Talk:maxillary

RFV discussion: September–October 2020
Rfv-sense. According to the noun entry, maxillary = jawbone. I thought mandible = jawbone. According to the sense #2 of jawbone, maxillary is one of the jawbones, but currently, I believe, the rfv'ed entry is somewhat misleading. The adjective section does not look perfect either. --Hekaheka (talk) 15:07, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The adjective is from, which means, “related to the ”, where the latter means “jawbone” both in post-classical Latin and in modern medical Latin, in which it is a synonym of os maxillare or “maxillary bone”. I think the noun sense derives from a shortening of the latter term. When properly used, there is a distinction: the maxillary is the upper jawbone, and the mandible the lower one, as illustrated in this image. I think this distinction was already present in pre-medical Latin; maxilla is derived from for which L&S write, “the cheek-bone, jaw; in the stricter anatomical sense, the upper bones of the face, between the eyes, nose, and mouth, in which the teeth are fixed”,  while the term  is related to chewing.  --Lambiam 16:17, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * No, they are synonyms., often plural , is a Late Latin replacement term for , also often plural and then sometimes meaning “chin”. The , the authors of which surely know how to write correct Latin, dedicated only twenty-five lines to  and explain them as “i.q. ossa maxillaria, quibus dentes infixi sunt, malae, maxillae”. One quote is   15, 15, where one reads “maxillam id est mandibulam asini” – “the jawbone that is the jawbone of the ass”. Nonetheless only  survived into Romance.  is of course defined in the ThLL as “i.q. mandibulae, ossa, quibus dentes infixi sunt”.
 * So I don’t know what would be misleading. There are a lot of translations to merge; to upper jaw and lower jaw, since obviously English users are baffled by the Latin. Fay Freak (talk) 16:50, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * While there may be some confusion about the Latin, the English term is pretty unambiguously the upper jawbone (or a tooth emerging from the upper jawbone). This is cited. Kiwima (talk) 22:57, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 21:02, 7 October 2020 (UTC)