Talk:quisquam

RFV discussion: April 2017–January 2021

 * See Talk:quis.

RFV discussion: May 2021–November 2023
Latin. 'quaequam' is certainly necessary, for feminin singular and plural but also for neuter plural.


 * I am not sure what you mean by “certainly necessary”. The form quaequam is easily attestable in later Latin texts; it would seem rare, though, to restrict a use of “anyone” to female persons. --Lambiam 11:18, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello, you are rigth! I looked a little further. Now I am sure the feminine forms quaequam, quamquam, quaquam, quarumquam, quasquam are never used by Latin writers. Instead they use the words ulla, ullam... (derived from ullus). Also in all plural forms Latin writers use forms of ullus. For instance: Tibi certabit ulla? Will any woman compete with you? SumMus235711 (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I suggest you delete my page for the word quaequam. Or you tell me how I can remove that page (I made myself)? SumMus235711 (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

That page quaequam is deleted! Good. I also replaced the feminine forms quaequam, quamquam ... by ulla, ullam... on the page quisquam. We still have to replace all plural forms by ulli, ullae, ulla... What do you think of this proposal? SumMus235711 (talk) 19:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Well, generally we also include Late Latin and New Latin terms (e.g. ). I think some of these forms qu*quam can be attested, although perhaps not in Classical Latin texts. Editors better versed in Latin than me may have an easier time discerning whether uses of qu*quam in later texts are meant to be inflected forms of quisquam. In L&S, the entry for quisquam starts with “” [my emphasis by underlining], and Gaffiot also gives this form, suggesting that quaequam it is found in Latin texts that are not Neo-Latin.  --Lambiam 00:29, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It could also be, and might even be more likely, that L&S gives an unattested form. It notes: "Quisquam as a fem., like quis (ante-class.)", and gives examples, but doesn't give any example for (*?)quaequam. 14:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Basically it seems to be related to the feminine of issue tormented on this page just below, the separate feminine form of which creeps up post-Classically. quaequam is indeed attestable, and indeed rare, mainly it seems for the reason you mention - the female-only restrictive condition is pragmatically rare, more so than the interrogative pronoun. It also sounds kind of rude, granted this might be my Russian intuition based on - Russian distinguishes pronouns from determiners way more strictly, so using the latter alone sounds very abrupt. It's confusing to me that says "you are right" only to immediately disagree with the statement that , saying that it's  , which is untrue. The Oxford Latin Dictionary says:   is used instead of this word only when we're talking about the determiner (sī ūllus porcus grunniat, sī ūlla avis canat), but as standalone pronouns these are dispreferred. Incidentally this means that using as a pronoun shouldn't sound abrupt; it does sound discriminatory, which women tend not to like. —My opinion is that it passes the RFV easily, but could use some Usage notes. Brutal Russian (talk) 11:33, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Some men also tend not to like language that is discriminatory towards women. Does that make them ? --Lambiam 11:57, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think in regards to gender-descriminatory language, men tend to not like what women don't like, but they don't care as much. For example, women are significantly less likely to refer to themselves using female-specific profession terms in Russian because these sound less professional, and in some cases bordering on derogatory (, even ). You'll often find women referring to themselves using gender-neutral (masculine) terms. This issue doesn't exist at all for male-specific terms as far as I can think, which in my opinion reflects the fact that men aren't sensitive to language that discriminates men (not discriminates against men). Brutal Russian (talk) 02:28, 20 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I've made somewhat substantial edits to the notes and declension tables at and would appreciate review to see if the current version is satisfactory and accurate. I removed the plural forms from the main table as I couldn't find any unambiguous evidence of them being used except in very late texts. The main table now only shows m/f quisquam, quisquem etc. and neuter quidquam/quicquam; I'm not sure whether it should have quaequam/quamquam as well, but since there seems to be only a single classical attestation (the quamquam mentioned above by Brutal Russian and the Oxford Latin Dictionary), I thought it was better to just mention it in a note. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to adjust the template to display just masculine and neuter singular versions: I'm not sure why, but adding the parameter num=sg seems to have automatically caused the masculine singular to be applied to the feminine? This might be OK depending on if we want to allow for the pre-Classical use in Plautus. I also included a larger table with the declension given by Pseudo-Probus and Diomedes, which includes all of the other plausible forms (except for dative/ablative plural quisquam, which I'm not sure ever existed) as well as some implausible forms (technically, Pseudo-Probus mentions vocative forms identical to the nominative, which basically have to be purely theoretical, but I'm not sure how to adjust the template to show them, or whether I should do that if I could). I had difficulty finding even late or Medieval Latin examples of the plural forms and first-declension feminine forms; if anyone can work on that further, I'd love to see it.--Urszag (talk) 11:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That's impressive and thorough work, thanks. I don't see anything objectionable after reading it through. I agree with the treatment of quamquam as a note if it's a (Classical) hapax. I also think it's fine for the table to include "masculine/feminine" with reference to the ante-Classical feminine instances, although the num=sg issue does sound like a bug that should be fixed either way unless there's some way to force it to show the empty feminine column. The lack of a good online corpus makes it difficult to search for Medieval Latin cases thoroughly, but I added an instance of adjectival quarumquam at Citations:quisquam (the "1406 January 28" quote). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I actually just thought of a potential issue with the current table at (and also the one at : I'm not sure that the form  is really attested as a feminine ablative singular form. Unlike  and, which are third-declension forms and so in principle don't have any especial reason to be restricted to one gender (aside from usage),  is a second-declension form and so I'd theoretically expect it to be confined to masculine and neuter use. Assuming what L&S say about the rarity of quoquam outside of Livy is true (I haven't tried to check), would it be sensible to just exclude the ablative singular from the table?--Urszag (talk) 00:18, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Given that various feminine and plural forms have been attested, and there are now usage notes describing the low level of attestation in Classical Latin, I'm going to mark this as an RFV passed.--Urszag (talk) 01:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC)