Talk:heffalump

RFV discussion
== heffalump ==

Needs attributive cites. --Yair rand 00:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it doesn't; just out-of-universe ones. —Ruakh TALK 01:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, my mistake. --Yair rand 01:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Added three cites from Google books. Do I really have to waste my time doing all the others, or could we impose a limit on the number of terms Rfved by a particular person per day? SemperBlotto 08:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not a waste of time, but I wouldn't have RFV'ed this one because it's used quite often. Well, my mum used to say it when I was young. So perhaps I'm naturally biased for that reason. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:04, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Often in the U.K., perhaps, but I'd never heard it. —Ruakh TALK 14:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * This seems to be cited, but should be moved to Heffalump. — Beobach 02:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. DAVilla 06:45, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September–November 2020
Sense 2: informal, humorous, "an elephant". We went to the zoo and saw some heffalumps. None of the current citations support this sense. Note it also says "without capital" so if it's real it should probably be moved to. Equinox ◑ 14:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with lower case for that, so does Lexico. Incidentally Heffalump was nominated for WOTD on 21 January 2019, but it hasn't appeared yet. DonnanZ (talk) 23:13, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I assert that this sense exists (probably with varying capitalisation), both from personal knowledge and on the basis of numerous Google hits such as, , , , and so on. I suppose it is the usual problem of finding "durable" sources. One Google Book Search result is . Mihia (talk) 09:56, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

''From time to time to time, bones clearly recognized as those of elephants have been found in the North Temperate Zone. In Western Europe the explanation always was, "These are the remains of the army-elephants of Hannibal the Carthaginian." Those who gave the explanation may not always have been satisfied with it, but the attribution continued to stand, as just about the only other possible explanation might have been, "P.T. Barnum didn't pay his feed bill." A little reflection on the part of any Latin student -- which in those days meant any educated person -- would have produced the memorable detail that the courageous Carthaginian had invaded Roman Europe with only nineteen or twenty heffalumps. . . and that the remains of hundreds had turned up.''

-- opening of Avram Davidson, 'What Gave All Those Mammoths Cold Feet?', published in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, vol. 56, no. 4, 1983.01 (p. 90), and also in his collection Adventures in Unhistory (1993).

kwami (talk) 07:11, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

cited, and moved to. Kiwima (talk) 21:52, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

RFC discussion: September–December 2020
The first sense is "A fictional, elephant-like creature mentioned in the Winnie the Pooh stories by ". This seems to be inherently in-universe, and all of the quotes on the citation page do in fact refer to the story about Winnie the Pooh hunting the Heffalump, either explicitly, or by using characteristic phrases from it (one with the same idiosyncratic capitalization), or by using plot points that require knowledge of that story. I suppose one could come up with a definition of a Heffalump as an elusive imaginary beast that people are doing absurd things to catch- but that's not how this definition reads. Note: this passed rfv a decade ago.

The second sense has the label "without capital" and should probably be at heffalump, which currently doesn't exist. The system automatically redirects to the capitalized spelling, so no one may have noticed its absence. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

This should be fixed by now, should it? Oosbam1812 (talk) 14:56, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Resolved. — SGconlaw (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Translations
There are some foreign translations to add in the first trans-box:
 * Danish: hafferlaf
 * Esperanto: hefelanto
 * Finnish: möhköfantti
 * French: éphélant m
 * Hebrew: פיל נפיל ‎
 * Italian: effalumpo m
 * Japanese: ズオウ (zuō)
 * Norwegian: heffalomp
 * Polish: ho-hoń (pl) m
 * Portuguese: efalante m
 * Russian: слонопота́м (ru) m (slonopotám)
 * Swedish: heffaklump


 * Any translations need to be of the English senses of the word, and not just be the name of the creature in the Winnie-the-Pooh books. I’ve left a message at “Tea room” asking for help to identify which of the above words satisfy this criterion. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:13, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

"heavy lump"
"heavy" was removed from the etymology suggestion with this comment:
 * thanks, but I think it's better to stick with what published sources like the OED state (there is no mention of "heavy"; the first element is probably from the start of "elephant")

The first part may be valid, but the final part ('the first element is probably from the start of "elephant"') misses the point. True, in all probability the word was coined based on a metathesis of "elephant". But it's just as fair to presume that the fact that the word "elephant" was twisted into this precise form is due to the phrase "heavy lump". Otherwise, why has the 'h' been added? — Smjg (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't forget that this is intended as humorous nonsense, so it's quite likely that the parts don't mean anything. To my ear, the most likely match is "half a lump", as in "how much sugar would you like in your tea?". I suspect that we're looking at metathesis ("ephelant") with further modification to remind one of this common, rather trivial phrase that sounds very similar. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:26, 5 November 2021 (UTC)