Wiktionary:Information desk/2023/March

Usage of "composite" to refer to group photos of fraternity members
From what I can see, the use of "composite" as a noun is somewhat contrary to the ordinary definition of composite. In this context, it's a wooden board composed of individual portrait photos of different members. I hoping to find a dictionary source which includes this specific usage.--2601:644:400:55D0:61BA:81A7:9BA1:7143 05:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Origin of the British word "Lorry"
In my opinion the word "lorry" is rooted in the German "Lore", which refers to an ore car that is used in underground mining. 50.37.24.100 21:04, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * We have a page dedicated to discussing etymologies, the Etymology scriptorium. For your theory to become acceptable, you need to show that the direction of borrowing did not go the other way, which is, reportedly, what thought.  --Lambiam 11:59, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

No new page preview
Hi - The last few times I have created a new (Ukrainian) page, a preview page has not appeared before I publish it.

Is this a known recent change or problem on wiktionary? Or is it something wrong at my end? I haven't changed any settings or anything at my end. (I'm using an android tablet/firefox.) Thank you. DaveyLiverpool (talk) 01:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

How do I link to 18+ under a definition?
That's as a synonym for 🔞, which is listed under 🛇. The 'syn' tag links to 18. kwami (talk) 01:00, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The entity code &amp;plus; works, I've changed it to that. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:13, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! kwami (talk) 01:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

How should I write the etymologies for xiehouyu with homophonic puns
e.g. should I write “no hair and no sky” or “regardless of laws”? Mahogany115 (talk) 06:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)


 * IMO the best approach is to mention both. Looking at the spelling of the form we currently lemmatize, it looks like the literal meaning is "no law", since it uses the character for "law" and "hair" is a different character, yes? So maybe something like A pun; literally "no law", but homophonous with "no hair".? Or would speakers more commonly treat "hair" as the literal meaning of the phrase ("like a monk - no hair") and "law" as the punning double meaning? If that's the case, switch the order accordingly, but perhaps the entry needs to be moved... - -sche (discuss) 21:03, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:label with wrong lang parameter
Is this still used, i.e. are there still errors which will result in this category being added by the module? or can it be deleted? - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Won't this be triggered when a user makes a simple typo and adds a new sense "{{mono| # {{lb|enn|slang} Outfit. }}" to the English noun fit? --Lambiam 08:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Apparently not; when I add that code to testcase, the module just happily adds the page to CAT:Engenni slang... which is what I would suspect: that the module has no way to discern whether the user meant to type that langcode. (Nothing in the module's code seems to add this category.) - -sche (discuss) 08:54, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Contracted forms of Latin verb forms with perfect in -āv-
In Cicero’s De officiis I.3 I came across the verb form, a contracted form of , the third-person plural perfect active indicative of. While having entries by themselves, such contractions are not listed in the conjugation tables of Latin first conjugation verbs with perfect in -āv-. Shouldn’t they be presented there as well? I am not certain how wide the applicability of the contraction -ār- < -āvēr- is, but it appears to also apply to other persons and moods. --Lambiam 10:30, 16 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Good point—there are various syncopated perfect forms, and they seem to be treated rather spottily: some already have entries, like or  < dīxistī, but they're not linked anywhere at their main lemmas; many others aren't covered at all. I agree that they should be listed in conjugation tables, they're well-attested in canonical Classical Latin as you've seen with Cicero. Pinging  as well. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the regular ones should just be auto-generated. Nicodene (talk) 12:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * From the documentation at la-conj we do have .poet-sync-perf already for the v-dropping perfect forms, which I've turned on for . I'm not sure the label about it being "rare poetic" is generally accurate though (De officiis is not poetry whatever else it is). Far from being "poetic" these forms were common in popular speech even before the later periods AFAIK. (.opt-sync-perf seems to do the same thing in practice without the note, but it's marked as "????? Currently used for only".) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:37, 17 March 2023 (UTC)


 * (See also Tea room/2021/October for more attested forms missing from our conjugation tables.) - -sche (discuss) 02:51, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Right, there is a template option already for them, but I agree that it isn't all that accurate to characterize these as "rare poetic" forms. Related: User:Isomorphyc/Sandbox/Some Latin Syncopated Forms. I think contraction of -āvis- to -ās- and -āver- to -ār- is more common than contraction of -āvit or -āvimus.--Urszag (talk) 19:13, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

A word invented later, for a thing that existed earlier
Remind me of the category for these please. Something like "anachronym"?? needs it. I had another one too the other day but I've unfortunately forgotten what it was. Equinox ◑ 22:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅ Got it: "Category:English retronyms" (though "anachronym" seems to be a synonym). Thanks to The Editor's Apprentice. Equinox ◑ 00:00, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Ah! I had looked through the parent category of Category:English historical terms to see if there was a counterpart for this, and didn't find anything. Does it make sense to treat "historical terms" (modern terms for things that no longer exist) as a "terms by usage" category, but "retronyms" as a "terms by etymology" category? Is there a way we could make these things more findable, e.g. adding anachronism or anachronym to the description of retronyms? - -sche (discuss) 00:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * TEA cleverly found it by looking up, which he knew ought to be in the category. Equinox ◑ 01:45, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * BTW, I notice the two entries given as examples of anachronyms in that entry's usage notes, lead pencil and tin foil, don't seem to be retronyms... but I wonder if they are even really anachronyms. Lead pencil dates to a time when graphite was assumed to be lead, and tin foil to a time when such foil was made of tin, but does this make the terms anachronistic? Is referring to Russian as a lingua franca (in former Soviet states today) anachronistic [because it's not a Frankish lingua]? I wonder if the usage note is wrong about what an anachronym is... - -sche (discuss) 04:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Sometimes it's easier to replace the "Trump was a Nazi" example sentence with "Hitler was a Nazi", rather than doing the whole argument. Delete and replace. Wipe and swipe. Zap and snap. Equinox ◑ 06:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Thinking about this more, my lingua franca example doesn't work (it's just a misnomer); I should've went with the first example that came to mind: whether referring to France or is an anachronism because they're not Franks. If those are anachronyms, I guess some anachronyms are not retronyms, since tin foil was apparently called that from the start (so not a retronym, and not originally anachronistic). But lead pencil seems to be neither a retronym nor an anchronym, since it was called that from the start (so not a retronym), but never contained lead (so calling it lead doesn't anachronistically refer to a time when it was lead). So I'm going to delete that one from the usage note. - -sche (discuss) 07:53, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * "Should've went"? Good grief. I'm only not banning you because of our shared history of LGBT support. Equinox ◑ 13:05, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Ha, sorry, I realize I didn't make much sense here (not because of mixing up past tenses, but because after you mentioned anachronym vs retronym, I hijacked your thread with thinking aloud about whether they were actually synonyms or not, a tangent which probably should've ygone in its own thread or just edit summaries, hah). - -sche (discuss) 20:52, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

/ɔɹ/ or /ɑɹ/
There are a number of words with prevocalic /ɔɹ/ in General American English that are pronounced /ɑɹ/ in certain regional dialects, ie horrible and forest. How do I know if a word is pronounced with an /ɑɹ/ in these dialects? My educated guess is that it must be 1) prevocalic, 2) stressed, and 3) followed by a reduced vowel. This is all complicated by the fact that since this is basically a phonemic difference certain words have randomly become more or less likely to have it.  Dngweh2s (talk) 00:36, 21 March 2023 (UTC)


 * 4) has to be spelled with "or" or "orr" and 5) can't be derived from a word where the vowel isn't prevocalic ie. store > storing Dngweh2s (talk) 00:41, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We had a  discussion about six months ago here, and there's relevant information there, but it didn't lead to us changing anything in our pronunciation sections so far as I know.  There might be a list of words somewhere, but I havent seen such a list either on Wiktionary or on Wikipedia.  Wikipedia has a list of words affected by the horse-hoarse merger here, but I dont think thats the same thing. — Soap — 12:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

template Wikipedia link
On Category:Glosa language, the Wikipedia link points to Interglossa when it should point to Glosa. When I push the "Edit template data" button it takes me to a module page that I can't edit, and even if I was able to edit it I don't see anything related to either of the two conlangs. Thanks! 2601:643:8300:9DF0:280E:C082:6215:F04F 03:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Fixed. It was due to an incorrect Wikidata item number in Module:languages/data/3/i, which you would never have found on your own. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:38, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks . 50.196.175.13 18:38, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Latin Ablative
Hi there Wiktionary,

I've been wondering why you separate the "ablative" form of Latin words from the other forms. Usually they all go together.

Regards Tony Taylor 203.12.143.13 03:52, 28 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Third-declension nouns with distinct ablative in -e are pretty common, including favourite words like, , . —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don’t understand the question; I do not see a difference in how the ablative is treated with respect to the other oblique cases. I don’t understand this answer; nothing in the question refers to the declension paradigm. --Lambiam 12:02, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I initially interpreted it as asking why the ablative is treated as a distinct case to begin with (which is an odd question), but actually now I'm pretty sure they're referring to entries for first-declension nouns where the ablative inflection is sometimes given its own POS header because of the vowel length difference (-ā vs -a). In that case the answer's simply that it's because they reflect different (classical) pronunciations. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:09, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, then Wiktionary seems to treat first declension nouns differently. I sampled a few words, aqua makes this distinction, but lupa, poeta, and agricola do not. I personally prefer to omit the part about the ablative as the same information is already present in the conjugation table, but this inconsistency does not seem like a big concern. —PetraMagna (talk) 06:38, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It is handled inconsistently, yes. I don't make a separate POS header in entries that I create for the reason you point out. In some entries there is an entire "Pronunciation 1" "Pronunciation 2" system, others will give an "Ablative:" pronunciation in the Pronunciation section. I prefer to just ignore it since it's in the conjugation table and people can see the vowel length. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 18:19, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Prima facie words
Should the components of the English word mia noi have entries of their own simply by virtue of mia noi being an English word? They lack meaning, so could only meet CFI if mia noi were in clearly widespread use. I think therefore they don't meet CFI. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:40, 30 March 2023 (UTC)


 * No. We wouldn't have English "cetera" just because of "et cetera". Equinox ◑ 20:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, that's why you have things like . Vininn126 (talk) 20:13, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Presumably, then, English Wiktionary should not be used by anyone whose English is not strong enough to suspect that 'mia noi' and 'a priori' are units. --RichardW57m (talk) 09:14, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One can easily check what they mean in Latin, but those words should not have English entries. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. Vininn126 (talk) 09:15, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What then is your model for a user trying to work out the meaning of a sentence? Consider the example sentence, "In his opening argument, the student mentioned nothing beyond his a priori knowledge."   is actually a poor example, as the first element is actually a morpheme in English, and should be entered.  I will check for definitions of it in paper dictionaries tonight. --RichardW57m (talk) 10:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My method is to include a priori by itself with an English definition, linking to the source language's words in the etymology. As most people do. Vininn126 (talk) 10:13, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Please answer the question. It is a question about a use case, and not directly a question about editing the dictionary, though it may inform the editing process.  Your English seems pretty strong, though I'm not entirely sure that you would have handled mia noi last week, which has nothing to do with Latin. --RichardW57m (talk) 10:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I am a native in English, as listed in my babble box...
 * As to your question, I do not understand the wording. Headwords should link to the appropriate L2's link if possible, if a segment isn't used in a language it shouldn't be linked in the headword. If you want a definition of that individual word, you should check the source language, which may be linked in the etymology. Vininn126 (talk) 10:47, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Being a native speaker of a language doesn't guarantee being able to handle all of it, though it helps a lot with identifying multi-word phrases that might have their own meaning. However, I think a simple and entirely plausible sentence such as 'He came with his mia noi' could be hard to puzzle out until one guesses that 'mia noi' is a lemma. So, how do you expect a user to come to consider that possibility?  Don't you care about the usability of Wiktionary? --RichardW57m (talk) 11:37, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I also wonder whether we should also handle misstemmings; I wonder whom to chide because I can't find that word at Wiktionary. Perhaps it's too technical. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:37, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So your solution is to include Latin definitions of English words so that people going to the individual words can find the phrase? That's inane. There's only so much we can do for the user. Vininn126 (talk) 11:48, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Clearly visible pointers from the first word of a multi-word lemma to the lemma would help. Some flexibility would be required for idioms where the lemmatisation isn't obvious or the start of the lemma is not clear.  In a printed dictionary I would expect something like
 * flagrante - See  in flagrante (delicto)
 * Wiktionary, which is not paper, would be more verbose. Where the page already exists, we could legitimately include these 'soft redirects' in the also at the head of the page.
 * Perhaps for very common starts, we could reference the relevant starting page within a category.
 * The details of this probably need to go to the Beer Parlour. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Using some sort of redirect was the compromise position that occurred to me too. —DIV (1.145.19.122 12:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC))