Talk:wheater

RFV discussion: July–October 2020
I have not yet found evidence that this term is anything other than a misspelling of wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe). I have not even seen evidence that it is a misspelling "in the wild". I have already copied the translations to wheatear. DCDuring (talk) 22:48, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Chester Albert Reed, North American Birds Eggs (1904), page 333, has "765. Wheater. Saxicola oenanthe. Range.-Asia; casual in Alaska in summer; nesting habits and eggs like the next. 765a. Greenland Wheater. S. oe. leucorhoa. [...]", but the index tells readers to find the "Wheatear" on that page, so it seems even that is a typo/misspelling. - -sche (discuss) 22:59, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Century, cited in the entry as having this, in fact only has wheatear. Looks like the entry creator just made a typo(?). - -sche (discuss) 23:01, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ian Newton, Speciation and Biogeography of Birds (2003, Academic Press, ISBN 9780080924991), page 275, has this spelled "Wheater" in a table, but "wheatear" in text, and similarly Val Nolan Jr., Ellen D. Ketterson, Current Ornithology (2012, Springer Science & Business Media, ISBN 9781461558811), page 148 has "wheater" once but then also "wheater". So, there are examples of it as a misspelling 'in the wild', but I don't know if it's common. In any case, the lemma should clearly be wheatear. - -sche (discuss) 00:26, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Sadly, we've had the entry for 10 years, with several translations added, without any translator noticing. They must have been focused on the taxonomic name. The entry for wheatear pre-dated wheater by almost 4 years. The simple expedient of including in the entry and checking to see whether other dictionaries had the term would have helped. Also, checking links to pedia for both the vernacular and taxonomic names might have helped. OTOH, I've often had trouble just seeing what was on the screen. DCDuring (talk) 03:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Clearly a typo. Does appear in occasional ornithological text where it is always a typo and the correct form "wheatear" also appears alongside or elsewhere in text. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 12:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

cited Kiwima (talk) 06:21, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Doesn't the existence of hits for wheater in works where the spelling also occurs as the much more common wheatear make this a "common[?] misspelling" rather than alternative form. DCDuring (talk) 07:41, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm puzzled. All three given cites are from works that do NOT use the form "wheatear". Kiwima (talk) 22:24, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I can't find enough examples, but I'm bothered that the only online dictionary besides Wiktionary that has an entry cites Wiktionary. DCDuring (talk) 08:16, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I can't find the first citation in the entry to check whether it uses wheater more than once; using it only once could be a one-off typo. I do see another (slightly different) copy of the same text, in Philipp Luckombe's 1790 England's Gazetter, volume 3, which says "It is particularly famous for its wheatear, a small delicious bird, of the size of a lark, [...]", with the expected spelling. Parish's book only uses the word once, which again doesn't rule out a misspelling, ditto the 1987 Geographical Magazine, and the number of books where it clearly is a misspelling and other occurrences of the word use the expected spelling makes solitary occurrences of this spelling suspect. (Compare Talk:licensize.) OTOH, Ngrams suggests it is a very common misspelling, on the order of occurring 1/20th as often as the standard spelling(???), so it's not like it'd be deleted if we relabel it a misspelling. The only thing in favor of viewing this as a possibly-sometimes-intentional spelling, AFAICT, is that it's consistent with the given etymology, whit ers. Ehhh. I would either go with "misspelling of" or "(nonstandard, sometimes erroneous) alternative spelling of" (compare Talk:rediculous). - -sche (discuss) 22:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Relabelled as a misspelling, and kept since it appears to be very common relative to the usual spelling, as I remarked above. - -sche (discuss) 01:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC)