Talk:explanable

RFD discussion: April 2019–March 2020

 * The creator must've thought it was a valid/intentional derivation of 🇨🇬, like from 🇨🇬, but I think it only exists as a misspelling. It's rare: COCA has 134 uses of "explainable" vs none of this; BNC has 12 of "explainable", none of this; Ngrams has "explainable" [//books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28explanable*200%29%2Cexplainable&year_start=1808&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=6&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%28explanable%20%2A%20200%29%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cexplainable%3B%2Cc0 ~200x more common]. Pulling all Google Books hits with QQ and counting only ones where the snippet used "explanable", discounting 29 duplicate copies, only ~244 books use "explanable"; many if not most or all only use it once, making it impossible to be sure if it's a one-off misspelling or one the author would use consistently, but 14 (5.7%) also use "explainable", suggesting that in those books, it is a typo. The only dictionaries I see it in are two old German-English translation dictionaries, one old Persian-English one, and an old copy of Samuel Johnson's English dictionary, but in all four the alphabetization of "explain, explanable, explainer, explanation" suggests it was meant to have an "i" (which other copies of Johnon's do have; indeed, the same copy of Johnson which has an entry for "explanable" uses "explainable" later in a definition), and the German dictionaries also have "inexplainable". No books I saw give it as a derivative of (or even mention it near) "explanabilis", whereas at least one copy of Webster's does connect "explainable" to "explanabilis". So, I think it's a rare misspelling. - -sche (discuss) 07:48, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Seems pretty clear to me. Delete. --Lambiam 19:40, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I've converted it into a misspelling. There are lots of hits on Google Ngram viewer - so, now, keep. SemperBlotto (talk) 19:45, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete, rare misspelling. Chignon – Пучок 11:02, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:19, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
 * @- -sche: Could you clarify whether concieve is a common or rare misspelling, and why, in reference to whatever calibration you used above? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It looks like a relatively rare misspelling: [//books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=(concieve*500)%2Cconceive&year_start=1808&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C(concieve*500)%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cconceive%3B%2Cc0 less than 1/500th as common] as the "ei" spelling in Google Books' Ngrams, and found only once in both COCA and the BNC, where the usual spelling is found 2275 times in COCA and 449 in the BNC. OTOH, in its defence, it seems more likely to be an intentional spelling: people often can't remember how -ieve/-eive words are spelled, and excluding books which are lists of misspellings next to their correct spellings, turns up few books using both, meaning works that use "concieve" use it consistently. (Whereas, "explanable" is sometimes clearly the result of unintentional omission of the "i", based on e.g. where it occurs in the alphabetical lists mentioned above; OTOH, the etymon and related words you mention below mean it may be intentional in other cases.) (FWIW there also seem to be more books using "concieve" than using "explanable", so someone is more likely to "run across" the former.) - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * @- -sche: Could it be that you have not performed a calibration of ratio thresholds that you are using? Or is there a calibration that you have performed and that I can have a look at? What was the testing set that you used for calibration? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:35, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep as a common misspelling per WT:CFI: shows a frequency ratio that suggests this is common for a misspelling; compare concieve. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:34, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There is now Votes/2019-03/Excluding typos and scannos that it going to pass soon and that excludes typos. Then, we could try to figure out whether explanable is a typo. It is at least plausible to be a non-typo given explanatory and explanation, that is, something that can appear in writing no less than in a typed text. In fact, the spelling explanable has some intuitive force; why explainable but explanatory? These are the considerations that suggest it could be non-typo. We would not need to have these very uncertain deliberations if the vote were not adopted, but now we have to do with the policies that we have or will soon have, leaving the world of British empiricism in favor of the continental speculationism. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:54, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it is likely that "explanable" for "explainable" is often not a typo. I guess to substantiate this we would need examples where "explanable" was used multiple times. (I am not necessarily supporting keeping it even it is a non-typo misspelling, depending on how widespread it is thought to be.) Mihia (talk) 23:29, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Deleted - TheDaveRoss  19:04, 29 March 2020 (UTC)