Wiktionary:Information desk/2020/October

nonlemma
As it is, this says "See the etymology of the main entry" (which is a little awkward), why not just make it "See main entry"? Esszet (talk) 23:12, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Even better is to give it an optional parameter, so that (for example) at κύων#Etymology 2 we’d see “See ” (rendering of κύω). This could even be automated, but the extra effort of adding this by hand is small. --Lambiam 19:15, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I guess we can do that, but why not just make it say ? Esszet (talk) 15:58, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

archaic English
What is the verb ending for "ye" equivalent to "st" for "thou"? or is it unmarked? Dngweh2s (talk) 02:40, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's unmarked in Early Modern English (Shakespeare, King James Version, etc.), e.g. "If ye love me, keep my commandments". —Mahāgaja · talk 06:32, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Inopportune (discriminating) image in the article for "cleavage"
I propose to remove or substitute the image of the woman showing cleavage in cleavage. In my opinion the image is neither modest, nor is it necessary. Depicting half-exposed breasts in a dictionary is sustaining objectification of women. In most cultures exposed breasts are considered sexually arousing. Every woman should be free to decide to show her breasts to whatever degree. But being confronted with it in a dictionary feels wrong. Are there any opinions on that? How does Wiktionary cope with discrimination?
 * It seems a reasonable depiction of the noun being described. I would leave it alone. SemperBlotto (talk) 09:06, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I do not know about you but looking at that woman I see a strong independent woman with full control of her own body. 'Objectification' is in the eyes of beholder. Dixtosa (talk) 12:48, 6 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Doesn't look pornographic or gratuitous to me. It illustrates what is being defined. Equinox ◑ 18:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Welsh - Brechdan(au)
The word brechdan(au) means sandwitches, and the only thing I can think its like it butterbrot but even then it doesn't seem very close. Maybe buttie? I'm a fluent Welsh speaker and I can't think of anything native to Welsh which would be an immediate. Maybe bara-(chdan)

Anyway, its missing an etymology listed as of right now and I would appreciate one :)
 * GPC says it's an Irish loanword. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:32, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

ID template for linking to etymology sections
Maybe a dumb question, but is there a template like for linking to particular etymology sections instead of senses? Should I just use ? (I’m loath to just link with, say,  because (1) other languages might have identical headings and (2) later changes to the entries might result in link targets falling out of sync.) — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 19:54, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Question conveniently answered here: we can now use . — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 18:19, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Democratic processes
Hi all,

Can somebody point me to a resource which explains all the democratic processes here, particularly as it relates to:


 * RFV
 * RFD (keep / delete)
 * Beer parlour discussions (support / oppose)

My questions are:


 * Who does the counting of votes?
 * Who decides when it's time for a decision?
 * Who has the authority to decide the outcome of these informal votes?
 * What happens if there's a clear consensus for some kind of change? What happens next?

Thanks. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 15:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * RFVs and RFDs are closed by administrators, usually after (at least) a month; the decision is at the closer's discretion. BP discussions almost never produce any binding results, and they're discussions rather than votes. Clear consensus for important change must be demonstrated in a formal vote. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:24, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Copyright policy
Hi all,

I've read WT:COPY, but I'd also like some clarification: If the president of a country says more or less (in a foreign language) "I spoke to him on the phone and I invited him to discuss it." This is reported by several different sources. It also appears to be, more or less, a normal sentence that any normal person would say.
 * Is it necessary to cite it or can you simply create an example using ux along with your own translation? Would it be viewed as a copyright violation to do otherwise?
 * Would a citation using quote-book or quote-journal be enough to avoid accusations of plagiarism?

-- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 07:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Quoting a short everyday sentence spoken in public by a public figure does not infringe copyright at all. Equinox ◑ 09:10, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I appreciate it. Just a little background information: I was admonished by a younger admin who I suppose just wanted to plant a warning on my talk page before taking future action (e.g., blocking me). I'm not taking any chances, though. I'll just use quote-book from here on out and avoid contributing to foreign languages here. I'll stick to Jamaican Creole and English. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 09:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

For the sake of transparency, the quote in question belonged to the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis and was taken verbatim from one or more news sources without being attributed as such. It was most likely taken from the opening paragraph of an article published on the 25th of October 2015 on Economica.net. All material published on that site is copyrighted (terms and conditions found here, unfortunately solely in Romanian). Similar copyrights apply to articles published by Aktual24, Mediafax, Jurnalul Antena3, Timpul etc. In the usage example for invita, there was no mention at all that the quote belonged to the president, a quote he by the way gave in an interview. Surely that kind of quote has to be attributed as such and not as your run-of-the-mill usage example.

For the record, I had and have no intention of blocking Dentonius – I simply wanted to help him understand that quotes, especially taken from news sources, have to be attributed as such so that we don't risk getting accused of copyright infringement. Depicting me as a malevolent admin, writing that my intervention was a "a set-up" and that I have a "personal vendetta" against him in the already archived discussion on his talk page which just happened yesterday, pretty much speaks for itself. --Robbie SWE (talk) 11:28, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm not really taking sides on this, although admittedly I've been trying to make friends with Dentonius bc I feel he could be a great contributor if he stops trying to "Right Great Wrongs" (as Wikipedia says). I am not in any way joining any accusation against you as malicious. Equinox ◑ 01:22, 19 October 2020 (UTC)


 * It's good to attribute citations properly, purely so we know when they were said and who said them (this will help us know in the future "who first used blog" or whatever). You might also want to consider trying to be a part of the community and not trying to start a guillotine revolution every time you see something you don't like. Just a thought. Equinox ◑ 13:50, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I'll do better. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 13:53, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Thesaurus page for terms meaning "person with characteristics stereotypical of people of another race"
Hello, do words like, , and as a group warrant the creation of a thesaurus page for listed all similar words? The main reason I am wondering is because I am unsure if there is a certain critical mass of related words that is generally considered necessary for a thesaurus page to be warranted. Details on such a standard if it exists would be appreciated. Also, for clarity there are at least six words that I consider related. Many of the terms listed at Thesaurus:newcomer, such as, could also be argued to be related. Hoping the best for you. &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 02:29, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

sound shift
What does "prothetic /w ~ u̯/ before /o/ and /u/" mean as a characteristic of the Southern Russian accent? Dngweh2s (talk) 22:50, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It means that and  at the beginning of a word are pronounced  and  in that accent. For example,  and  would be pronounced like  and . —Mahāgaja · talk 09:00, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Hypothetical Kangxi Dictionary entries
I was reading the entry on 悶 and noticed a contradiction: The radical is given as 心 which makes sense given that that is the semantic component, whereas in the "References" section it says that it's not present in the Kangxi Dictionary, but that it would follow character 9 on page 1333 with the 門 radical. In the absence of an original Kangxi Dictionary entry, what is Wiktionary's policy for determining a character's radical and where it would go in the dictionary? (I actually find it a bit odd to state where a character would be in a dictionary that never had it.) Stibitzki (talk) 18:17, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like I've found the answer, the value is the same as that of the field "kIRGKangXi" in the corresponding Unihan entry and I assume the radical is based on the field "kRSUnicode". Still, I feel that the template should mention that. Stibitzki (talk) 10:29, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Citing/quoting poems
What template should be used for quoting poems? , for instance requires a title, which it italicizes, but if I just want to cite a poem apart from a collection, I want the title to be in quotation marks. does this, but then adds "(lyrics and music)" after the name of the poet/author. Is there a workaround? (I specifically ran into this issue when trying to format the Robert Frost quote at, sense 2.) Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:34, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The same thing goes for old songs, like traditional hymns. For instance, at, St. Ambrose is the possible hymnist for "Te lucis ante terminum" but is not really a "lyricist." Perhaps could be created to cover cases like these? Parameters could include . Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:19, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Anyone?? Should I bring this to the Grease Pit instead? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

-ish Etymology 2
Unless I'm missing something (entirely possible as I'm not fully awake), -ish appears to be missing a definition? Thryduulf (talk) 02:40, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have a meaning, and I would be reluctant to call it a suffix of English. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I added a non-gloss definition as "an ending found on some verbs", directing people to the usage notes, since it should have some definition as long as it exists, but that is without prejudice to RFVing it. I will say Dictionary.com and Lexico have entries for that -ish, though Merriam-Webster and MacMillan do not. Lexico says it is used in "forming" verbs, and our usage notes say it is found not only on verbs of French origin but also verbs "formed on the type of such verbs", as if to imply it might have been marginally productive in English at some point. That text (in our usage notes) appears to have been copied from Century, their examples are: abolish, astonish, banish, demolish, diminish, establish, finish, minish, punish, stablish. Of these, astonish derives from English aston(e), but it may be easier to view the -ish not as a suffix which was applied but as the result of a process like blending. banish claims it's "equivalent to" ban + -ish. Meh. Compare -rix, WT:RFM, ostensible "suffix" on a range of words borrowed intact from Latin. - -sche (discuss) 21:15, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Change ancestor of Jeju from "Proto-Korean" to "Old Korean"
While a distinction technically exists between Proto-Korean as a reconstructed language and Old Korean as a (marginally) attested language, all Koreanic varieties, including Jeju, are descended from the language of Silla (see for more)—which happens to be identical to the very language represented in what survives of Old Korean. So really, PK and OK are the same thing, just one is reconstructed and the other is attested.

I have also been lemmatizing reconstructed Proto/Old Korean forms with the tag for Old Korean.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:10, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

relatum
Hi, I haven't looked over any of the guidelines on how to use or edit this wiki, but I just wanted to make a post about the Wiktionary entry for the word 'relatum' which I have come across in Karen Barad's 2007 book Meeting the Universe Halfway ("Relations do not follow relata, but the other way around", p136). I'd not come across the word relata/relatum before but my instinctive impression of the definition is, more or less, "that which is related." I think this definition is supported by the two already-cited quotations in the current Wiktionary page for this word. Wiktionary gives this sole definition: "1. A term which is related to the referent." This is fine - sure, the word is related to the word 'referent' - but it does have two problems: 1) it makes no mention of the (I would say glaringly obvious) connection between the words 'relatum' and 'relation' and 2) it actually uses the word 'related' without pointing out said connection. It's a kind of unknowingly circular defintion, in my view. I don't presume to suggest the definition should be removed (I am a totally new user after all) but I think at the very least "2. That which is related" should be appended. BCJT (talk) 17:47, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

How to write a Japanese entry for single-kanji, compound-only senses?
The kanji has the following meanings (taken from kotobank.jp):
 * 1) something that resembles the human shape; doll (Ex., , )
 * 2) pair; couple (Ex., , )
 * 3) even number (Ex. )
 * 4) unexpectedly; accidentally; by chance (Ex., )

However when appearing as a standalone term (as 偶, 偶々, or 偶に) it only ever has the "unexpected" sense, and only this sense is represented in it's entry. What would be the best ways to represent the other three senses?


 * For general entries, we have Template:only used in, which could be used to point towards the compounds a particular meaning is used in. (That may or may not be appropriate here.) If there is a large number/variety of compounds in which one or more of these meanings occurs, I think it's OK to cover the meaning on the kanji page with a label like ja. We may also have a Japanese-specific template for this., who would know more about this. - -sche (discuss) 17:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * (PS, since you are also familiar with Korean, either of you might also have input on, above.) - -sche (discuss) 18:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You don’t have to worry about kun readings. It’s rather a Japanese word than a sense of a kanji., , and are all native Japanese words that may or may not be written with the kanji 偶. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:34, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Where to add "to scramble expectations"?
Where's the best place to add information about the phrase "to scramble expectations"? Should it be added to scramble, or do phrases like this get their own page? Thanks AxelBoldt (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Assuming that "to scramble expectations" can mean something different than the definitions of "scramble" and "expectations" together, the standard place for information about it would be scramble expectations. Pages that might be useful to reference are ask out and answer back. Hope the best for you and that this is helpful. &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 23:15, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Adding a new language
Hello, I'd like to create a new module for Proto-Romance. According to your naming scheme, the tag would be roa-pro. Could an admin help me add it to this page? Cheers.--Excelsius (talk) 05:26, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a bit more complicated than that. First of all, what you're talking about here is a language code. There are plenty of languages that have a language code, but no module. Data that would be included in the existing data modules is normally enough to use in all of our normal templates. And a module doesn't necessarily need its own language code. If you're creating a module to generate pronunciations, it probably doesn't need to use a language code at all.
 * Second, Proto-Romance may not be distinct enough from Latin to merit treatment as a separate language. It's possible to have an "etymology-only" language code that can be used in etymology sections, but the entries themselves are in the main language and the templates convert links to the etymology-only language into links to the main language. Thus, Vulgar Latin has the language code "VL.", which the etymology templates display as "Vulgar Latin" and they add categories such as Category:Spanish terms derived from Vulgar Latin. When you include a term to link to, however, they link to the term as Latin, and the the entry for the Vulgar Latin term itself has a "Latin" header and uses the "la" language code. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:16, 31 October 2020 (UTC)