Talk:proof

Looks like this user is copying articles wholesale from somewhere like Webster's. I hope they are not copyright violations. &mdash; Paul G 10:58, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Request for verification
Rfv-sense: colloquial: to complete a mathematical proof. Could be, but not in MW3 or OneLook mathematical glossaries. DCDuring TALK 15:15, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been through a program of graduate study in math and have never heard this AFAIR. Nor do the three BYU English corpora yield anything with this sense for . (They do, however, yield a yeast-related verb sense whose meaning I don't know and which we lack.) However,  and  have a number of relevant hits: they seem, I suspect, to be mistakes for "prove" and, since they're in academic writing, are IMO unlikely to be "colloquial" as our sense is tagged. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Chambers has a sense "to test". This seems to fit with the "mathematical" sense "A process for testing the accuracy of an operation performed." Pingku 03:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A possible citation:
 * 2000, K. U. Kainer, Magnesium alloys and their applications,
 * For the ternary system Al-Mg-Sc extensive experimental work was investigated to proof the calculation [2].
 * Noting that scientific verification cannot prove a calculation. Pingku 09:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The "test" sense and the possibly related but distinct baking sense are in other dictionaries. It would be nice to word our "test" sense to incorporate the calculation/prediction verification sense without directly contradicting scientific and mathematical method. DCDuring TALK 10:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Chambers has a sense "cause or allow (dough) to rise", under "prove". No suggestion.
 * I agree with Msh that the google books/scholar hits as above are mistakes. Perhaps the definition under review should (if kept) be marked as a misconstruction of prove?
 * I suspect the "test" sense is related more closely to -proof: - in essence, to attempt to render something impervious to argument.
 * This leads to an attempt at a definition: "To render an argument or perform a test or series of tests to be presented as an argument that a proposition is true or that a product or process is or behaves as expected."
 * I think the tag "mathematical" should be removed from the noun sense "process for testing the accuracy of an operation".
 * Pingku 16:06, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Now we're getting somewhere. All we've got to do now is fix the dated Webstery wordy noun definitions. DCDuring TALK 16:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that that Kainer quote is in the sense of "proofread". &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 18:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * In what sense would proofreading need "experimental work"? Pingku 19:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Meaning, experiment to determine if the calculation is correct. I guess "proofread" and "test" overlap a bit. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 19:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I overlooked the significance of the word "investigated". Maybe we shouldn't consider that citation as evidence, then. Pingku 19:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, if the authors had been repeating experiments done by others, this would count as doing science (and as testing the calculation) - by helping establish that the experiments are replicable. It's not certain from the citation that they did this, or indeed what exactly they did: as you point out, there is a grey area between "proofreading" and "testing", and it is not clear where in that grey spectrum the action they performed actually lies.
 * It is altogether possible that my supposition above that the "test" sense derives from "proofing against argument" is inaccurate; maybe (as you perhaps imply) it derives from proofreading - i.e., checking something for errors. Unfortunately the dictionaries I know don't go into this sort of detail. ;) So we come back to needing citations... Pingku 17:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure the quote above would count as evidence of good English usage. What does it mean to "investigate extensive empirical work"? Does he mean "conduct extensive empirical work" (of his own) or "review a lot of empirical work" (of others)? If either of those, the wording indicates probable non-native to me. (Sometimes this happens with native-born technical and scholarly writers.) Is there another reading that would make this good English? DCDuring TALK 19:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure the quote above would count as evidence of good English usage. What does it mean to "investigate extensive empirical work"? Does he mean "conduct extensive empirical work" (of his own) or "review a lot of empirical work" (of others)? If either of those, the wording indicates probable non-native to me. (Sometimes this happens with native-born technical and scholarly writers.) Is there another reading that would make this good English? DCDuring TALK 19:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

RFV failed, sense removed. —Ruakh TALK 18:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: March 2007–January 2009
Unformatted quotations, a bunch of funny Cf.'s, derived terms defined on page. DAVilla 18:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Cleaned up. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

"Being of a certain standard as to alcohol content"
Chambers 1908 names a specific figure, defining proof as "noting alcoholic liquors having the specific gravity 0.920". Is that obsolete? Equinox ◑ 23:09, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

What is this Borrowed terms
There isnt single any other English wiki entry that has Borrowed terms
 * It's used in some non-English entries (see User:Erutuon/mainspace_headers for the latest count). It holds some terms that would otherwise be put in the "Descendants" section, those that are borrowed, rather than inherited or derived in some other way. — Eru·tuon 00:10, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

derived terms: proof reader
Why is it added but not proofread, which doesn't show up in read either ? --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:46, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Possible missing obsolete slang sense
John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873) has "the best ale at Magdalen College, Oxford". Equinox ◑ 19:12, 29 October 2023 (UTC)