Wiktionary:Information desk/2015/July

ciboa
From what little I can dig up, this is a palm tree with very large leaves used as thatching and as umbrellas, and having sap used for a sort of palm wine. This sounds to me very much like Borassus aethiopica, but I can't find any mention of its botanical identity. Searching for this on Google Books is rather frustrating: the vast majority of passages onlne refer only to the fact that Mungo Park once used it as an umbrella.

Can anyone provide a botanical name, or at least a synonym I can look up? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:10, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Synonym: rhun. — Ungoliant (falai) 14:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like it’s the Borassus aethiopum indeed. — Ungoliant (falai) 14:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

EU legislation meaning of "p.m."
See and click document two. Now search for "p.m.". What do they refer to? --Ysangkok (talk) 20:05, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Templates for references
Where can I find templates used for referencing information e. g. from Etymology sections? It seems that template:cite-book is not suitable, because it requires fulfilling the parameter "passage". There is also template:reference-book, but the documentation says that the template should not be used in "References". Thank you. Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:27, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The "passage" parameter actually should not be required. I have just fixed this. --WikiTiki89 13:35, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:39, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I am afraid that there are many more problems with citation templates. For example I failed to find anything like cite journal. I found only template:cite with a parameter type=magazine, but it seems it is only for quotations but not for referencing information in the Etymology section (besides that it does not offer all necessary parametres: there is only year, but not date, there are not parameters volume, number, pages...). The same applies also to template:cite-magazine. Besides that there are many citation templates which lack documentation, such as the above mentioned cite-magazine or template:cite paper. Trying to understand the templates here is extremely timeconsuming for me, although I have some experience from English Wikipedia. It must be totally discouraging for all newbies :-(

May I ask for help once more? Could you suggest me, which template is most suitable for referencing information from an article published in a journal? Thank you very much. Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:04, 7 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I recommend just writing out a citation manually. That's what I do when I run into problems. Our citation templates are horrible. --WikiTiki89 17:08, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, will do it that way, thanks. Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:18, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

New Word
Please create a page for "sporographic." Thanks
 * It seems to be very rare; it gets only 5 hits at . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Category:English terms by language of origin ?
Is there a category that has English words categorized based on what language they derive from? If not, would it be easy enough to create such a thing, being that the etymology sections contain templates (although it might be complicated by the lists of cognates)? JodianWarrior (talk) 02:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * We have a pretty elaborate system of templates and modules to provide derivational categories from just about any language to just about any language. To start with, try Category:English terms derived from other languages. From there you can drill down through the category structure. For specific languages, the categories are always in the form "Category:" + language name + " terms derived from " + language name, as in Category:English terms derived from Sumerian. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:40, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's more or less what I was looking for. I realized shortly after posting here that there were already numerous categories of "English terms derived from...", so putting them together wouldn't be much work if it hadn't already been done.
 * It would be nice to be able to see how many different entries were under a category, with the entries in all subcategories included in the total (that way one could compare the number of terms derived from Indo-European languages with those derived from Sino-Tibetan without having to go through all the subcategories). It's largely for curiosity's sake, however; I'm just voicing my desires without expecting any changes.... JodianWarrior (talk) 13:39, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * How silly of me...I forgot about the little arrows that expand the categories. Some addition is still required, but it's easier than I was thinking it was. JodianWarrior (talk) 13:51, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

New Username
I'm not sure where I really should be asking this, so I'm doing it here... Could my username be changed globally (across all Wiki projects, that is)? I used it when I made a few edits on Wikipedia back in 2011, but it is no longer relevant to me. JodianWarrior (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Changing username. — Keφr 06:12, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. JodianWarrior (talk) 15:01, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary's place on Google search results pages
Why is it that Wikipedia is pretty much the first thing that comes up for many Google searches, but Wiktionary often doesn't even show up at all on the first page? Do other dictionaries pay to show up first? Dictionary.com seems to be at the top most of the time, with Merriam-Webster, The Free Dictionary, and Vocabulary.com not far behind. I suspect that is the biggest reason Wiktionary doesn't have more visitors and editors than it does. JodianWarrior (talk) 02:24, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's more cause of the algorythm and the exotic "Wikt-" part which mean and refer absolutely to nothing. At least, i think it's the name of Wiktionary which may penalize us, if it would be Wikidictionary I'm quite sure the project would be more visible. When I look for "dictionnaire" (french word for dictionary) on google, the "Wiktionnaire" (= fr.wikt) appear in the second page of the result page and it wasn't the home page of the project but only the entry page for "dictionnaire" word. V!v£ l@ Rosière   /Whisper…/  17:53, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Your logic fails to explain Wikipedia's being first. With your logic it should be Wikiencyclopedia in order to get into the first page.
 * I think time will come when they will (manually?) give us more credits with the forms of high PageRank coefficients xD. --Dixtosa (talk) 19:41, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Still, it would probably help if our pagetitles were "x - Wiktionary, the free dictionary", instead of just "x - Wiktionary". Compare how Wikipedia is "X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Automatically Generate Adjective Forms?
I recently took to adding besynnerlig and all of its forms, and it occurred to me that there might already be an automatic process for generating all of the pages for the adjective forms for regular adjectives. Is there such a thing? Rekov (talk) 19:24, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Definition order
What method is generally accepted for ordering definitions? Are they just added on a first-come-first-serve basis?

I see very strange orders sometimes, take rhombus for example:


 * 1) (zoology, now rare) Any of several flatfishes once considered part of the genus Rhombus. [from 16th c.]
 * 2) (geometry) A parallelogram having all sides of equal length. [from 16th c.]

I would think the second definition listed there would be listed first.

So is there a guideline somewhere? Bruto (talk) 08:56, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * No, there's not. Some people prefer to list senses in chronological order of first attestation, others like to list them in order of commonness in current usage, but most of us realize that researching what either of those orders is will turn out to be way more work than we're willing to do and so we tend to add new senses to the bottom, in the "first-come-first serve basis" you mention. 10:36, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

178.222.124.18
Not sure if this is the right place. IP editor (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/178.222.124.18) is consistently adding fake etymologies that cannot be corroborated by any of the relevant etymology sources for Serbo-Croatian (HJP, Skok). 93.139.57.95 19:41, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Surprising word - "deadname"
So I came across this term: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deadname#English

noun: "The birth name of a person who has since changed their name." verb: "To refer to someone who has changed their name by their previous name." ("to deadname", "deadnaming")

There's zero hits for this word on all of dictionary.com, JSTOR, Google Books or Google Scholar. There's a single Urban Dictionary entry less than a year old. There's a couple of links to online articles, all less than a year old.

What are the requirements for inclusion? Does this fill the 'attestation' requirement? Word asker (talk) 10:45, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * The term has associated citations (see its Citation page). SemperBlotto (talk) 10:49, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * And there are other citations (of the gender sense which Wordasker asks about) in the entry itself — to my surprise, since I had looked for citations just a month earlier and only been able to find the "kill by naming" citations I put on the citations page. Nice work finding the gender citations, Visviva! - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

How to refer properly on en.wikt ?
Hi, I just created non-résistance and filled it but I'm really stuck for one thing : to refer properly the etymology like the fr.wikt article (you know that little [1] in exposant, how to do that here ? Which template or meanings to use ?). Thanks by advance. V!v£ l@ Rosière  /Whisper…/  17:43, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * You can use  tags, just like on Wikipedia. We don't have a special  template. --WikiTiki89 17:48, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok thanks, I'll try to find an example over there. V!v£ l@ Rosière   /Whisper…/  21:16, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

google ngram
How reliable is google ngram ([books.google.com/ngrams/])? A google book search often has incorrect OCRs - especially regarding fraktur scripts, umlauts and the distinction of s/ſ/ß (e.g. ſs might become "ss" at google, while its actually used for "ß"). -eXplodit (talk) 00:09, 23 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, if we look at a string like "das beſte", it's misread as "das befte" only about 1/1500th of the time (version with no smoothing). And if we look at an ngram of "dass" vs "daß", we see what we'd expect — daß has been more common during the times it's been standard, dass has been more common during the times it's been standard. - -sche (discuss) 18:59, 23 July 2015 (UTC)


 * beste is another kind of example. beſte might be misread as befte, but daſs (= daß) might be misread as dafs and might also be misread as dass. My impression is that in ca. 1871-1902 (cf. Template:U:de:dass) Latin script became more common, in which daſs was used, which than was misread as dass (or even dafs) by google instead of the correct form daß (or daſs). And there might be a simple reason why ß became more popular after 1902 again even though Latin script wasn't banished: ß (instead of ſs) became more widely available and more popular in Latin script. In a rule book after 1902 (Berlin, 1908) it is: "In lateinischer Schrift steht [...] ß (besser als ſs) für ß [...]" (it uses fraktur and Latin script, so the two versions of ß look different).
 * (There might also be reasons why Latin script became more common in the time after 1871: Latin got widely replaced by national languages and Germany became more European (-> nationalism, imperialism, WWI; also cf. Hitlerists' arguments for banishing fraktur).)
 * -eXplodit (talk) 22:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

(German) Participial Adjectives
At "Requested entries" there was: " - inflection of bestellen?".

So, how are (German) participles called here resp. how should (German) participles be called here? How about simply calling them "Participle" (that is resp. in some cases was a part of speech)?
 * unterdrückt (here labeled Adjective) is the past participle of unterdrücken, and unterdrückter (here labeled Adjective) is an inflected form of it.
 * bestellt (here labeled Verb) is the past participle of bestellen, and bestellter (here labeled Participial Adjective by me) is an inflected form of it.

PS: Category:German participle forms and Category:German participles do exist, but are almost empty. Should these categories be used for unterdrückter & bestellter and bestellt & unterdrückt? -eXplodit (talk) 20:11 & 20:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been making a habit of labelling participles with the POS header "Participle" to underscore the fact that they're not simply verb forms but have adjectival properties as well. —CodeCat 20:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I'd support that for the given reason, and as it makes things easier (no discussions whether a word like unterdrückt is an adjective or a verb form). Is there something like for participles, like  ? -eXplodit (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Why not use ? —CodeCat 21:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Amount of hypernyms and hyponyms in compared to german wiktionary and a practice to get them.
Hey everyone, I'm a computer science student from Düsseldorf, Germany and actually write my bachelor thesis. In this I compare different dictionaries and semantic nets to each other. My main focus is on the relationship of hyper- and hyponyms and in which way they are connected. I parsed the german and also the english wiktionary and recognize that the english version has a significant less number of hypernym and hypnym connections. Now I question myself why it is like that and if I maybe have missed out a important practice to read them out. I hope you can give some information about this. --Mo0812 (talk) 16:15, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

(Well, actually it's easier to add words here, as one doesn't have to add quotes or references, at least not if they are not requested (see requests for verification).) Or maybe in de.wt more terms are added as they use (more/better) templatised pages where one doesn't have to add a hyperonym section, but just hyperonyms.
 * Maybe this is relevant or helpful:
 * In German compounds are usually new words (like: Kind + (Geburt + Tag) = Kindergeburtstag), while in English many compounds are spelled like "birthday party" or "child's birthday" which then should often be what's here called "SoP" (sum of parts).
 * de.wt is German and thus it's easier for them to add German compounds. en.wt is English and thus it's not unlikely that here are less German words.
 * Maybe German terms like "Unterbegriff[e]" and "Oberbegriff[e]" are easier to understand for normal people than terms like "Hyperonym[e]" or "hyper[o]nym[s]". So maybe that's why more terms are added in de.wt.
 * -eXplodit (talk) 19:22, 29 July 2015 (UTC)