Talk:boreal

aeronian

 * Original heading: Category:en:Geological periods
 * Other nominated lowercase English entries: aeronian (Citations:aeronian), aptian (Citations:aptian), artinskian (Citations:artinskian), asselian (Citations:asselian), bajocian (Citations:bajocian), bartonian (Citations:bartonian), bashkirian (Citations:bashkirian), bathonian (Citations:bathonian), boreal (Citations:boreal), burdigalian (Citations:burdigalian), calabrian (Citations:calabrian), callovian (Citations:callovian), capitanian (Citations:capitanian), cenomanian (Citations:cenomanian), changhsingian (Citations:changhsingian), chattian (Citations:chattian), coniacian (Citations:coniacian), danian (Citations:danian), dapingian (Citations:dapingian), darriwilian (Citations:darriwilian), drumian (Citations:drumian), eifelian (Citations:eifelian), emsian (Citations:emsian), famennian (Citations:famennian), floian (Citations:floian), fortunian (Citations:fortunian), frasnian (Citations:frasnian), gelasian (Citations:gelasian), gorstian (Citations:gorstian), guzhangian (Citations:guzhangian), gzhelian (Citations:gzhelian), hettangian (Citations:hettangian), hirnantian (Citations:hirnantian), homerian (Citations:homerian), induan (Citations:induan), ionian (Citations:ionian), jiangshanian (Citations:jiangshanian), kasimovian (Citations:kasimovian), katian (Citations:katian), kimmeridgian (Citations:kimmeridgian), kungurian (Citations:kungurian), ladinian (Citations:ladinian), langhian (Citations:langhian), lochkovian (Citations:lochkovian), ludfordian (Citations:ludfordian), lutetian (Citations:lutetian), maastrichtian (Citations:maastrichtian), messinian (Citations:messinian), moscovian (Citations:moscovian), olenekian (Citations:olenekian), oxfordian (Citations:oxfordian), paibian (Citations:paibian), permian (Citations:permian), piacenzian (Citations:piacenzian), pliensbachian (Citations:pliensbachian), pragian (Citations:pragian), priabonian (Citations:priabonian), pridoli (Citations:pridoli), rhuddanian (Citations:rhuddanian), roadian (Citations:roadian), rupelian (Citations:rupelian), sakmarian (Citations:sakmarian), sandbian (Citations:sandbian), santonian (Citations:santonian), selandian (Citations:selandian), serpukhovian (Citations:serpukhovian), serravallian (Citations:serravallian), sheinwoodian (Citations:sheinwoodian), sinemurian (Citations:sinemurian), tarantian (Citations:tarantian), telychian (Citations:telychian), thanetian (Citations:thanetian), titonian (Citations:titonian), toarcian (Citations:toarcian), tortonian (Citations:tortonian), tremadocian (Citations:tremadocian), turonian (Citations:turonian), visean (Citations:visean), wordian (Citations:wordian), wuchiapingian (Citations:wuchiapingian), ypresian (Citations:ypresian), zanclean (Citations:zanclean)

Pursuant to the BP, there are 79 geological periods adjectives in lower case to check. [//dictionnaire.reverso.net/anglais-francais/permian A few is attested], but some others like gzhelian can't be found anywhere. JackPotte (talk) 11:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Ghezelian gets thousands of raw hits at Google books., some with the and not having an explicit noun that they modify, in the usual mode of geologists referring to such things. CGEL calls that kind of thing a fused-head construction, I think. Whether we call that noun usage seems like a policy decision. DCDuring TALK 11:24, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The issue is whether it's attestable in lower case. Unlike JackPotte's native French, I don't think English uses these terms in lower case (except for rare writers' errors). Equinox ◑ 19:53, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was too lazy to check the prior discussion. But why have both a proper noun and adjective sense? Adjectives can be used in fused heads that behave like nouns and proper nouns can be used attributively. Are these ever used unabiguously as adjectives, ie, comparatively/gradably "more/very Gzhelian in character" or as predicates? DCDuring TALK 20:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, the Gzhelian is a bit obscure... but exactly three good, paleontological hits come up for me when I search . (The Maastrichtian has some truly excellent fossil assemblages, and definitely is one of the best known geological periods.) So yes, I would say that they can all be used adjectivally. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:33, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We could continue to have the sense(s) essentially duplicated between adjective and proper noun headers or we could simply exclude one and illustrate usage as both modifier and nominal in usage examples, perhaps mentioning it as well in a usage note in the PoS we chose to retain. I personally prefer the economy of just one PoS, preferably adjective in light of the confirming evidence Metaknowledge found, but users may be less confused by having both headers. DCDuring TALK 02:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Metaknowledge, I think you also missed the point here :) The issue is whether it's attestable in lower case. Unlike JackPotte's native French, I don't think English uses these terms in lower case (except for rare writers' errors). Equinox ◑ 01:12, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, and they're entirely unattestable in lowercase AFAICS. I didn't miss the point, though. I was responding to DCDuring's tangent about what POS we should use. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:55, 19 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I am renaming the heading and adding an express nomination of the lowercase entries at the top. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I spent some time looking for cites and the only one I found was aptian in a French periodical. I think we can safely delete these, as everyone seems to agree that the lowercase forms are uncitable. — Ungoliant (Falai) 20:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see what else we can do, but mass RfVs now are going to lead to mass deletions because of the absence of significant citation effort. This would be a good time to use this technique to get rid of any class of entries without supporters. DCDuring TALK 22:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * As for mass RFVs, the terms were nominated as a group because they were created on 19 March 2013‎ by User:JackBot, presumably exhibiting the same sort of error, if any; and they were nominated for RFV by the bot owner User:JackPotte. Thus, I do not see anything unfair in this particular mass nomination, while I can imagine unfair mass nominations in general. I propose to close this as RFV failed by an admin. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:29, 22 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I've started deleting these as RFV-failed, per the above discussion. - -sche (discuss) 00:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Done: all deleted and no longer linked-to from the uppercase forms. - -sche (discuss) 09:48, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Striking as RFV failed; already deleted by -sche. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)