Talk:prévaille

prévaillent
The proper first-person and third-person present subjunctive of prévaloir is prévale. Esszet (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I was thinking this might be a common enough error to be included as an erroneous form. But it's actually attested in early Modern French (with the acute as well) as a correct form. Here's such an example. Keep, rewrite as necessary. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That source says that prévaille is incorrect: 'But no matter what those who attach themselves to the exactitude of grammar say about how it is so and how one must speak so, one says at the court prévale and not prévaille, and it is the court that must set the rules for us.’ If prévaille is a common error, it should be included under ‘Usage Notes’ and not be given a seperate page or even be included in the conjugation table.  I'm also nominating prévailles and prévaillent for deletion because the correct forms are prévales and prévalent respectively (see the above link for prévale). Esszet (talk) 20:17, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * We're a descriptive, not a prescriptive dictionary- if it's in use, we have an entry for it. That's not to say it shouldn't be tagged as "proscribed", "nonstandard" or a "misspelling"- but it merits an entry according to our WT:CFI. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:00, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep all and rewrite as necessary - all of these are likely enough errors that they should be included. Razorflame 21:20, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Esszet, prévaille might be incorrect but it hasn't always been incorrect. It has existed, it is present in French texts. Websites likes Larousse and Leconjugueur only list current forms, not all forms that have existed. Similarly you won't find avoit under avoir instead of avait, but it's an older form and the standard spelling for much longer than avait has been. And I'm not suggesting adding these to the conjugation either. So only those who type it in will find it, and they will see the usage notes saying this is no longer used and prévale is the only modern form. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I would like to see actual uses (the link provided above does not show a use at all). I found at least one use, but I feel that it might have always been an uncommon error due to the conjugation of valoir. I even find this error on a modern conjugation site (mentioning prévaille', prévailles but prévalent), despite the fact that nobody would use prévaille''. Lmaltier (talk) 20:29, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of uses; I searched Google Books, found about 10 and stopped after that. The total number of hits was in the thousands and I didn't want to check all of them. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:37, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Have a look at
 * http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pr%C3%A9vaille%2Cpr%C3%A9vale&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share=
 * http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pr%C3%A9vailles%2Cpr%C3%A9vales&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share=
 * http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pr%C3%A9vaillent%2C+pr%C3%A9valent&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share= (but this comparison is not very meaninglful, because prévalent is also an adjective, so look at the following one)
 * http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ils+pr%C3%A9vaillent%2Cils+pr%C3%A9valent&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share=
 * All these figures seem to show that prévale, prévales, prévalent have always been the normal forms, and prévaille used concurrently only during very short periods. These statistics should be used in some way to clarify things in the pages: it might be understood that the old normal form was prévaille and that prévale is only a modern form. Lmaltier (talk) 21:14, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. Any clarification as to usage is a matter for the entry talk pages. bd2412 T 22:07, 10 May 2014 (UTC)