes used other than in italics or in quotes. It looks good to me. DCDuring TALK 21:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

RFD
The senses:


 * assembly language.
 * artificial life.
 * (networking) country code for Albania.
 * other things.
 * other persons.
 * autograph letter.

are all bad caps or otherwise at the wrong lemma. -- Prince Kassad 13:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I suppose other persons or things would be al. as in et al. Dunno if al. is ever used without the et - probably. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * BTW see Entry titles which I recently created to clear up this sort of issue. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

resolved under the RFC request which someone helpfully made. -- Liliana • 20:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Chaucer
My concern is with the other obsolete meaning of 'al' as a conjunction. The only attestation given is from Chaucer and that is Middle English (i.e. a different language under ISO639: enm, not en(g).) Shouldn't there be a quotation from post 1500 to justify this entry, c.q. shouldn't this entry be made into a Middle English item? Jcwf (talk) 01:28, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There should be. (There are those who feel that Wiktionary should not distinguish Middle English from Modern English, but as long as it does, post-1500 citations are needed.) I've opened a Request for Verification. - -sche (discuss) 03:24, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

RfV discussion January 2013
RFV of the conjunction. Is it attested in modern English (and I use "modern" very loosely: "post-1500")? - -sche (discuss) 03:26, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Hard to search for. This needs the OED or an EME corpus. DCDuring TALK 15:33, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * And a corpus with powerful search that doesn't treat al as a stopword. DCDuring TALK 16:06, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Failed. — Ungoliant (Falai) 06:18, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Arabic definite article Romanization
I'm willing to bet a large portion of our English speaking readers come to this page looking for the meaning of al as in Al Qaeda etc. I noticed it isn't mentioned or linked to anywhere here, nor at al- (pardon me, I see it is actually linked there as a see also hatnote). I've read About Arabic and sort of understand why. However I still think we're doing them a disservice by not at least pointing them in the right direction.. perhaps a see also link or sisterlink to Arabic definite article? -- OlEnglish (Talk) 09:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Etymology
The Celtic dialect forms are as far as can be ascertained. The root is fictitious for this lexeme, confirmed by the absence of this derivative in the listing from the root. Its origin is quite uncertain; and there is no evidence of a Celtic origin (and the proposed Germanic root is fictious), in spite of the Welsh and Breton lexemes for "fireplace". There is no evidence of any such borrowings from Germanic. The apparent analogies in Basque have no significance, unless the prefix "kisk-" to "-al" (scorched), "-aldu" (trans. to burn, scorch, toast), "-ali" (intrans. be burned)" and its gerund "-alpen", et cetera, has the meaningful sense of 'enforcing' or 'knock on effect'.  The ancient Argentine Spanish ALUA (glow worm) and Ancient Greek ΑΛÉA (warmth, heat) with ΕΙΛΗ (the sun's warmth) - unrelated to 'ἩΛIOΣ (sun) - are so remote as not to help in this etymology; Andrew H. Gray 16:38, 13 July 2017 (UTC)Andrew talk although all these forms are most likely from a stock root AL-!  Andrew H. Gray 17:07, 25 August 2018 (UTC)Andrew talk