Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/November

antithesis
Should there be a phonetic IPA for this word given that it has an American audio that isn't [æn.ˈtɪ.θə.sɪs] ? Dngweh2s (talk) 01:58, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you're hearing, but the audio I hear at antithesis is . —Mahāgaja · talk 09:02, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Your IPA didn't render Dngweh2s (talk) 17:12, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed: the template name is all lowercase, apparently. Should the version with uppercase IPA be a redirect? - -sche (discuss) 17:46, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing my IPA; a redirect would be a good idea. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:08, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I thought it was [eə̯n.ˈtɪ.θə.sɪs] Dngweh2s (talk) 19:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say so. Her /æ/ may be slightly raised, but not as far as [e], nor is there any diphthongization that I can hear. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:28, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

of one's own
I've found four idiomatic expressions that make use of that prepositional phrase. Are there others? PUC – 14:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I hope you don't mind, but I've moved these four expressions, that have separate articles, to the "See also" section, and put a "plain" usex against the definition. Mihia (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've moved them to a "derived terms" section, but yes, it's probably better not to have them as usexes. PUC – 14:29, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Very strictly speaking, I think that these should be "related terms", but the intended distinction between "derived" and "related" (or what I think is the intended distinction) is in practice not consistently observed across Wiktionary. Mihia (talk) 15:06, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I notice that even classifying these as "related terms" is not really supported by WT:EL, which describes "related terms" as "words in the same language that have strong etymological connections but aren’t derived terms". In practice this category is very often used for multi-word compounds that incorporate the headword/headphrase, something that WT:EL does not even mention. We really ought to go through this text some time, and review how all these sections should be used, or even if we want so many. Mihia (talk) 15:13, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

up (5)
Alleged noun sense:


 * An upstairs room of a two story house.
 * She lives in a two-up two-down.

In the given example, is "up" really a noun meaning "an upstairs room"? Mihia (talk) 15:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Further to this, I have in fact found a few instances of e.g. "two ups and two downs" in reference to configuration of houses. However, I have never previously heard of such a usage, and I'm not sure whether it is correct English or just an occasional error that people make. Is it familiar to anyone else? Mihia (talk) 17:29, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

up to
Adjective sense:


 * maximum of.
 * Violators may face a fine of up to $300.

Putting aside for the moment the fact that the definition isn't substitutable anyway, does anyone think that this is an adjective as claimed? For comparison, we presently classify e.g. "nearly" in "nearly 3,000 exoplanet candidates" and "about" in "about three thousand men" as adverbs. Noting that "up to" also has a preposition sense "As much as; no more than", with example "You can make up to five copies". Mihia (talk) 18:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Ingrian + pron/det
I have created these entries back in February and I have just realized that hot may be a particle in this case. Other known usages are, , , , ,. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thadh (talk) 20:34, 1 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Missing from this list of derived interrogative or relative pronouns are “whosever” (or “whose ever”) and “whomever”. Also, you might say “whitherever” rather than “whereverto”, and “whencever” rather than “whereverfrom”.  However, I'm unsure whether any of these last four compound forms appear _yet_ in any dictionary of English.  Also, both “whither” and “whence” are becoming vanishingly rare in modern world Englishes, except perhaps in an consciously archaic or ironic usage.  yoyo (talk) 03:22, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Ahem. Correcting myself: both “whitherever” and “whencever” do appear - in Wiktionary!, whilst neither “whereverto” nor “whereverfrom” does.  yoyo (talk) 03:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Bill of Rights
Surely this is not "American English" but rather the title of a document that happens to be from the United States? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 04:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is an issue I keep intending to raise but forgetting. What is the correct label for a specialized term in American (US) law?  I have seen (law, US), (US, law), (US law), and I think a fourth too.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:41, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would use "US law". Mihia (talk) 15:13, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not a term only known to and used by lawyers, in a legal setting, or in legal documents, but part of general discourse in the US. Therefore, I would argue for.
 * Almost all references to the Bill of Rights refer not to the document George Washington had made up for transmission to the states, but to the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The wording may be identical, but the referent is not to an ordinary document, but to the words in the Constitution, as amended, where they have legal force. The Constitution does not anywhere contain the term bill of rights. DCDuring (talk) 23:38, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem with the label "US" is, as mentioned by Tooironic, that this normally denotes "American English", i.e. words or expressions not used by English speakers elsewhere. The same is true of other national labels. In contrast, "Bill of Rights" is not an expression unused by speakers outside the US, but rather an expression used by anyone anywhere to refer (in the relevant sense) to something that exists in America. Mihia (talk) 23:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Ahem. Bill of Rights 1689. And despite the title of the Wikipedia article, this is generally referred to as The Bill of Rights. --ColinFine (talk) 17:25, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would expect that outside the US the first use in a printed work would be of a form like the US Bill of Rights. Each use thereafter would be an anaphora, DCDuring (talk) 17:32, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, necessarily. I think that the context being US can be, and in practice often is, established without literally using the exact phrase "the US Bill of Rights". Mihia (talk) 17:58, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, sure. In a book comparing constitutional-type documents in different countries, the chapter entitled "United States" might not have the exact term. DCDuring (talk) 22:21, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I’d say it was originally Anglo-American, but is now applied to comparable documents in other parts of the world. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:34, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

herre
Can someone check the pronunciation of the Swedish word? I don't think the mid tone (¯) is used in that language. Glades12 (talk) 10:10, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks inconsistent with About_Swedish/Pronunciation. Pitch accents are marked with other symbols.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

élan
... audio seems to be wrong. --Akletos (talk) 13:21, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Nah, he's saying "un élan", that's all. I think there's a whole bunch on French audios which randomly have un/une/le/la/l' at the beginning. If anyone wants brownie points, they can look for them Tampswab (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Many Swedish nouns (in Category:Swedish terms with audio links) have an almost identical problem. Most or all of them were added by a bot that also didn't include information like the speaker's dialect (it's apparently an older woman from Gotland). Glades12 (talk) 20:04, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The sj-sound in the audio for sjunga registers as /ʃ/ to my American ear. Is that a Gotland accent and/or an old person accent?  The IPA /ɧ/ sounds like /x/ to me based on other Swedish I've heard. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 01:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely sure about that. Glades12 (talk) 10:51, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I (also American) agree that the speaker's at  sounds like my, but at  the same speaker produces an sj-sound that sounds very much like . Do they sound like the same sound to Swedish speakers? Is the difference a consequence of the different following vowels? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:09, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * They do sound slightly different to me; in particular, sounds higher pitched. Again, I'm not a real linguist, so I don't know what causes this or whether they can be considered different phonemes or anything like that. (This discussion got really off-topic.) Glades12 (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Election Day

 * The day on which general elections are held in the United States: the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

AFAIK, "Election Day" in any English-speaking country simply means a day when an election is to be held, especially an important or significant one, and especially a national election. Is there any reason why this term deserves a special "US" definition? In fact, is there any reason why it is not SoP, merely "election" + "day"? (In any event, per the comment above on "Bill of Rights", I suppose the label "US, politics" should be changed to "US politics", as this is not American English but rather a description of an American event in universal English.) Mihia (talk) 15:11, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've simplified it and removed the US-centric text. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks, I think this has exposed the SoPness of this entry, so I have listed it at RFD. Mihia (talk) 18:19, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Why not have the US definition? It is a proper noun in the US context. What are the corresponding days of elections called in Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, Ireland, etc? I agree that election day is more likely to be SoP, but I'm not sure that it would prove to be so. DCDuring (talk) 23:21, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I can partially answer my second question myself. In most parliamentary systems, there is no designated day for elections, so the definition, whatever term is used, would be different and more likely SoP. DCDuring (talk) 23:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I know this might be more of a case for WT:BP, but how are multi-word terms consisting of only nouns SoPs? From a grammatical point of view, these are nonsensical without the appropriate context and furthermore aren't any different from "regular" compounds except for being multi-word. Thadh (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I hope very much that we widely (actually I would have thought universally) agree that "noun + noun" compounds can be SoP. Otherwise we would need to include a trillion combinations such as "church roof" or "saucepan lid". Mihia (talk) 18:10, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * May your hopes not be in vain. I would not be surprised, though, to find some radical inclusionists who are not in agreement. DCDuring (talk) 18:29, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't like the idea of including "church roof" as well, but we ought to draw a better line than "multi-word". Why is "church window" more SoP than (and the over 400(!) others provided at )? Thadh (talk) 19:29, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It isn't. Logically, SoPness does not depend on whether a multi-component term is written with a space or without. coalmine is no less SoP than coal mine, for instance. However, in practice, while the SoP principle is relatively easy to apply to spaced multi-word terms (albeit there are of course debated cases), it is more problematic applying it to single words for various reasons. Mihia (talk) 20:33, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I doubt that rules for inclusion for English terms and applicable to other languages and vice versa. More outrageous is the ratchet effect by which a term being included in any language supposedly compels some kind of entry in English, with the translation table then compelling entries in all other languages (limited only by attestation). DCDuring (talk) 22:17, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Quote at helm
The quote is The kynge Ban be-gan to laugh vndir his helme., given as "Merlin". The only hits I get are for Merlin Or the Early History of King Arthur: A Prose Romance (about 1450-1460) from the Early English Text Society, published in the 1860s. I'm assuming the text in question is , but not that sure. Best to check before making any changes Tampswab (talk) 15:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

see for yourself
We have no entry for see for yourself (or see for oneself), which I suspect would be challenged as SOP, but which I also think has an idiomatic sense of resolving disbelief. I figured I'd bring the question here in advance of making an entry. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:22, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * A couple of lemmings have it. DCDuring (talk) 23:16, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll take that as an endorsement. bd2412 T 17:33, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * And I'll take your taking it as such as an endorsement of the lemming principle. DCDuring (talk) 02:00, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've always said that we should strive to be at least as comprehensive as all the other dictionaries out there put together. Of course, I assume that you wouldn't have mentioned the lemmings at all if you didn't think it was significant to the includability of the phrase. bd2412 T 21:26, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We basically agree. I'd go a bit farther and argue that a common collocation that does not appear in any other lexical reference deserves hard scrutiny as to its inclusion. DCDuring (talk) 00:01, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't adopt the limitations and oversights of other dictionaries as our own. For example, I recently created fuck around and find out, which I don't believe can be found in any other dictionary, save Urban Dictionary. bd2412 T 00:58, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Audio at respite
The speaker clearly is saying something like [ɹəˈspaɪt] (accent on 2nd syllable, no stress, not even secondary, on 1st) while the IPA that is given (apart from /ˈɹɛspɪt/) reads /ˈɹɛˌspaɪt/; is this pronounciation possible at all? Should what is said be added as an alternative or replace the latter? --Akletos (talk) 06:39, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The New Oxford American Dictionary app on my computer gives "ˈrɛspət, riˈspaɪt", so it would seem to be quite possible, if we assume a bit of pre-accented-syllable reduction of the first vowel. Whether that's what we actually have here is another matter. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:27, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I definitely hear the accent on the second syllable. To my ears the IPA is incorrect, but the audio quality is pretty muddy so perhaps the recording should be replaced regardless. My English is from the US but I always thought it was [ɹəˈspaɪt], but maybe that's just because that's how it's spelled. --RDBury (talk) 19:07, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Meaning 5 is marked as "(law)". I don't believe it is restricted to legal contexts at all, and would like to remove the note. Comments? --ColinFine (talk) 17:34, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you have a sighting of that sense in the wild? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:35, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree. No reason at all for that label IMO. Mihia (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of 'em, . Here's one chosen arbitrarily from a search of "where there is" in the iWeb corpus: Where there is variation in the amount of capital invested during the reporting period the indexation process results in a degree of extrapolation due to the assumption that you were able to achieve your per annum return on a fixed sum of money invested for the entire reporting period. (https://help.sharesight.com/uk/interpreting-the-return-index-graph/). Do I need to cite it, or can I leave the existing one there and simply remove "(Law)"? --ColinFine (talk) 22:26, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Remove it. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:18, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. --ColinFine (talk) 11:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We could use non-legalistic usage examples. Would fools rush in where angels fear to tread suffice? Or is it too much like a metaphorical interpretation of another sense? DCDuring (talk) 02:04, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just do a Google search for "a situation where" and you will see this is a very common usage.

so
Does anyone believe that any/many of the alleged interjections at so are actually interjections? To me, some at least seem more like conjunctions. Mihia (talk) 19:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I do, at least for some, but others are questionable at best. Specifically: 1 & 2 interjections. 3 the second example is an interjection, the first a conjunction. 4 conjunction. 5 adverb; I'd call it a modal adverb except those aren't supposed to exist in English. 6, I'd need an example to be sure, but judging from the meaning given I'd say interjection. Interjections (imo) often double as conjunctions, or at least carry some meaning as conjunctions. For example "Yes" may indicate agreement with a previous sentence, but it can still stand by itself as an interjection. --RDBury (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Belated thanks for your reply. I think I do largely agree with you, and I have made one or two changes accordingly, but I wonder whether you might be able to elaborate a little on why you think the old #5, now #3, as follows, is an adverb and not a conjunction:
 * What are you doing? / So I'm just fixing this shelf.
 * What time does the train leave? / So it leaves at 10 o'clock.
 * Mihia (talk) 20:06, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Wow this is frustrating; I can't remember what I was thinking nor of an circumstance where I'd use 'so' as a filler word to start the answer to a question. Obviously, I thought I knew what I talking about at the time, but I either misread it then, or the connection I made at the time is gone now. At this point I'm going to say just ignore that part of my earlier answer; meanwhile I'll search some other dictionaries to see if I can find something close to this meaning and maybe it will come to me. --RDBury (talk) 22:26, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this usage is a relatively new phenomenon, at least in my experience. I don't know what part of world you are in, but where I am in the UK, it has become fairly common over, let's say, the past decade. It is extremely irritating, and there has been some comment to that effect in the media too. Mihia (talk) 22:37, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this usage is a relatively new phenomenon, at least in my experience. I don't know what part of world you are in, but where I am in the UK, it has become fairly common over, let's say, the past decade. It is extremely irritating, and there has been some comment to that effect in the media too. Mihia (talk) 22:37, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

sprinkling
Some words similar to sprinkling are used for both a small quantity and "number", so that either uncountable or plural nouns follow, (There was a sprinkling of women in the audience, unlike for example bit. How should it be reflected in entries? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:09, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I added "a scattering" which probably covers it; smattering might work as well.--RDBury (talk) 18:35, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

what's up
Permalink to referenced version: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=what%27s_up&oldid=61043181

Do we have too many separate senses here? For example, is sense #4 really distinct from both #1 and #2? Because some of these have an AmE flavour (to me), I may not be the best to judge. Mihia (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe it could be subsumed into a broader #1 or #2. But "how can I help you" is worth mentioning somewhere. Maybe #1 doesn't have to have negative connotations? Ultimateria (talk) 03:55, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd leave it as is. They all might get different translations into a foreign language, and we need to keep in mind that English learners will probably be the people who will read this entry the most. In German:
 * Was ist los?
 * Was gibt's?
 * Wie geht's?
 * Was brauchst du?
 * --RDBury (talk) 18:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you (or anyone else) sure that "What's up?" really means "How can I help you?"? I don't recognise this meaning separately. In the present usex for #4, "Can I ask you something? – Sure, what's up?", the phrase "what's up?" to me means something like "what is of concern (to you)?", i.e. essentially the same as #1. Yes, it may be understood circumstantially that the speaker is offering to help, but I can't see "what's up" as actually meaning this. Mihia (talk) 20:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I see how the usex at 4 looks like a minor sense extension of 1. Maybe it's the American flavor you mention, but it feels distinct to me. Like a student can raise their hand in class and the teacher will come over and say "what's up" (in a falling tone, like a statement) with the assumption not that something is "the matter"/"the problem"/"wrong" as 1 explicitly says. It's not asking "what's wrong" with an implied "how can I help", it's stating "you have my attention". This could be too abstract to even mention in our entry. Can someone back me up if this makes any sense? Ultimateria (talk) 06:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I have raised this at Requests_for_verification/English. Mihia (talk) 10:20, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

'Gripe' audio is incorrect
The audio file for the US English "gripe" is incorrect. It voices /ɡɹɪp/ as in "grip" and "grippe", not /ɡɹʌɪp/ as it should to reflect that "gripe" rhymes with "wipe" and "tripe".
 * I'm not sure what you're what you're listening to, but the audio at gripe sounds to my (Southern California) ear like it's missing the very sound you say it has too much of- more like /gra:p/. That's typical of Southern-influenced dialects in the Midwest as well as much of the South. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:52, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, to me it sounds like with  before a voiceless consonant (so-called "Canadian" raising of  to  being widespread in the U.S. as well). I definitely don't hear either  or a Southern . —Mahāgaja · talk 18:05, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It sounds mostly normal to me. Like Mahagaja, I hear /ɡɹʌɪp/ (or [ɡɹəɪp]], if you prefer. I've always transcribed it with /ʌɪ/, but whatever). I will say, the /ɪ/ sounds a tad shortened, though. I can see how it might be heard by someone as having a monophthong. Tharthan (talk) 00:41, 7 November 2020 (UTC)


 * To me, it sounds intermediate between "grape" and "gripe" (that is, between the canonical way those words would be pronounced, rhyming with tape and type). If someone were to record a clearly better audio file we could just sub it in not have to weigh whether the current audio is technically OK or not... - -sche (discuss) 21:54, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * America has different accents and the speaker's pronunciation seems to fall within the normal range. In other words it's not exactly the way I would pronounce it but I don't have any problems recognizing it either. A strong Southern accent would be different enough to merit a different IPA spelling, but in this case the IPA still matches.
 * If it actually differs enough from the broad /ɡɹaɪp/ IPA transcription to warrant a narrow transcription, then we probably ought to include one. But, again, I hear /ɡɹʌɪp/ (more or less, anyway), which is pretty usual in North America. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why we have the general transcription as /ɡɹaɪp/ anyway. At least nowadays, that's a more regional pronunciation than /ɡɹʌɪp/ is. But I don't care too much about that, so whatever. Tharthan (talk) 18:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Faroese vita conjugation
A comment by User:Ooswesthoesbes on Talk:vita points out a problem on vita: the string &amp;#151; appears in the conjugation table. This comes from fo-conj-vita. Decimal 151 is an unprintable control character in Unicode and ISO 8859-1. U+0151 (hex) is ő. Does anybody know what was meant here? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:07, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I figured it out. It's the Windows encoding of em dash.  I will change the template on the assumption that was what was meant. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:22, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you! --Ooswesthoesbes (talk) 07:07, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

abbrs, rptd
There's a quote given at article from ''Stat. 33 Geo. III''. What's that supposed to mean? Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 11:50, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it means "Statute 33 of King George III". —Mahāgaja · talk 12:22, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Right. When was it published? Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 12:37, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Apparently 33rd year of the reign of George III, 1793 according to Wikisource. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:53, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, added that to the entry. Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 18:55, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Be more careful. You got the king wrong (III, not II), got the quote wrong (missed "liable to"), got the author wrong (not by the king himself), and misspelled statute.  Once the abbreviation is expanded it is not a long journey to the actual text. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:39, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Deliberate mistakes, Vox, wanting to encourage wiki spirit. For correcting it, consider yourself the winner of 20 brownie points. Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 19:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

cat-burgle
Currently has no citations. Tharthan (talk) 22:20, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, pretty sure it's not a word. --RDBury (talk) 17:54, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm, a quick search suggests that it's uncommon, but also in evidence as a verb: . ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:04, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a backformed verb from the noun "cat-burglar". You could show from google books that there is some attestation, but it still would not strike most native speakers as a real word. In any language, any native speaker can make up a word, but getting them accepted is another thing.
 * For purposes of Wiktionary, we care primarily about whether a term as attestable -- not about whether it's "real"" or "accepted", nor how it's derived. Such details are relevant to include in the entry, but they are largely irrelevant when it comes to whether we include an entry for the term.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:19, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Then it risks becoming a dictionary of low-quality forms.
 * We are a dictionary of many things, including many, many words that people would consider "low-quality". If it's used, then we record it, and we record details about it to help people use it in the correct context.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:22, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Senses of
nail biter (plural nail biters)
 * 2. A nervous or uncomfortable situation.
 * 3. An engaging or exciting cliffhanger.

I have the impression that to call an unresolved situation a cliffhanger already implies that it is engaging or exciting, so then the definition is pleonastic for just “a cliffhanger”. But is really a synonym for ? I further think that to call a cliffhanger a “nail biter” requires that the uncertainty of the unresolved situation is not merely one of suspense and eager anticipation, but more specifically one that induces anxiety. If I am correct, sense 3 is merely a special case of sense 2. The usex for sense 2, It was a real nail biter waiting for the test results, is actually also an example for sense 3. --Lambiam 23:02, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with your analysis; I don't think they're synonyms. *The first book in the trilogy ended on a nail biter doesn't sound right. Ultimateria (talk) 03:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and rephrased & merged the definitions, and threw in "suspense" to be on the safe side. The example with the trilogy is not very idiomatic, but it's still correct and conveys the intended meaning. --RDBury (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

go to
I think all senses of this verb other than the archaic intransitive uses are SOP and should be removed or merged into go. Thoughts? Benwing2 (talk) 23:08, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I should add, the past participle listed as either gone to or been to is interesting but not exclusive to this usage, cf. "going/went/gone/been skiing". Benwing2 (talk) 23:13, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you are wrong.
 * Let's take one usage as an example: go to prison
 * There are two interpretations which I will distinguish by putting them in sentences:
 * I went to prison to see my borther-in-law.
 * I went to prison for three years for larceny.
 * The first is covered by some of the "movement" senses.
 * The second would appear to be covered by the "attend" sense. Unfortunately that definition is not substitutable in any of the usage examples. Note that all of the usage examples would be perfectly appropriate and some (reworded) sense of go to such as the "attend school definitinn. I do not believe that any substitutable definition of go that encompasses the "attend" usages is possible. OTOH, "attend" is a perfectly substitutable definition for go to in those usage examples. Adding a label "with to" still does not make the definition unambiguously substitutable: Is to supposed to be added to attend?
 * I believe similar and better arguments can be made about all the other definitions.
 * In addition, trying to include such definitions in a PoS section as long as that of the verb go makes the section very long and is likely to make the definitions hard to understand. I also would draw your attention to how other dictionaries treat go to. DCDuring (talk) 05:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

shuck and jive
To me this term has racist overtones but I see nothing of this mentioned in the entry. Benwing2 (talk) 23:18, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It depends on whether you voted for Obama, see . It has an African-American origin so it's wasn't always considered racist, and, as is often the case with this kind of thing, it may depend on who is using the phrase. You're right that it should have some kind of warning label though. --RDBury (talk) 17:17, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added offensive & derogatory labels, which is perhaps overkill. I don't know how to be more specific though; do we have a label for "now may be considered offensive depending on your race and party affiliation"? --RDBury (talk) 17:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

eat shit from Family Guy
There's a quote at eat shit stating "Kelly Clarkson had bronchitis and had to cancel. I had to eat shit and call Céline". Family Guy is surely extensively transcribed, being super popular and nerdy and all. Not being able to find this quote, I really wanna just delete it, assuming it's wrong. Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 00:41, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The original version only attributed the quote to Kathy Griffin. added Family Guy. DTLHS (talk) 01:05, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't remember this particular entry but I imagine I was trying to fill out an incomplete quotation. Could it be a real-world Kathy Griffin with no connection to Family Guy? Or just fakery? Equinox ◑ 18:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

a /an/
Before drpping an /h/ the unstressed indefinite article is /an/, or /aʔ/, isn't it? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:16, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As the entry states, (/æn/, not /an/) is generally used before vowel sounds, which is what you get with English /h/-dropping. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 17:25, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * is a word that takes either a or an depending on the speaker's accent. "A(n) historical take on the evolving use of a/an". Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:22, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-West_Germanic/lort
The French descendant lourd either doesn't have an entry, or the entry for a French word that we have spelt lourd claims a different etymology.

The claimed Middle English descendant, , also lacks an entry.

Even the French descendant, lourche, from whence English lurch, lacks an entry. Tharthan (talk) 16:07, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The only R:fr:NDE mentions is derived from }; it doesn't mention a  at all. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:25, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Lots of words don't have entries. See lort, lord, lǒurd, and Lurch, for starters. -- 23:07, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

goded out
(Context is that the woman filed for divorce saying her husband had abused her and forced her to have too much sex.) What does "goded" mean? Is it a typo for something, and if so, what? - -sche (discuss) 21:48, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 2016, Robin C. Sager, Marital Cruelty in Antebellum America, LSU Press (ISBN 9780807163115), page 73:
 * He recalled how she had been “unable to turn herself or sit up in bed” due to being “completely goded out with sexual intercourse.” Based upon his observations of her body, he felt as if he could conclusively tell the court that her condition directly stemmed from "too much intercourse."


 * goaded out, surely. Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 22:06, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * While homophone, the usual meaning of “to goad someone out” (from a hiding place?) does not make an abundance of sense. The context requires something in the line of “exhausted, sapped, wasted”. These are reportedly the words of a physician testifying in court, so this can hardly be a slang term. The quote is sourced to Eliza Wyman v. William Wyman (1849), MIL-MC. Perhaps, if found, this will offer some form of resolution. --Lambiam 23:29, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Gode is an obsolete variant of goad, originally to prod with a sharp stick. Perhaps the stick is a metaphor for a penis.  Otherwise it doesn't make sense to me.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:59, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Till when did this variant survive in English? The quoted use is from 1849. --Lambiam 07:23, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The spelling was called obsolete by the original OED volume published in 1901. They don't have any uses of that spelling from as late as the 19th century.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 07:30, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I can't see how "goad" makes any sense at all here. My first thought was something like "grossed out" (cf. "grody") but that doesn't quite fit either! Equinox ◑ 22:00, 10 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I looked through all the Books hits for "goaded out with" to see if it ever had a sense like this, but they all refer to someone being "goaded [i.e. prodded] out of [somewhere] with [something]". I do see a [//twitter.com/APHurd/status/1325722173659631616 tweet] where "a 57-year-old dad was shot dead on his doorstep by police [...] neighbours tell me he was ‘goaded’ out with a pellet gun by people illegally drinking", which I think is still the "prod" sense(?). The EDD does not have anything relevant for either "goad" or "gode" AFAICT (though they do have citations where gode = goed). I considered the possibility that "goded out with" is some type of error for "gutted out with", but that's a rare and awkward phrase. - -sche (discuss) 12:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * What does "MIL-MC" stand for? DTLHS (talk) 00:38, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Noun: little vs. a little
What is the best approach to differentiate the nominal meaning of little from a little? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:07, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We do have a separate entry for a little, which is thus clearly differentiated from little. If you mean something else, please clarify. DCDuring (talk) 22:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to the noun meaning in a little? --Backinstadiums (talk) 00:02, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you clarify what you meant in your initial question by nominal meaning? Which meaning(s) in which entry/ies in which PoS(es)? For that matter what meaning of nominal? DCDuring (talk) 17:37, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In this context it surely means “functioning as a noun”. We only have as an adverb or determiner. In the sentence “a little goes a long way”, “little” is a noun. The issue is, I think, the difference in meaning between, e.g., ”she gave her son little to help him out” and ”she gave her son a little to help him out”. Are these really properly covered by the same sense? At the very least, a usage note seems in order.  --Lambiam 20:36, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Why unlike bit, can't little be used in *"a little of water spilled"? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Etymologically bit is a noun, whereas little is an adjective. That history seems to carry over into the grammatical microstructure and collocations that such terms have, even when they play a determinative role. DCDuring (talk) 17:19, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * worth mentioning too at the very least in a usage note ? a little of THE water spilled is fine--Backinstadiums (talk) 17:26, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Attempting to verbalize the phenomenon seems like a complete waste of time and screenspace. Perhaps usage examples, placed under the appropriate parts of speech would help a little. But this is the kind of thing that one learns unconsciously, statistically by listening to a great deal of native speaker speech. DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems a simple grammar rule:

We use OF after (a) little/few before a pronoun or determiner, and (a) little with singular (usually uncountable) words. --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * And that could go in [[of]], [[little]]/[[few]], and [[a little]]. Similar rules could probably be found for other determiners. I believe in the benefit of unconscious language learning for people who actually want to use a language. Rules, especially those of such limited application, probably interfere with efficient unconscious learning. DCDuring (talk) 22:28, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

recent as noun
While doing some localization work I noticed that the recent calls tab on the iPhone is labeled as "Recents", turning "recent" into a noun. A search for "recents" on Google Books mostly surfaces Apple related material, so I was wondering if they "coined" this, or if it is used colloquially anywhere else? – Jberkel 10:00, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This book from 1657 uses "the Recents" in juxtaposition with "the Ancients", so among coinages it is hardly one of the more recents. But the noun sense of "recently accessed item" may be due to Apple. --Lambiam 10:42, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Do we really need to find and attest all cases of adjectives being used as nouns when there is no change in the semantics? DCDuring (talk) 23:04, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The 1657 quote is actually "the more Recents", so it's more used like an adjective there. I find it interesting that this is isolated to one company–their use of it obviously hasn't caught on. – Jberkel 17:08, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Template:cite-meta
Please change this page to this version to provide support for Template:cite-thesis. Thanks. --沈澄心✉ 13:38, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe better ask at BP, or GP. – Jberkel 22:29, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ —Suzukaze-c (talk) 05:24, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Is "ideophone" really a part of speech?
See wah-wah and Category:English_ideophones. They may be ideophones but isn't the part of speech still "interjection"? Equinox ◑ 21:58, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Analysis on the Ideographic Characteristics of Some English Morphemes --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:57, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not obvious (to me) what that book has to do with this topic. Do you have a specific passage in mind? --RDBury (talk) 16:12, 12 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree and went ahead and updated the section titles, but not the labels. The ought to be an existing category for these things, imitative? onomatopoeic? --RDBury (talk) 16:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * PS. I updated the labels to put them in Category:English onomatopoeias. It's not helpful to have categories with only a few entries; we might as well have a category of words imitative of musical instruments in the brass section. (That would also include oom-pah, by the way.) --RDBury (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Ideophones are probably not a coherent part of speech in English. It depends on the language under consideration.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Wikipedia article mentions specifically Japanese, Korean, Xhosa and Zulu as languages where they do appear. I gather that there is a difference between this and Onomatopoeia but I don't think it's common enough in English to merit a separate category. In Japanese at least, I think the distinction is that the word takes on a broader meaning that just the sound being imitated, similar to using "woof-woof" as a synonym for "dog". Saying something like "I see a woof-woof," sounds like baby-talk in English, but there's no reason that this type of construction might not be retained in other languages. --RDBury (talk) 17:00, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

canon
I suspect sense 8 of etymology 1 (A member of a cathedral chapter; one who possesses a prebend in a cathedral or collegiate church) is the same as sense 1 of etymology 2 (A clergy member serving a cathedral or collegiate church). I think etymology 2 is the correct place, but it may need an RFD to remove it from etymology 1.

Incidentally, canon does pop up in British place names, like, , ; these appear to originate from sense 2 of etymology 2. DonnanZ (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

nickname
These definitions could really use a rewrite, especially the use of archaic/dialectal "byname" in #2. #1 seems overly broad, too, like it might encompass #2. Ultimateria (talk) 16:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * #1 seemed ok, so I just tweaked it a bit. #2 seemed like a lost cause so I removed it. But I added in a new #2 for when the nickname is based on the real name. I also added examples for each def. Finally, nothing to do with the definition, but I thought it would be useful to include a note about the (first name) "(nickname)" (last name) syntax that's commonly used. --RDBury (talk) 17:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

hon and honey
I think our definition of as "a term of affection" is too narrow. I've been called by a stranger. I think this is mainly a Southern American use. Can somebody who speaks Southern American fix or clarify? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:05, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just because you can call a stranger hon doesn't mean it's not affectionate. —Mahāgaja · talk 23:21, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. @Vox Sciurorum: If an elderly woman refers to someone who she doesn't know as dearie, does that make the term not affectionate? Tharthan (talk) 01:08, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "Affectionate" seems a bit too narrow to describe those usages, but perhaps the difference is best analyzed culturally and not linguistically. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:29, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We give one of the senses of as:   I think that it indeed does not imply affection, any more than beginning a letter with “Dear Mr. Fuzzlewuzz” does. Methinks this may also apply to hon as a form of address.  --Lambiam 15:01, 13 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Not in the UK as far as I know. In my experience you might be called "love" or "duckie" by a friendly (female) shopkeeper, but "hon(ey)" is between spouses or lovers. Equinox ◑ 01:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I am inclined to agree with Lambiam. I concede quite a few terms can be used this way (...our entry on sweetie seems very incomplete in this regard), but the fact that it can be used of a stranger as a friendly address in some dialects and not, if Equinox is right, in others seems like exactly the sort of thing we cover with dialect labels, especially when the definition is already partly a non-gloss explanatory one to begin with. How's this? Or we could condense that into e.g. "honey, sweetheart, an affectionate or friendly term of address"? - -sche (discuss) 05:29, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Unrelatedly, does consistently refer to Southern US? I would have assumed it was a synonym of . That's definitely deserving of an entry, because South and Southern, as adjectives, are usually interchangeable.__Gamren (talk) 02:03, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * My use was informal, but we do have an entry at . See also .  As the labels there say, the restricted use is part of American English.  Arizona and Los Angeles are not part of the South (capitalized); they belong to the Southwest.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:43, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't know where/if this should be included, but as a common form of address is considered to have strong identification as a Baltimore regionalism.

Jeddah pronunciation
I don't know where to put an rfp template on an Arabic page. Could somebody add the IPA pronunciation to and to its Arabic origin (on the page )? I was watching Al Jazeera English and the anchor said the name oddly, probably using the Arabic pronunciation. There were clearly two d sounds. I'd say only one in English. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:49, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It’s a geminate of course, there is no room for oddity. There is also no room for IPA pronunciations on the Arabic page, else those who seek the meanings do not see the actual content between all the pronunciation sections. You can predict the Arabic pronunciation by the vocalized script knowing just a wee bit of and by the transcription perhaps even without knowing anything. It’s 1 to 1. Fay Freak (talk) 16:33, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

förskollärare
Is this Swedish term really pronounced as with an unwritten -e-? Glades12 (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Not according to the audio at Svensk ordbok. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:32, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It sounds as though the "e" is pronounced. You can compare with the audio for 🇨🇬 in DDO which sounds quite different to me. I wonder if Danes and Swedes can understand each other. DonnanZ (talk) 20:10, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sometimes we can't. Glades12 (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the question was about the doubled /lɛ/ in /ˌføːrskuːlɛˈlɛːrarɛ/. I don't hear it.  And I don't hear the vowel as /ɛ/ but that could be because my ears aren't calibrated for Swedish.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 21:54, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

ウイルス

 * Is 「ウイルス」, 「ビールス」, or 「バイラス」 the more common form? If it is actually 「ウイルス」, that's surprising, given that Japanese lost its native [ɰi] sound hundreds of years ago. Tharthan (talk) 18:54, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It’s ウイルス, which is from Latin. Wi is firmly established in borrowings, but ウイルス is not wirusu but uirusu. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 23:05, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

hairball
What does this word mean when it is used to denote a person? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk)
 * Wasn't this from one of Belker's favorite lines in Hill Street Blues? I'm guessing it's a made-up variation of scumball. Any evidence that entered the language in general? --RDBury (talk) 08:04, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah I saw plenty of uses on Google Books, for instance, "a bunch of hairballs", et al. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 09:27, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That seems to be a usage/meaning I'm not familiar with. --RDBury (talk) 12:32, 13 November 2020 (UTC)


 * In most of these uses it refers to protesters (environmental or anti-war activists), presumably in reference to the hippie hair style for young males developed in the second half of the sixties. --Lambiam 14:50, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

The word in the feminine plural
I see in the declension table that all the forms are constructed as حَضْرَة + an enclitic pronoun. But there's one form missing – feminine plural. I'm not a native speaker of any dialect. But shouldn't it be possible to say حَضْرَتُكُنَّ? —&#x2060;This unsigned comment was added by Zhnka (talk • contribs)&#x20;at 07:13, 13 November 2020 (UTC).

Quotations of the noun microphone
All quotations of the English noun microphone are within the noun phrase garden of microphones. Why is this? If garden of microphones is such an idiomatic noun phrase, shouldn't an entry with that name be created and the quotations moved there? Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 16:55, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Garden of microphones is just a metaphor, not worth an entry and not as common as the page makes it appear. I moved most of the quotations to Citations:microphone and added a more typical use.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:11, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The quotations were added at Special:Diff/7200704 in 2009 by a now-retired editor. I dispute the specification of garden as the collective noun.  I would say sea of microphones.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:15, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The usage note should be reviewed then. Equinox ◑ 09:26, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think wall of microphones is at least as common in this sense (that of emphasizing their multitudinosity, not even counting uses as a method used by sound engineers for recording a stereo signal) as garden of microphones. --Lambiam 17:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I added citations for literal and figurative uses of wall of microphones and updated the usage note. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 18:07, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

done in AAVE
John McWhorter describes the auxiliary verb sense of in AAVE as being more emphatic than the standard equivalent, and specifically as describing something counterexpectational. I'd rather not make the change myself without speaking the dialect or having any references to cite. Could somebody make the appropriate edits? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:01, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you give us an idea of what you have in mind? Maybe we can refine it here in the discussion. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 09:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with the emphatic aspect, but I'm not sure about "counterexpectational". On a random Twitter search I found "We done saw Hilary win the popular vote in 2016 and it didn't mean ish!" She was expected to win the popular vote, but the loss of the election was unexpected to many. But maybe it's just emphatic here. Ultimateria (talk) 18:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * (Inspired by a song a few years back called "".) If I say "she left" maybe she went out to the store.  If I say "she done gone" there's an implied "...and I had no idea that she would get mad and move out just because she caught me in bed with her best friend."  I had a vague sense that it was emphatic, but according to John McWhorter on the Lexicon Valley podcast it's used more specifically to call attention to something unexpected.  He says the same thing about sentence-final .  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:01, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Philosophical sense of phantasia
Anyone here familiar with philosophy? Sense 2 of (written by me) needs to be reviewed. — SGconlaw (talk) 21:04, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. I admit, though, that I've never seen it as "phantasia", but usually as "phantasm". I added a slightly expanded definition to and added the word "phantasm" to your definition. As far as I can tell, the two aren't used any differently, although in the first citation you added it doesn't seem to mean quite the same thing as the others. It's common for different philosophers to use the same word in slightly different ways, however, so it's probably good enough for now, unless you want to create a separate definition and find more cites. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:24, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * great, thank you. I think I’ll leave it as it is for now; I was actually working on which lists phantasia as a dated variant, then I started coming across quotations using phantasia with different senses. Do you think the philosophical sense should be labelled “rare”? — SGconlaw (talk) 05:08, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm majoring in philosophy, so I know what things mean, but I don't know enough that I can judge exactly how common a specific variant of a word is. It's certainly much less common than phantasm, but it's possible it's used all the time when discussing the work of particular Medieval philosophers. So I'd just leave it without a label, or maybe indicate that phantasm is a more common synonym. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I added "(more commonly)" before phantasm. — SGconlaw (talk) 18:28, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that could be misunderstood as "more commonly means phantasm", by contrast with the first part of the definition. I looked it up to get a sense of how common it is relative to phantasm and discovered that its meaning shifted over time. So the definition was accurate for most of the citations you had, but earlier philosophers used the term a bit differently. I've expanded the definition to account for this. Splitting it into a couple defs or subdefs would probably be best, so maybe I'll revisit it sometime. Our philosophy coverage is a bit weak in general; I just wish I had more time to contribute.... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:42, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, great. I’m afraid philosophy is a big mystery to me. I can hardly make sense of the passages in the works quoted. — SGconlaw (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Haha, I often still feel the same way! Thanks for adding the definition...it gave me some extra incentive to actually add some philosophy content. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:28, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Re 'palowala' submission
Hi there, I was just informed the word is simply a crude replication of the sound of French-Creole to the Guyanese ear. That's how it originated, at least according to the Guyanese elders in my group. --

lawd hammercy
Lawd hammercy Should this interjection be added? (with general loss of final /v/ as in luh) --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:22, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. Add three quotations as well using quote-book and these sources on Google Books. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 09:40, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Several spellings appear with have as a, a', or even a- though. --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:52, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Find out which one is the most common form. Use that as the main form. Mention the others as alternative forms. -- Dentonius :::(my politics | talk) 11:01, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * What about a- for the auxiliary have as is -a in coulda? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:02, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , don't worry about that. Work with what you have. Somebody else will come along and make it perfect later :-) Create lawd hammercy. Supply your quotes (if you can). It's going to be great. I hope that helps. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 13:21, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The main entry should presumably be Lord have mercy; the only variant of that as an exclamation we currently have seems to be . Lord have mercy should also have an &lit line corresponding in meaning to Kyrie eleison (which really needs an English entry!). —Mahāgaja · talk 13:56, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

liquidate
Just dated a quote at liquidate, but I'm assuming the format is incorrect (hey, how should I know how to cite legal cases?) Do we have a quote template for them? or or whatever? Anyway, feel free to fix it Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 10:39, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) * 1851,Hargroves v. Cooke, 15th Georgia Reports 321
 * I’d say just use . No need to create templates for every conceivable type of text. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:33, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

“masthead” as a group of people
A recent piece in the “Intelligencer” section of the New York website about internal discussion at The New York Times mentions ‘the editorial cabal atop the newsroom known as “the masthead”’. None of the current senses we have for fits  this use of the term. Is it particular to the lingo of people working at the NYT, or is it more widespread? --Lambiam 10:40, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you type "define masthead" in Google, it gives this: 'the title of a newspaper or magazine at the head of the first or editorial page. / "the paper lists forty smart writers on its masthead" / (North American) the listed details in a newspaper or magazine referring to ownership, editorial staff, advertising rates, etc.' . -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 10:47, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems like definition 2 (


 * I agree; "A list of a newspaper or other periodical's main staff, ..." covers this. Maybe add "... or the people on this list"? --RDBury (talk) 12:11, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, a group of people is not a list, and certainly not a list of advertizing rates etc. I wonder if the cabal from the Intelligencer piece coincides with the editorial staff listed by name on the NYT masthead. My question is more, though, whether this use is NYT-specific or more widespread. --Lambiam 19:09, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

might be going to
Similarly to might can/could, is might be going to also an example of an ungrammatical double/stacked modal? This might be going to be being claimed. --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:22, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say so. The reason double modals like "might could" are nonstandard is that "could" is a finite form, not an infinitive, and modals like "might" are supposed to be followed by an infinitive (without to), so "might could" is nonstandard, but "might be able to" is standard. Since "be going to" is an infinitive, "might be going to" is acceptable in standard English. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:51, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

sure of
We have sure of oneself but it seems to me that this is a special case of being sure of (something). One can be "sure of the the fact that ..." which is a roundabout, but still grammatical, way of saying "sure that ...". But if the fact in question is known it's better to just say "sure of it/that". You can be sure of a person other than yourself: "I'm sure of you" meaning I have confidence in you (your ability, friendship, faithfulness, etc.) Or you can be sure of a thing: "I'm sure of Heaven" (that it exists, that I will go there, etc.). The meaning isn't always clear to me but it used and we don't seem to cover it under sure. I'm thinking either new entry, redirect "sure of oneself" or add new definitions to "sure". --RDBury (talk) 14:27, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

make sure ⇒ (takes a clause as object) to make certain; ensure [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/make-sure 2. (followed by of) to establish or confirm power or possession (over)]

make certain: I just want to make certain that our meeting is still on for tomorrow morning.

--Backinstadiums (talk) 16:10, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I have no clue what you're trying to get at with this. --RDBury (talk) 20:55, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Me neither.
 * Def. 2 of sure includes as usage examples two uses with of, including one of sure of himself. Two dictionaries (MWOnline and Oxford/Lexico) have entries for sure of oneself. Oxford/Lexico also has a definition at sure "(sure of) Having a certain prospect or confident anticipation of." I think we need [[sure of oneself]] and could possibly benefit from comparing our 5 definitions (two labelled obsolete) at [[sure]] with Oxford/Lexico's single sense with 5 subsenses (none obsolete). DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

CambGEL, page 543, We review here a range of constructions with PP complements. For each of the prepositions concerned we give a few examples of AdjPs containing a complement, followed by a sample of adjectives that license complements headed by this preposition. In the lists of adjectives we type capitalize those where (for a given sense of the adjective) the complement is wholly or virtually obligatory in non-attributive constructions (We do not provide a list for against, but there is one adjective that selects complements headed by this preposition: No security system is PROOF against the truly professional burglar). [17] Adj. + of: sure OF HIS FACTS.

page 1326 Coordination of unlike categories In the great majority of cases, coordinates belong to the same syntactic category, but a difference of category is generally tolerated where there is likeness of function. This section surveys the main functions allowing coordinations of this kind. (b) Other complements, including subject. Where a head element can take different categories as complement (without a change in sense), unlike coordinations are generally possible. In [15 ic] He was sure [OF HIMSELF and WHERE HE WAS GOING], the head is an adjective (sure) (Strictly speaking there is indeterminacy as to whether the coordination is complement of sure (Strictly speaking there is indeterminacy as to whether the coordination is complement of sure (with the form PP + clause) or of of (with the form NP + clause), for the non-coordinative version could be either he was sure where he was going or He was sure of where he was going)

Practical English Grammar Certain/sure of + -ing are used to refer to the feelings of the person one is talking about. ''Before the game she felt certain of winning, but after a few minutes she realised it wasn't going to be so easy. You seem very sure of passing the exam''. Certain/sure + infinitive refer to the speaker's or writer's own feelings. ''The repairs are certain to cost more than you think. Kroftova's sure to win - the other girl hasn't got a chance. He is sure to succeed'' means 'I am sure that he will succeed'. I'm not sure {of his method -how he does it} (More natural than I'm not sure of how he does it.) In rare instances the English adjective takes an object without any preposition, expressed by mere juxtaposition, e. g. worth (It is worth while). Under this type of object JESPERSEN includes the object after like, near, next (cf. This is quite like him, Wear your underwear next [Tο] your skin, I live near the faculty). However, these expressions are generally felt as prepositions. Moreover, near and next are sometimes followed by the preposition to.

Quirk's Comprehensive, page 881

The pro-form not is occasionally used with the verbs say and tell, but the use of the positive pro-form so is much more frequent with such verbs of saying. With other verbs and adjectives, such as know and (be) sure, neither of these forms can normally be used, but the whole that-clause can be ellipted (I know; I am sure; cf 12.65), or else the pronoun it can be used: I know it (AmE) ; I am sure of it. For other examples of ellipsis in place of so (eg: Who says? I agree) cf 12.65


 * compare SURE: https://www.oed.com/oed2/00243226 ; CERTAIN: https://www.oed.com/oed2/00035941

--Backinstadiums (talk) 22:44, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you think these mean we should or should not have an entry for sure of? To me they are inconclusive. We could easily include labels and usage examples at [[sure]]. DCDuring (talk) 16:44, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm confused by this as well. In any case, since one of the main goals is to keep the entries readable, we should probably skip the grammatical jargon and just stick to definitions. --RDBury (talk) 22:30, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

(Idiom) be sure or make sure "to take care (to be or do as specified)": [be + ~ + to + verb] Be sure to set your alarm clock. [make + ~ + (that) clause] Could you make sure (that) everything is OK with our checking account? https://www.wordreference.com/definition/sure --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:24, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I added two meanings to make sure (to be more precise I added one and split one), and did some other cleanups. Then I moved "sure of oneself" to sure of, keeping the existing meaning by adding a label, and adding three new definition with examples. The entire kit and caboodle might easily be merged into sure, but I think this is good enough for the time being. --RDBury (talk) 17:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Uyghur for 'fuck'
Now that I have your attention... does anyone active know enough about Uyghur to check the usage example for ? The curse 'Fuck your mother!' was added on 6 August by a user who does not have Uyghur in their Babel, and who has been repeatedly cautioned for going beyond their knowledge. On the same day they copied it across to the Cyrillic. My doubt, from a very basic knowledge of Turkish and none at all of Uyghur, is about the infinitive (-mek form) being used as an imperative (I don't think it is in Turkish), and also the lack of case ending: 'your mother' as object should be anangni, not anang. Googling reveals instances of this form in this curse, but nothing I'm willing to rely on. Can anyone do better? --Hiztegilari (talk) 21:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

why didn't you run
How is this a suitable candidate for the phrasebook? ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 02:25, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I’m doubtful too. Seems like the entry was created for the sole reason of adding the quotation, for what reason I know not. — SGconlaw (talk) 06:03, 15 November 2020 (UTC)


 * (move to RFD and) delete, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 07:08, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's just a question, not an idiom, phrase or proverb. --RDBury (talk) 20:50, 15 November 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅. Thank you. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 22:58, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

goodwin
Is goodwin English or Scots? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:08, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I changed it to Scots. I have some doubt that it is in common use in that spelling.  The surname Goodwin makes searching difficult.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:18, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

but = only
The meaning of "only, merely" is claimed to be obsolete. In reality, I would hardly say that the following is obsolete:
 * He is but a man.

This usage is rather formal, yes, but still found. Benwing2 (talk) 19:03, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The conjunction sense is labelled obsolete. You used the "chiefly literary or poetic" adverb sense. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:09, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I just heard it (the adverb) used in a TV show from 2009; something like "This will take but a moment." It's not something everyone would say but I wouldn't call it literary or poetic. Imo change the adverb label to "formal". --RDBury (talk) 21:06, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I use this myself on occasion. I agree that it isn't inherently literary or poetic. Tharthan (talk) 20:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is something portentious about use of but in the sense "only", but formal, literary, poetic don't adequately characterize it, IMO. I would hope we could capture the subtleties by finding suitable citations, both older and current. This link to Google N-Grams shows the decline in relative frequency of but relative to only, though sadly for but one collocation. DCDuring (talk) 21:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Are the citations under the conjunction sense actually conjunctive uses? They look like the adverb to me... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

precarized/precarity
Ipa misin:( EntryDiscusionzgon?
 * It's good to see you're still around, even if your typing is as illegible as ever. The vast majority of our entries have no IPA. For what it's worth I would pronounce precarity so the last two syllables rhyme with disparity or hilarity- I have no idea how precarized is normally pronounced. As for discussions- I'm not sure what you're referring to. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

wapper
Definition:
 * 1)  A gudgeon.

I'm not really sure what to do about this.

I started out with a very simple question: "which kind of gudgeon is it?". After all, there's the original gudgeon, , which is a kind of minnow, and then there are gobies, which were named after it.

I looked in a couple of dialect dictionaries: nothing. Then I looked for co-occurrences of "wapper" and "gudgeon". The first thing I discovered as I followed the lexicographic trail backwards was that the wapper was described in earlier works as a smaller kind of gudgeon, then that it was a smaller kind of gudgeon found in Germany, then that it was a smaller kind of gudgeon found in Germany that the Germans called a wapper. Then I found this passage that says, basically, that the English naturalist who reported the name probably misheard what he was told by the seller at some German local fish market, which was probably a joke about the fish's appearance. I believe this 1686 Latin text is the origin of the term. I haven't taken the time to translate it yet, but the title seems to read: "smaller river gudgeon, German 'Wapper'".

So I now know what kind of gudgeon it is (the Danube gudgeon or Steingressling, ), but I don't know whether the word for it is English or German- or if it ever existed at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In my experience mapping common names for fish to actual species is pretty much a lost cause. A particularly egregious example is "sunfish", see the Wikipedia disambiguation page. The common names for any type of living thing are often difficult to interpret precisely, but for some reason the situation for fish is worse than usual. Our entry for "wapper" seems to be based on the 1913 edition of Websters, so you might try similar sources, e.g. old encyclopedias etc. This meaning may well be obsolete by now, assuming it was ever used in the first place, in which case it may be better to just delete that definition. --RDBury (talk) 15:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Century 1911 doesn't have it. Citations, if available, might tell us more about the exact referent. DCDuring (talk) 22:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The Encyclopaedic Dictionary (1896) has it, "the smaller species of river-gudgeon", 'Etym. doubtful'). An 1819 dictionary identifies wapper with the lesser gudgeon, but says wapper is the name in Germany. And lesser gudgeon seems no longer in use for any species.
 * The Fisheries of the Adriatic and the Fish Thereof has a table that identifies wapper with Gobio uranoscopus, which seems to now be Gobius uranoscopus.
 * One source of confusion in searching is that wapper seems to be sometimes used where I would expect whopper, for a big fish, especially one that got away. DCDuring (talk) 22:29, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * At Fishbase's entry for Romanogobio uranoscopus "Danubian longbarbel gudgeon", at the 'common names' link, "Wapper" appears as a German name for the species. No other species has the name. DCDuring (talk) 22:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Google Books has some evidence of Wapper as a German word: "Eine verwandte Art, der Steingreßling oder Wapper (Gobio uranoscopus)..."; "G. uranoscopus. Steingressling, Wapper.".  You can call these mentions rather than uses, but they are in German text and not called out as foreign names.   I can't rule out the possibility of citogenesis based on the alleged fish market misunderstanding. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

turban's origin
I've seen here and there that turban is claimed to have root in Persian but "دلبند" isn't really recognizable at least in Modern Persian (dolband, not to be confused with delband) and only Turkish books دلبند or دولبند can be found with the use. Is someone interested to have a closer look at it? Thanks −ebrahimtalk 15:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I really don't know, but hopefully somebody can help you out. (I had always just assumed it was ultimately from an Indo-European root meaning "to twist" lol) 2601:49:C301:D810:35EA:BEC3:5D39:CCBD 16:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The Persian Wiktionary glosses دلبند as an adjective meaning “beloved”; in the it is the translated title of Toni Morrison’s novel . In Nişanyan’s etymological dictionary, the lemma  mentions an occurrence in the early 14th-century  of dulband as the Persian translation of Latin fazolum. The term may have since become obsolete in Persian.  --Lambiam 01:20, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The Persian Wiktionary gives دولبند as a synonym of . --Lambiam 01:51, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much to both of you for trying to solve this. Correct. The “beloved” one, delband has happened to have the same spelling but different vowels, not unusual with the script. About the one we are talking about, Dehkhoda, a famous Persian dictionary also mentions dool band with the meaning (it says per French dictionaries turban is of the same root, however also mentions its use in a w:Diatessaron Persian translation). I mean sure, some word goes out of fashion, that's understandable, and I am not in a position to reject the whole thing but it doesn't have also an apparent meaning in Modern Persian, if it is constructed from dool + band, the second part is completely meaningful and related here, بند / band has the same meaning as English "band", a Proto-Indo-European word anyway with the related meaning, however the first part, dool, has completely different meaning دول with what can be meaningful here, I can understand also some meaning shift also may have occurred to dool also, just am in feeling that something interesting had happened to the word and may it has a different etymology. −ebrahimtalk 09:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * According to the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands the first component dul is a Hindustani prefix allegedly meaning “loin”. --Lambiam 15:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Moved to دولبند and added an etymology. -- 09:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * victar: This is excellent, دوربند actually makes lots of sense, not feeling that confident about dour (دور) to doul (دول) transition inside Persian context as I don't remember seeing something similar right now (or maybe turban had a more direct way to Persian's دوربند/dourband?) but that is just a personal opinion and the found references are great. Thank you very much! −ebrahimtalk 13:02, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I wondered if is a reborrowing or readjustment from Ottoman Turkish, but  is a word, apparently. --  19:03, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

English dexter / sinister (heraldry)
For the "heraldry" definitions: I notice sinister is listed as an adjective only, and dexter a noun only. Seems inconsistent. I really don't know which is correct, but I think somebody should fix it. Also, shouldn't "sinister" (in the heraldry sense, and also in sense 3) have a separate etymology? I don't know the etymologies, but just looking at it I'd guess it comes more directly from the French or Latin "left", not through Middle English's "unlucky" sense. 2601:49:C301:D810:35EA:BEC3:5D39:CCBD 16:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The current common French heraldic term is, both an adjective and a noun, but in older texts one also finds the spelling sinistre. There can be no doubt that the French term comes from Latin with the affect-free sense of “left” as opposed to “right”. I have not examined whether the use in heraldry in English was borrowed from the French with a spelling adopted to its Latin etymon, or was directly borrowed from Latin, but in either case the immediate source had no “unlucky” connotation. --Lambiam 15:32, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

chemical formula vs. molecular formula
We define the first as a synonym of the second, but Wikipedia's article suggests there are differences in usage: for example, whether the exact numbers of molecules are given (6:12:6) or just the ratio (1:2:1). Equinox ◑ 23:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There's the empirical formula, structural formula, and condensed formula as well and I think they're getting mixed up with the other two. As I interpret the Wikipedia article, the most general term is chemical formula because it includes all the others. A chemical formula can be either an empirical formula (only ratios of atoms given), a molecular formula (exact numbers of atoms but nothing on how they're connected), or a structural formula (at least some information to show how the atoms are connected). A structural formula can be a condensed formula (minimal structure information), or one of several other types depending on how much structure information is given. In any case, none of them are synonyms, though I'm guessing only a chemist would know the difference without looking it up. --RDBury (talk) 16:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Equinox ◑ 17:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I think they are reasonable entries (I made a few minor tweaks). SemperBlotto (talk) 20:51, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

German copulative verbs
Is there a reason not to have Category:German copulative verbs? Currently the verbs that would be in this category are listed in Category:German intransitive verbs but there is a difference just as there is in English. For example "sleep" is intransitive because you can say "I sleep." But "seem" is copulative -- you can't say "I seem." --RDBury (talk) 23:44, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, there's no reason not to have it. You can create the category with auto cat and populate it if you like. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:33, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As you already know I went ahead and did that. (Thanks for the help populating it, btw.) 15 entries now, which should be enough to be self-sustaining. --RDBury (talk) 22:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

bonk noun sense 2
"Any minor collision or random meeting." How would bonk ever be used to describe a meeting? Equinox ◑ 01:14, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you’re pulling out of your parking spot and your car meets the back of a Lincoln LS backing out of his parking spot, and WHAM!!!, can’t you say the cars had a meeting? (“Sorry, I’ll be late, my car is in a meeting.”) --Lambiam 01:35, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Okay, then how can it describe a meeting that is not a collision? If it can't, "meeting" is redundant here. Equinox ◑ 01:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and changed it to "blow". --RDBury (talk) 08:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

oxygen
How would we define the figurative sense of this word? We often say things like "silence is the oxygen of shame", "starve the terrorists of the oxygen of publicity", etc. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 02:16, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * A condition or environment in which something can thrive? Equinox ◑ 02:22, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that definition. I have added the relevant sense and usage examples. Cheers. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 18:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * "Love is like oxygen/You get too much, you get too high/Not enough and you're gonna die" -- Sweet. In other words, not every figurative meaning needs to be included in a dictionary. If a direct translation into another language doesn't alter the meaning, then imo let people work it out for themselves. --RDBury (talk) 08:43, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * "Love is like oxygen". This is a simile. The usage I am describing is figurative and idiomatic. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 18:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's a simile; it just seemed apropos for the thread. In any case, they're all figures of speech and we shouldn't be trying to document every possible variation. I disagree that it's an idiom; anyone with a basic understanding of biology understands the role that Oxygen plays in supporting life, and will understand what the "the oxygen of" metaphor means. Shakespeare called the world "a stage" and Juliette "the sun", but that doesn't mean we need to add the corresponding meanings to "stage" and "sun". --RDBury (talk) 19:20, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * We do in fact have a figurative sense at sun: "Something like the sun in brightness or splendor". Perhaps other dictionaries do it too. Equinox ◑ 06:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

wedding shower or wetting shower?
I don't understand what's a wedding shower. A shower wets someone, it doesn't wed them. 212.224.226.156 21:55, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a party at which the bridal couple is showered with presents. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)


 * A cake doesn't wed someone either, but there are wedding cakes. Equinox ◑ 03:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

woke
I feel like our second definition ("Alert and aware of what is going on, especially in social justice contexts. Well-informed.") is either inadequate or should be supplemented by another definition. Based on the cites, the term seems to have evolved from an AAVE context to more mainstream and recent colloquial usage, where my impression is that it means something closer to "in line with current liberal thinking on social justice issues". There may be a more NPOV way of phrasing that, but I definitely think the mainstream usage has little to do with being informed and more to do with the way one thinks. Someone who is very well-informed but conservative would not be considered "woke" by anybody's standards, I think. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, for the people who use it sincerely, our definition is correct. They may be wrong, but they consider liberal thinking the inevitable result of being aware and well informed. Conservatives would use some other expression to express the conservative counterpart, and only used "woke" to disparage those people. I agree, though, that not mentioning that context is misleading and POV. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Might be difficult to put all this in the definition. Usage notes? – Jberkel 09:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, a usage note might be the way to go. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, woke seems to be the contemporary version of the old "enlightened", with regard to its usage in labelling those who disagree with one's particular philosophy as backward dunces, and those who agree with one's philosophy as informed people of the future. (Indeed, I recall one political candidate in my country saying in a stump speech "I aim to be the [XYZ] of the woke, while leaving some room for the still waking") Not too differently from the situation historically with enlightened, those who use woke tend to indeed have legitimate arguments on certain issues and concerns (as well as ideas to help combat certain problems), but unfortunately equally as often spout ideological rot. As such, I think that (either through usage notes or through a rewording of the definition— alternatively, both) the entry needs to indicate that this is most certainly not an ideologically-neutral term, and explain (succinctly) any particular connotations and associations.


 * If we are going to have usage notes for the entry, though, then it needs to be determined what terminology makes the most sense to use. Do we really wish to use terminology like "liberal", when that is a pretty nebulous term with regard to meaning? Just something to consider. Tharthan (talk) 18:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I added a usage note to warn that it is often used in a derogatory manner. Anybody remember the 1988 US presidential election?  Bush called Dukakis a liberal, a card-carrying member of the ACLU.  While it was meant as an insult, there were plenty of people who were liberal or ACLU members who would consider it a compliment.  So it goes with woke. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:24, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Why does our definition use the wording "and (in current usage) consequently" used? That's a curious wording. Can another way of phrasing this be thought of? Perhaps "and (in current usage) primarily, or simply "and (in current usage)? I fail to see how having the word consequently makes much sense. The entry doesn't present any reason why the former part of the definition would inherently lead "in consequence" to the latter part, so that wording is odd. Tharthan (talk) 20:15, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we should split the definition into the mid-20th century meaning and the modern meaning. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That was my attempt at expressing the current sense of the word, which is almost exclusively limited to those who are liberal. The sense I get from the way the word is used is that there is an underlying implication that being aware of social justice issues goes hand in hand with taking a left-wing view of them. No one who is aware of the issues but rejects the left-wing approach is considered woke. But perhaps just "and" would work. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would argue that it would be best if we either: A. simply remove the "consequently" from the definition, and just use "and (in current usage)", or B. do what Vox Sciurorum suggests, and split the definition in two; the mid-20th century meaning, and the modern meaning. If we do split the definition in two, the new sense defined ought not to use "consequently" either. It probably would be easier just to remove the "consequently" and leave it at that, but that's just my opinion. Perhaps others would prefer that the definition be split. Tharthan (talk) 15:01, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * My sense of the semantic evolution is that it went from:
 * AAVE use of "woke" = "awake", which is our sense 1, to
 * AAVE use of "woke" = aware of what's going on (which, given the African-American context, means aware of the realities of systemic racism or things like that, rather than, like, "aware that conservatism is the best and correct ideology", thus de facto restricted to left-of-center people), which is our sense 2, to broader use of "woke" in roughly that same sense also by white people, and then to
 * broad (white) use of "woke", initially for people who are aware of those kinds of things, but by now (often disparagingly) for anyone who is "liberal" in any way, e.g. wearing a mask(!), saying "trans women are women", believing sexual assault is bad,... anything "liberal" can be decried as "woke". The insult is used not only by conservatives, as Chuck Entz mentions, but also significantly by a class of white leftists who also disparage the idea that racism or racial justice or other social justice (that is associated with people who are not them) is important. I think this is clearly a distinct sense.
 * - -sche (discuss) 18:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hold on a minute. Since when did not believing in ideological views and/or dogmas held by (a) particular part(s) of the left wing, or even if one was not inclined towards the left wing in general, mean that one consequently believes that right wing views are correct?
 * It is absurd to say that not identifying as left wing is de facto identification as right wing. That mentality is useful only to partisans (of whatever stripe they may be).
 * Incidentally, am I supposed to take in good faith your grouping of the statement "transwomen are women" (something which is a particular dogma of an element of the left wing) alongside things that are obvious truisms (sense 1), such as "face coverings help prevent viral spread", and "sexual assault is an evil act"? If so, then with all due respect, I must confess that I am having a hard time seeing that as something more than provocative trolling. If you grouped that with those other statements in earnest, then I apologise; the inclusion didn't come off that way to me. Tharthan (talk) 19:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Re your first paragraph: huh? My comment is directly saying that, contrary to what someone else said above, the term is not just used by right-wingers but also by certain left-wingers, who hold left-wing views but specifically distinguish themselves from "woke" people (although they would be included as "woke" by conservative users of the word). Re your second paragraph: my point is that (different) people de facto use the word "woke" to deride each of those things even though they are disparate, i.e., that the term has become "semantically bleached" into a vague insult that hardly reflects or refers to any particular identifiable or coherent ideology anymore (compare "neoliberal" and, in a different direction, "fascist"). - -sche (discuss) 19:49, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Then I direct you to my question below, re: whether we need a third sense. Tharthan (talk) 19:56, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I do think the recent usage constitutes a separate sense ... and so I split it off as one, but you reverted that, which I take to mean you don't think it's a separate sense? I think it's clearly become too different in meaning to be the same sense. (Also, if you think either "sexual assault is evil" or "face coverings help prevent viral spread" are uncontroversial bi- or non-partisan statements, I question how familiar you are with politics at all. The very reason some people deride masks as "woke" is that they've become a shibboleth and many on the right refuse to wear them, while also dismissing concerns about "grabbing women by the pussy" or people [Toobin, etc] masturbating in front of coworkers as "woke" overreactions to things all [adult] boys do, boys will be boys, locker-room talk, etc.) - -sche (discuss) 20:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I meant something more like this. (For the record, -sche, I am of the opinion that politics have gotten to such an absurdly hostile and tribalistic level that it is very hard to gauge what the rest of the public believes. As you point out, there is a lot of ridiculous and disgusting behaviour that is being excused by this or that element on political grounds. I most definitely do believe that that "sexual assault is evil" and "face coverings help prevent viral spread" are recognised as the obvious truths that they are, except by a partisan element. Granted, yes, that partisan element has grown significantly over the years. I have witnessed that. But despite their expansion over the years and their loudness, they are still only one element) . Tharthan (talk) 20:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Btw, I'm pretty sure British conservatives and "anti-antiracist" leftists also use the insulting term, so it's not US/Canada-specific like we say the "aware" sense is. A quick Google News search finds a London Times article denouncing "wokeism", for example. - -sche (discuss) 18:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If the word now has some vague, buzzwordesque sense that is used by right-wingers, perhaps that also ought to have its own sense. This really needs to be looked into further. From what I can tell, we have:


 * woke: (dialect, African-American Vernacular or slang) Awake: conscious and not asleep.
 * woke: (slang[?]) Alert, aware of what is going on, or well-informed, especially in social justice contexts, and (in current usage) holding left-wing views on social justice issues.
 * woke: (slang, [right wing jargon]) Left wing, or imagined to be left wing, especially in contemporary contexts[?]


 * Does that sound about right? Tharthan (talk) 19:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * To the extent sense 2 is specific to left-leaning views, the restriction does not seem to be limited to just "current usage"(?), so I might either drop the "in current usage" or possibly drop the entire second clause. The third sense is probably most used by right-wingers but is also used by some leftists, for whom the quality being derided is liberal-ness rather than left-wing-ness per se, which makes it a little tricky to word the label; then again, if the left-wing uses aren't durably archived we could decide to ignore them. Something like "Liberal or left-wing; holding social justice views or attitudes associated with liberals or left-wingers" perhaps? I don't know that we need to say "or imagined to be", since the person using the word intends it as a claim that the referent is liberal/left-wing, even if they are mistaken (cf Equinox's point about femifascist). For the label, I think DCDuring would argue we should avoid calling things "jargon", but I admit I have trouble thinking of another word to use in cases like this. I think I've sometimes used "in [adjective] speech or writing", which is clunky; perhaps "jargon" is a fine word. - -sche (discuss) 20:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * With regard to the third sense, how about:
 * (slang, jargon) progressive left-wing or otherwise left-wing; holding views or attitudes associated with progressives or left-wingers


 * ? I hesitate to use "progressive left", "progressive", or "progressive left-wing", given the associations that such phrasing is often seen as having (leading to potential complaints of 'why did you use one word and not the other?', 'this word often has unfavourable connotations', 'This word is more favoured by that group/disliked by that group', etc.), but I'm not sure what better words could be used.
 * With regard to the second sense, I would advocate for the retention of (in current usage) unless it can be shown that the word wasn't used early on in self-reference by or toward individual(s) possessing alertness, awareness, and savviness, especially in social justice contexts, who at the same time would not be deemed to have held '(contemporary, 21st century) left-wing views on social justice issues'. If there is no evidence that the word was ever used in reference to those who would be accurately described by the sense's first clause, but not by the second, then I would agree with you that (in current usage) ought to be removed. Tharthan (talk) 21:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I would also avoid "progressive", since it's not a neutral term. I think "left-wing" is fine. I'm not sure that "jargon" is the best word...just "slang" seems adequate. How about the following:
 * (slang, often derogative) Holding left-wing views or attitudes, (especially) with regards to social justice issues or to an excessive degree.
 * It seems to me that the second definition could make specific reference to racism. The Merriam-Webster has "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)". The OED has "figurative and in figurative contexts. Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice; frequently in stay woke (often used as an exhortation)." The definition that Google gives is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism." I removed "consequently", by the way. Perhaps the whole second part of the definition could go, since it was meant to capture what is perhaps best included as a third definition. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Even social justice in our definition is not accurate with regards to the relatively narrow issues that it includes. The range is limited to the ones in the usage notes. Indeed, if it were not, it would be NISoP. Wokeness, AFAiCT, rarely includes concerns such as intergenerational justice, or international justice, or concern for exploitation of non-human organisms. I don't even think it includes economic justice. I think we should include wording from the social justice usage notes both in our definition of social justice and in our usage of social justice in any definiens to clarify current usage for those not from whatever English-speaking cultures use the term and for the later generations that may wonder about it. DCDuring (talk) 04:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * On the political affiliations scattered above: Labels should rarely if ever mention political affiliations. You can assume a derogatory sense is used by people who don't like the target of the word.  So we don't and shouldn't have a label on  saying it is right wing talk.  On rare occasions I will add a usage note when there is a strong political bias that you couldn't guess.  For example, early this year American politics suddenly decided that  and the like should be polarized.   could be an ordinary English word, but seems to be confined to conservative use.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 08:51, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't keep track of indentation and binding of replies above when editing. Woke is not jargon.  Woke is no longer slang.  It's escaped informal street talk and moved into serious writing.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 09:07, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I am not saying that you are necessarily incorrect, Vox Sciurorum, but how exactly do we determine when a word like this has ceased to be slang? There has been a general trend towards casualisation of discourse in more or less all areas of life. Yet, if you press people, many will still distinguish between a word that might be much more widely used but most definitely not a term generally applied outside of casual discourse, and a term that honestly has gone beyond "slang" after a period of many years.
 * I guess that what I am saying is that the onus is on you to clearly demonstrate that the word has ceased being slang and/or heavily colloquial. Tharthan (talk) 21:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I have split definition 2, using the definition I last suggested. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:01, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I would say that a current usage is along the lines of 'To hold an anti-bigoted viewpoint or attitude'. Usr9 (talk) 17:35, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

On the wrong foot
We have an entry for the synonymous intransitive verbs and. But there is also the idiomatic transitive verb. (It can also be used in the literal sense.) Should we have an additional entry for, or perhaps just a single entry for covering all? Or both? Consider also uses as in be on the wrong foot, find oneself on the wrong foot, and probably many other similar dictions based on the metaphor. --Lambiam 11:50, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't forget the UK verb wrong-foot/wrongfoot/wrong foot, as in "his quick, decisive intervention had wrong footed Sarti." and "Kelly Masterson's complex, unpredictable screenplay continually wrong-foots the viewer, starting out as a classic heist gone wrong flick but spinning off into a blistering family drama." DCDuring (talk) 16:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I always thought it was "start out on the wrong foot". I think the rule for idioms should be to always include words that can't be replaced by a synonym. For example "kick the pail" is not the same as "kick the bucket" so the word "bucket" must be included in the idiom kick the bucket. Words that can be replaced by a synonym should not be included unless it's unavoidable for grammatical reasons. (If only one word can't be replaced then what you have is not an idiom but an idiomatic meaning for the word. If every word can be replaced then it's a metaphor or some other figure of speech.) It's seems clear that in this case the "start out" part can be replaced by a synonym -- "start on the wrong foot", "begin on the wrong foot", "get going on the wrong foot" etc. seem plausible and with the same meaning. Meanwhile "start off on the incorrect foot" and "start off on the wrong leg" both seem incorrect. I'm not sure about "start off with the wrong foot" or even "start off wrong-footed"; they strain the idiom but I'm not convinced they actually break it. So I'd say definitely reduce "start off on the wrong foot" and "get off on the wrong foot" is a single entry. Whether that can, in turn, be merged with "wrong-foot" is another issue and I'm not convinced either way. In any case, I always thought the "on the wrong foot" thing started with parade ground marching while "wrong-footed" has to do with sports. If they have different origins then it's probably better to keep the entries separate. --RDBury (talk) 09:34, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * PS. Apparently "wrong-footed" started as a cricket term, see Glossary of cricket terms. --RDBury (talk) 09:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * On the wrong foot seems like a sensible place to redirect the various full predicates to. To me it seems that there are at least two distinguishable meanings, one having to do with a metaphorical walk or march (coordination), the other with metaphorical sports footwork (competitive disadvantage, being off-balance). I doubt that we can find definitive distinct etymologies for both of these, so separation on etymological grounds seems unwise. DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

cashier's check
While editing banker's draft in an attempt to make the definition more understandable, I notice that presently we list cashier's check as a synonym of banker's draft (and vice versa). According to, "A bank draft [= banker's draft] is not the same as a cashier's check", yet says "A customer asks a bank for a cashier's check, and the bank debits the amount from the customer's account immediately and assumes the responsibility for covering the cashier's check" which seems essentially identical to my new definition of banker's draft. I have not so far been able to get to the bottom of this -- I don't know whether anyone else might have an idea about whether there really is a difference, and precisely what that difference is. Mihia (talk) 14:39, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I have obtained cashier's checks in the USA and they work like the description of in the UK.  The bank immediately removes funds from my account and gives me a special type of paper check that is understood to be more likely to be honored.  I was informed by a teller when I mistakenly asked for a certified check that I was requesting something slightly different, one of my own checks certified by the bank to have sufficient funds.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would look at how other dictionaries avoid getting mired in the legal technicalities, which differ by country and type of financial institution. I believe that the WP articles are limited in the scope of applicability, without saying so. DCDuring (talk) 18:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Believe me, I have looked at plenty of other definitions! The wording of definitions of the two things are typically different in a fairly consistent way, but somehow I still cannot actually put my finger on what the essential difference is (if any). Mihia (talk) 18:34, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

barrel of laughs

 * 1)  That which is enjoyable or entertaining.
 * You should see this movie I just got, it's a real barrel of laughs.
 * 1)  That which is immature, embarrassing, or disgraceful.
 * You mean to say that barrel of laughs over there is my new partner?

I don't recognise the #2 usex as anything other than sarcastic use of #1. The mention of "immature" also seems a bit weird to me. Does anyone else see a separate sense here? Mihia (talk) 18:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. Benwing2 (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * OK, I sent it to RFV. Mihia (talk) 21:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

You've been a lot of places
You've been a lot of places, haven't you?. I do not think we have this transitive meaning. --Backinstadiums (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a transitive use of "to be"; rather, it's an adverbial use of "a lot of places". —Mahāgaja · talk 21:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * What they said. DCDuring (talk) 22:34, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

hadn't ought
Hadn't ought "ought not —usually used with to": you really hadn't ought to do that. Is this had the same as the one in had better ? --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

pronunciation of
The pronunciation listed for this one is. However, I noticed that I pronounce it a second way sometimes, stressed on the first syllable. It ranges from at the laziest to  (, not ) if I'm not being lazy, or  if I were to pronounce it carefully. I'm a little unsure of how to phonemically represent that, but I'd guess something like. (That l-vocalization thing normally only happens for me in "falcon" and words ending with "alm", but I guess in it kind of assimilates into the "r".)

My alternate pronunciation is never mandatory, but there are some places where it isn't allowed to happen, such as sentences like "You're done already?" There are some places where it feels particularly weird not to use it, though, like "You're already done?" It's obviously somehow connected to prosodic stress, but I can't figure out what triggers it. Does anyone else have anything even close to this and/or have any idea what could trigger the alternate pronunciation? I have no idea if this is just a weird idiosyncrasy or if it's an actual pronunciation other people use. —Globins (yo) 08:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Check this post --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)


 * In most languages there is a discrepancy between the way words are supposed to be pronounced and the they way they actually are pronounced in casual speech, and American English is one of the worst offenders. (A typical conversion in America: "Dja-eechet?" "No." "Djawanta?" "Sure.") Familiarity with the language gives you the ability to fill in the information that's lost because of slurred syllables and the result is that you often "hear" something different than what is actually said. Learners of a language haven't built up this kind of familiarity and so have trouble understanding casual speech and find it easier to understand the written language than the spoken one. To answer your question, I think the casual pronunciation is used when the word is not the focus of the sentence, but when the word is the focus, and it's important that the word is understood, only the careful pronunciation will do. Imo it's not really practical to document every variation in pronunciation from clear and careful to casual and sloppy. It's sufficient to document the clear and careful version since the casual and sloppy versions are usually just slurred versions of that. If you were trying to design a speech recognition system then there might be a need for this kind of detail, but my understanding is that speech recognition generally uses an entirely different method. --RDBury (talk) 11:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * jeet from d'ya, losing the final schwa--Backinstadiums (talk) 11:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you translate that conversation for us non-natives? Glades12 (talk) 14:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "Did you eat yet?" "No." "Do you want to?" "Sure." —Mahāgaja · talk 14:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not exactly how I would pronounce it, but I recognize it. I'd ask "y'wanna?", contraction of "you want to?"  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:52, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think this is a general prosodic rule: When words lose the stress to a following word, the word stress recedes to the first syllable.


 * 1) "I ˈdid alˌready" vs. "I ˌalready ˈdid"
 * 2) "The ˈedges were unˈeven" vs. ˌ"uneven ˈedges"
 * 3) "That's unˈlikely" vs. "an ˌunlikely sceˈnario"
 * 4) "The ˌbook was ˌoverˈdue" vs. "an ˌoverdue ˈbook"
 * It would be interesting to see what exceptions there are. French loanwords with final stress come to mind:

Chuck Entz (talk) 16:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) "That ˈstory is a bit risˈqué" vs. "a risˈqué ˈstory"

Proto-Slavic, instrumental singular
The instrumental singular for Proto-Slavic is reconstructed as *dьnьmъ, notice the *-ъ ending. This is inconsistent with the *-ь ending of all other masculine and neuter instrumental singular reconstructions, and also with OCS. Does anyone have a source for the reconstructed *-ъ ending if this is the intended reconstruction? OosakaNoOusama (talk) 09:28, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English
I am sceptical of several recently-added terms. (People seem to add things that feel culturally specific to them without adequate investigation of whether they are in fact difficult to translate.) - -sche (discuss) 18:17, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Adda (South Asian) suggests that Bengali আড্ড is not defined correctly, is in fact probably translatable, and has even been borrowed into English (which would make it an obscure term adopted as a loanword instead).
 * Our entry on seny seems to have no problem translating it, and from the connotations suggested in the appendix, "common sense, sensibleness" seems like a perfectly sensible translation. (removed)
 * Likewise, rauxa seems entirely translatable, as "rashness". finds several books which translate it that way or as "extreme" or "extremist" rashness. (removed)
 * vetja I am also sceptical of: English has lots of fillers, including ones that can be used after bringing forth a suggestion, innit. Buy a scratch ticket if you want to get rich, you know?
 * I added . Feel free to remove it if you want. Glades12 (talk) 06:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, is either of those (or s some other English filler) an adequate translation / replacement when rendering Swedish uses of it into English? User:LA2, what do you think? - -sche (discuss) 10:22, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * What was the question? Translation? In the examples given, I'd translate it to "come on" (surely do this). This word (vetja) has been used in literature (eg. here, lines 2 and 4), but only in direct speech, and is not listed in dictionaries (SAOL, SAOB, sv.wiktionary). Then there is another use in the dialect of Närke, but I doubt that it is properly documented. --LA2 (talk) 04:47, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking the main problem with this list is there are no objective criteria for inclusion. Considered by whom to be untranslatable? The idea seems fun and interesting, but I can also see it being the source of endless include/exclude arguments such as the above. --RDBury (talk) 01:41, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it's definitely good to have, but would welcome citations for the proposition that a given word or phrase does not translate. bd2412 T 02:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Many of those are easier to translate than the verbs in the translation table for, because thou is essentially obsolete outside of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. I read an English translation of Crime and Punishment with the awkward phrase (from memory) "they agreed to call each other by the familiar second person pronoun".  I bet the French and Spanish translators had an easier job.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:54, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

black car
There are five separate senses here: two types of taxi, a government SUV with blacked-out windows, a limousine, and a hearse. Are these all idiomatically called "black cars"? Are some of them just cars that happen to be black, like a fire engine is a "red truck"? Equinox ◑ 06:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would delete all. SemperBlotto (talk) 07:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep the NYC sense. I added two uses.  Keep the London sense because the related term black cab exists and is not a sum of parts: "Although London cabs are known as black cabs, many of them carry advertisements and are painted bright colors."  If black car meaning London black cab does not exist as such, that's a question for RFV.  Delete the other senses unless there is good evidence they have an idiomatic meaning.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 08:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Page "meaning"
Page meaning: The translation subblocks are inconsistent with the definitons, and the problem seems to have existed for a long time (at least since year 2014). Taylor 49 (talk) 11:31, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've seen this on another entry; someone updates the definitions but doesn't update the corresponding translation headers and they become out of sync. The big problem is resynchronizing them. You can revert the updates to the definitions, but usually they would have been done for a reason (they were vague, incorrect, incomplete, etc.). Or you can update the headers, but then you have to recheck all the translations because updating the definitions may change the context enough that different translations are in order. With several languages involved that could be a challenge. The way I dealt with the case I came across was to re-add the old definition since it was sufficiently different from the now-current definitions. I'm pretty sure that solution would only work in that one case though. (The entry was make sure if anyone want's to check.) The underlying problem here is that the definition is in two places and updating it in one place does not guarantee it gets updated in the other place. (See Database normalization if you want the gory details.) I tried to fix this in the entry I came across by reducing the translation header to a single keyword, that way additions can be made to the definition without breaking the link. I'd also recommend only adding definitions after there is a usage example given for the meaning, that way if the given definition is unclear and needs to be rephrased, then at least we can be sure that the translations fit the example. Of course the translations might still break if both the definition and the usage example are changed. --RDBury (talk) 13:47, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Before we get too concerned about reconciling the translations with the definitions, we should make sure that our definitions are coherent and cover all the meanings. The first definition seems to be worded (thereby) as if it followed another definition, which is no longer present. MWOnline has 5 senses, some with subsenses; we only have three definitions. Once we have the definitions more or less right, we can use templates, , and  to draw the attention of those with the required language knowledge to straighten out the translation problem and problems with synonyms etc. DCDuring (talk) 17:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was thinking about that after posting the above; the existing definitions could really use some review and (to paraphrase, sort of, Macbeth) if it's to be done then it's best to have it done before fixing the translations. --RDBury (talk) 14:35, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If understand DCD correctly, I completely agree. We cannot let the presence of translations stand in the way of perfecting English definitions. If the necessary development or improvement of English definitions renders translations orphaned or ambiguous, then so be it. If all else fails, dump these into a "to be checked" category. Mihia (talk) 23:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Kubura
Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Kubura/User:Kubura2 who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at Request for comment/Global ban for Kubura. Thank you. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 17:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That user was indef-blocked here in June 2010. --Lambiam 18:08, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

gee
The usage notes section made me cringe... the speaker putting on the persona of a freshly scrubbed freckle-faced kid from days gone by. I'm, like, ORLY??? Also, how on earth would one put on freckly-facedness? Darren X. Thorsson (talk) 23:41, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Ha ha ha. Who put that in the usage notes section? Tharthan (talk)
 * I've changed it to "putting on an air of youthful innocence". —Mahāgaja · talk 08:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't know about "innocence", but it was a common trick in radio, television, etc. to have child characters use this kind of juvenile slang to make them sound younger than the the actors playing them. (Walter Tetley, who played Sherman in the original Mr. Peabody cartoons, was in his forties at the time.). I'm pretty sure that kind of thing ended with Bart Simpson though. There was, of course, a time when kids actually did use "gee" without trying to put on anything, just as a way of swearing without getting into trouble. --RDBury (talk) 15:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * This has been in the entry from the day it was created in 2004!! User:Dmh added the first version, followed shortly thereafter by an addition from User:Tormod, and it's been more or less unchanged ever since.... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 15:49, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Heh, a bit of "colour", like Chambers' famous definitions of eclair and middle age. But "kid" is too informal at any rate. Equinox ◑ 13:11, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

poste
''Moved from Etymology scriptorium/2020/November. Merged with Etymology scriptorium/2020/November''

US pronunciation of forward
Forward has /ˈfɔɹ.wɚd/ as the suggested US pronunciation. But it seems to me that many Americans say /ˈfo:.wɚd/, as if the word were spelt "foward". Is this right?
 * I can't say I've ever heard that from rhotic speakers, though of course nonrhotic speakers will have like RP. There's also an old-fashioned pronunciation  (with no /w/) which you might still hear occasionally. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:31, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * At least in my neck of the woods, non-rhotic speakers use /ˈfɔ.wəd/. I do hear many fully rhotic speakers pronounce forward as /ˈfoʊ:.wɚd/, as the IP user suggests. And it seems to be quite a common pronunciation, too. I was always baffled by this, because I cannot think of a reason why a rhotic dialect would ditch the first /ɹ/ from the word in such a manner. Tharthan (talk) 18:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If there are rhotic speakers who do say, it's presumably dissimilation in the form of deletion of the first of two r’s in a word, as we see also in the rhotic pronunciation of as  or  as . But I can't find  in any of my dictionaries, not even the ones that tend to include nonstandard pronunciations. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * To my (American) ears /ˈfo:.wɚd/ does not sound wrong, though I don't think I'd use it myself, at least not if I was trying to speak clearly. --RDBury (talk) 15:11, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Not 100% related but I wonder whether should be glossed as UK. Equinox ◑ 15:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see why. One of the citations is from James Fenimore Cooper, who was American. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I am the OP. Equinox asks whether forrard should be glossed as UK. I am in the UK and don't recognise this pronunciation, but let me hasten to add that I wouldn't be surprised if someone said it somewhere. But /ˈfɔɹəd/ does exist as the UK pronunciation, or one of the UK pronunciations, of forehead. Maybe that is why I don't recognise /ˈfɔɹəd/ as a UK variant for "forward".


 * I have also heard /ˈfoʊ.wɚd/ from a few (rhotic) American speakers; there's a reddit thread about it [//www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/dpi8mj/is_the_deletion_of_the_first_r_in_forward_so/ here], which I found by googling "foeward", and Patricia Blaine, Change Your Words, Change Your Worth (2014) gives it as an example of sloppy speech, and nets a few other mentions. It should probably be characterized as nonstandard if we decide to include it. - -sche (discuss) 00:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you everyone for weighing in on the thread I started. Tharthan is right. I should have transcribed the pronunciation I was talking about as /ˈfoʊ:.wɚd/. This is not rare at all -- at least judging by watching Youtube videos, and no, should not be described as "non-standard". Not being a rhotic speaker, I didn't realise US rhotic speakers pronounce "governor" as "govenor" and "surprise" as "supprise". I just overlooked that. So it seems there is a subset of words where the r is commonly dropped by rhotic speakers too. There are probably other words in this category.
 * If I am speaking formally or with emphasis I pronounce the r in governor and surprise. Casually, I don't.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:10, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In this case, you have a couple of labial sounds interrupted by a retroflex/rhotic sound before another labial sound and then a retroflex sound. It's easier to pronounce without the in-between sounds, so either the retroflex goes, to mske, or the labial goes, to make . To complicate things, there's a tendency for at least some people to move the tongue into a velar position during a labial sound, and to round the lips during a retroflex/rhotic sound. At any rate, it's just a matter of saving effort/complexity in rapid speech, not a change in the underlying phoneme. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * But why /oʊ/ as opposed to /ɔ/?


 * My speech, being what would probably be called a cultivated form of a particular variant of New England English, is partially influenced by the non-rhotic element that was historically dominant (and certainly still alive. Even the speech of a number of the younger folks in one of the nearby cities is quite non-rhotic, especially folks who were from the particularly urban part of that city, and who grew up in lower-income households). I would call my own speech 90 - 95% rhotic; in swift, casual speech, probably 85% rhotic. I don't have 'hypercorrective r' issues like some speakers who live where I am. So it wasn't until I studied linguistics that I realised that the common pronunciations of "surprise" and "governor" were not due to influence from non-rhotic speech. And until this Tea room discussion, I didn't realise that forward was another instance of the same phenomenon. It did always make me raise an eyebrow that the pronunciation of forward by non-rhotic speakers was /ˈfɔ.wəd/ / [ˈfɔ.wʊd], and yet fully rhotic speakers often used a different, half-non-rhotic pronunciation for forward; /ˈfoʊ.wɚd/. Personally, throughout my life, I always used /ˈfɔɹ.wɚd/ /  /ˈfɔ.wɚd/ / /ˈfɔ.wəd/ depending upon the situation.
 * Let me clarify that the "r" sound in "Russia and China" (between "Russia" and "and") is not hypercorrective. In British English, you need some glides between vowels. In the phrase "I am", there is a /j/ in between the words in British English. In "to understand" there is a /w/ in between in British English, as you can't go from the vowel in "to" to the first vowel in "understand" directly. I believe they do make a direct transition in American English, but in British English, a glide is required. Between other vowel combinations, the glide is provided by /ɹ/, which is thus seen as some kind of semi-vowel. It depends on the vowels on either side whether /j/, /w/ or /ɹ/ is chosen as the appropriate semi-vowel glide. This has nothing to do with the spelling, so in "drawing", there is an /ɹ/ glide between draw- and -ing in British English. This is not hypercorrection, it is liaison between words, as in the way the French add in a /z/ between "les" and "enfants".
 * : French 'inserting' /z/ in "les enfants" is not equivalent to the phenomenon of the intrusive R, which is what you are describing. the S at the end of the word "les" was pronounced at one point in time. So pronouncing it when the word that follows it begins with a vowel, is preservation of the historic sound in that particular environment. It's actually much closer to the phenomenon in English of the linking R. The linking R refers to the phenomenon when a non-rhotic dialect of English preserves a final /ɹ/ sound when it is immediately followed up by a word that begins with a vowel. The intrusive R, as is stated in the linked article, is "an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/". In other words, the intrusive R is the very definition of a hypercorrection.
 * You haven't considered my argument that /j/, /w/ and /ɹ/ can function as semi-vowels or liquids in a way that suits glides between vowels. The fact that US English does this less does not mean that this is not the case in British English. Neither is the spelling relevant, as, if you go back far enough, few people were literate, and on a phonological level the glides form between spoken vowels (not orthographic representations of them). A rhotic speaker may view R-insertion as a hypercorrection, but once the R was lost in many dialects and they became non-rhotic, then the R insertion was felt to be required as a glide between certain vowel sounds. I'm not sure if we're talking diachronic vs. synchronic here. It is not a hypercorrection to say "law Rand order", because the way the language presents itself in the modern day to speakers of the relevant dialects is that you can't go from the vowel in "law" to the vowel in "and" directly. It is not based on some kind of "hypercorrective" misconception that there is an etymological R in here. I say /tu ˌwʌndəˈstæ:nd/ whereas American speakers seem to me to be saying /tə ˌʌnɝˈstæ:ᵊnd/. In other words, it seems Americans can go directly from one vowel into the other.
 * I suppose that what I am saying is that, whether the linguistic phenomenon known as the intrusive R is considered a hypercorrection by many speakers now or not is immaterial to the fact that it originated out of hypercorrection, and that is what it historically was.
 * I simply feel that the intrusive R did not originate as a hypercorrection, but as a semi-consonantal glide. It is not felt by English speakers to be an R. It you asked an English speaker why he inserted an R in "China and India", he would be unaware of having done so. It is not felt to be an R, and does not result from confusion between "China" and "Chinar".
 * Your transcription of an American English pronunciation seems to be of a particular dialect's pronunciation, and certainly not representative of all parts of the country. Idiolectally, I pronounce "to understand" as [tu ˌ(w)ʌndᵻˈstænd], and my local dialect's usual pronunciation more generally is similar, though is more commonly [tu ˌ(w)ʌndʌˈsteə̯nd] (/ə/ is commonly realised as a number other vowels in the dialect [and in my speech], rather than as /ə/. Actual /ə/ only appears in certain environments) . Tharthan (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon, 81.141.8.102, even though I do not have it as part of my speech. Moreover, I said /ˈdɹɔɹɪŋ/ throughout my childhood, a pronunciation clearly lifted from the (to varying extents) non-rhotic speech (which had both linking R and intrusive R) that I heard all around me. Again, I myself didn't have the intrusive R, but /ˈdɹɔ.ɪŋ/ said too swiftly by a child would soon morph into /dɹɔɪŋ/ (droing). So I subconsciously adopted /ˈdɹɔɹɪŋ/, until I was in my adolescence. I've noticed that some speakers of certain broad forms of certain dialects of British English opt for /ˈdɹɔwɪŋ/ for the same reason that I had opted for /ˈdɹɔɹɪŋ/ as a child.
 * I don't know who wrote this about droing.Yes /dɹɔɪŋ/ is one way of resolving the fact that there is no such diphthong as /ɔ:ɪ/ in English. By shortening the /ɔ/, you get /dɹɔɪŋ/, which is a valid combination of sounds. Many English people do say /dɹɔɪŋ/. Also, apart from /ˈdɹɔ:ɹɪŋ/ (note the long /ɔ/), there is also /ˈdɹɔ:ɹɪn/, which is very common in England. I think the -ng pronunciations have made a comeback with literacy in the modern age as reading pronunciations. In the 18th century, the aristocracy used to say huntin', shootin' and fishin', but anecdotally it seems that /ˈdɹɔ:ɹɪŋ/ and /ˈdɹɔ:ɹɪn/ are in free variation in many people's speech in England. I'm trying to iron reading pronunciations out of my speech and go with natural pronunciations for Southern British English, and so I try to say /ˈdɹɔ:ɹɪn/ whenever I can remember to.
 * If a spelling pronunciation is actually the historically older pronunciation (even if it once fell out of use), and it is the one that you personally have typically used, then why force yourself to stop using it? The only actually-historically-more-accurate spelling pronunciation that I can think of that I do not use is /ˈɔftən/. Saying [ˈɔftᵻn] sounds utterly phony to me, so I say [ˈɔfᵻn]. So unless it sounds phony, why ditch it? Tharthan (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I try not to pronounce /ɪn/ as/ɪŋ/ in the relevant words. I don't believe that /ɪŋ/ is historically more accurate, as the -ing gerund results from the confuse of two forms in Middle English, the gerund in -ing and the present participle in -ende. The /ɪn/ pronunciation may derive from the latter. I regard the /ɪn/ pronunciation as more correct in British English, for the same reason that no one pronounces "said" as it is spelt.
 * Lastly, the glide insertion that you mention re: /j/ is definitely present in my dialect. "I am" is [ɑɪ.jæm] ~ [ɑːjæm] for me. Using /w/ as a glide is (in words where that would be expected to occur)... is less common in my speech, but I am pretty sure it occurs to some extent in it, though not as much as /j/ does. Tharthan (talk) 00:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * : As such, the /ˈfoʊ.wɚd/ pronunciation always sounded quite strange to me, because it is not simply a loss of the postalveolar approximant. It is a replacement of /ɔɹ/ with /oʊ/, which is quite unusual. The obvious expected outcome would be a simple dropping of /ɹ/, leaving /ɔ/ as the vowel of the first syllable; /ˈfɔ.wɚd/. Tharthan (talk) 21:54, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the replacement of with  rather than with  is due to the effect of the . Rhotic speakers who have this merger (like me) merge to a sound that is neither precisely  nor  but something in between; call it . So when you drop the r, you're left with a vowel that's already halfway to . Add to that the following  (and the transcription  is just one convention; the sound could just as easily be transcribed ) and it's not surprising that  should be phonemicized as . The case is even stronger in varieties of American English that also have the  with a resulting unrounded  as the merged vowel. In those accents,  doesn't exist at all except in  and, so for those speakers there's really no phoneme for  to be assigned to besides . —Mahāgaja · talk 22:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Anyway, someone added this following Tea_room/2020/December. - -sche (discuss) 05:06, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Perfective and imperfective: скре́щиваться / скрести́ться:
kindly responded to my request for and, and I have corrected a clear slip in the verb headword of  (the verb itself and the perfective link to   were swapped). However, I am puzzled by two things: PJTraill (talk) 18:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Both verbs are specified as imperfective, with the other as their perfective form.
 * In Russian Wikipedia (where they date from 2017), both are described as, i.e. perfective, with a link to the other as the imperfective form: that seems a clear error, but I would rather someone more knowledgable than me fixed it.


 * Hi . I think you're right. Openrussian.org also agrees with you. You should totally go ahead and correct the mistakes. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:57, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Openrussian.org doesn't have an entry for the perfective form. Langenscheidt agrees with you as well. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:00, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi. Fixed my accidental copypasta error. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 19:55, 21 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks; I took a look at ru:скрещиваться, which was therefore also incorrect, and am fairly confident that I correctly worked out how to correct it, namely by replacing the call of ru:Шаблон:гл ru 1a-сяСВ with one of ru:Шаблон:гл ru 1a-ся Do you think you could check that I did that right? PJTraill (talk) 20:58, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Your edit in the Russian Wiktionary is correct. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

The etymology of the English word spiel
There is no evidence for a Yiddish origin of the word. See David L. Gold's "The etymology of English spiel and spieler and Scots English bonspiel, on pages 563-570 of his Studies in Etymology and Etiology (With Emphasis on Germanic, Jewish, Romance, and Slavic Languages). Selected and edited, with a Foreword, by Félix Rodríguez González and Antonio Lillo Buades. Alicante. Publicaciones de la Universidad de AlicanteS.S. Valkemirer (talk) 23:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is an overstatement of the thesis of that paper. The original loan may well have been from German, but Yiddish could have reinforced or expanded the semantics. More research would help, but our wording is not incorrect. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

break
Currently, we have:
 * 8. (intransitive, of a fever) To pass the most dangerous part of the illness; to go down, in terms of temperature.
 * Susan's fever broke at about 3 AM, and the doctor said the worst was over.
 * 9. (intransitive, of a spell of settled weather) To end.
 * The forecast says the hot weather will break by midweek.
 * 10. (intransitive, of a storm) To begin; to end.
 * We ran to find shelter before the storm broke.
 * Around midday the storm broke, and the afternoon was calm and sunny.
 * 11. (intransitive, of morning, dawn, day etc.) To arrive.
 * Morning has broken. The day broke crisp and clear.

This seems like a poor way of dividing and grouping the senses the word has. In particular, grouping "to end" together with "to begin" on the same sense line, rather than grouping it with the other "to end" sense, is incoherent. I also question whether the fever-related sense is defined correctly, or whether a fever breaking is using the same sense as a spell of hot weather breaking. But leaving 8 as it is for now, I would re-organize 9–11 as:
 * 9. (intransitive, of a spell of weather) To end.
 * The forecast says the hot weather will break by midweek.
 * Around midday the storm broke, and the afternoon was calm and sunny.
 * 10. (intransitive, of a morning, dawn, day, storm, etc.) To begin, to arrive.
 * Morning has broken. The day broke crisp and clear.
 * We ran to find shelter before the storm broke.

- -sche (discuss) 01:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * My dictionary has number 8 as a specific case of something more general, something like, "to suddenly decrease in intensity". The definitions for 9 and 10b are the same so they can be merged. Your number 10 might say something about the events being expected. maybe something like "To begin, to arrive after a period of anticipation." Also, I don't think it applies to just weather. The main problem in general is to find a balance between being to vague and too specific in the definitions. If you're too vague and just say "to end" for example, then the question arises, "Why not just say 'end' instead of 'break'?" But if you're too specific then you risk not covering all meanings in use. My dictionary has 55 definitions just for the verb, not even counting sub-definitions and prepositional variants, so there will always be room for improvement. --RDBury (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Limburgish
The first usage note contains a lot of POV, especially the bolded part: "However, this has been criticised by linguists because the group fulfils none of the criteria usually applied by linguists to define a language. It is merely the most distinct and most vivid of Dutch dialects. The status includes all dialects spoken in the province of Limburg, even ones that, linguistically, are not Limburgish at all." Of course, the distinction between a language and a dialect is notoriously arbitrary, so that argument is quite an embarrassment. But is the last sentence even true? Does the legal recognition of Limburgish also include Brabantian varieties spoken in Limburg or is this only the IP's opinion? I don't think the second usage note is entirely correct either; e.g. Vaals is to the east of the Benrather line. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  10:29, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

make much of
We have make little of, not make little; what is the best approach? --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:34, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * But we have make much but not make much of; I see your point. It seems to me that the "of" is included in the "make much" idiom. After all you can say "Do you make much money?" and this doesn't invoke the idiom at all. Meanwhile "Do you make much of money?" does, with the right voicing, invoke the idiom and has a very different meaning. So, imo, just move make much to make much of and, if you insist on symmetry, add a redirect for make little to make little of. --RDBury (talk) 10:06, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Follow the lemmings: . DCDuring (talk) 06:19, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * But what about make nothing of, make something of, and also others like make more of, make less of, make a lot of, make anything of? DCDuring (talk) 06:24, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Excellent point. There's also make light of which is similar to, but not the same as imo, make little of. --RDBury (talk) 18:21, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

inrun
Are the two ski jumping sense distinct? Returning2stadia (talk) 22:20, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Judging from File:Ski jumping hill schematic.svg I'd say no. In fact, I'd include the diagram next to the definition. --RDBury (talk) 10:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and merged the definitions and added the diagram. There was already a picture there but I don't think it really explains much. --RDBury (talk) 17:36, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

sward
Audio file appears to be incorrect. Other dictionaries also list this word as being pronounced /swɔɹd/ / /swɔːd/, so I'm not sure why the audio file is /swɑ(ː ? )d/.

Incidentally, I would imagine that there was a period of time when this and sword would have been pronounced the same way. Unless this was pronounced /swɑɹd/ at the time that sword lost its W, why did sword shift, but not sward? Tharthan (talk) 22:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)


 * /swɔɹd/ - /swɔːd/ seems to be correct depending on rhoticity. But /swɑɹd/ - /swɑːd/ is probably a common enough mispronunciation that it should be listed as an alternative. (I'm tempted to say that in the US it's pronounced /lɔːn/, but I'll try to resist.) In any case, the audio file seems problematic. On the second question, it looks like "sword" lost the 'w' sound in Middle English, see sword. I'm not sure that the question of why is even answerable; deducing the sounds of a dead language is difficult enough and trying to go further seems beyond where the available evidence can lead. You could come up with different hypotheses but without a way of testing them they're just speculation. --RDBury (talk) 11:04, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think sward and sword were historically ever homophones, because quite apart from sward having /w/ and sword having none, before the horse-hoarse merger, sward was a word and sword was a  word. And yes, that audio is clearly a nonrhotic speaker who thinks sward is a  word. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:48, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * As it happens, the question about 'sword' came up on |Stack Exhchange ELL just a few days ago. There is a good and full answer there from "Void" - though it actually quotes Phonological history of English, saying the /w/ in 'swore' is analogical, based on 'swear'. --ColinFine (talk) 16:03, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The list there states that "/sw/ before back vowel becomes /s/", and gives an example of, sure enough -- but what then of ? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 23:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That would've had a front vowel historically; i.e. . Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 11:40, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

s̲h̲āh
What is the underscore supposed to represent here? DTLHS (talk) 01:41, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Whatever it is, I'm sure this is supposed to be a transliteration of something in a writing system other than English. Do we really want to get into providing entries for transliterations in scholarly literature? Pinging, who's likely to know the answer to your question, and , who created the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Based on the citation that has "Khwārazm-Shāhs" with the kh also underlined, I suspect it's to indicate that "sh" is a digraph for /ʃ/ not a sequence of "s" and "h" signifying something like /s(ᵊ)h/. And yes, it looks like a transliteration, not English. I would be inclined to RFD it, compare prior discussions of whether to allow transliterations; compare also e.g. Citations:ἄρχων "used" (sic in that script) in English. - -sche (discuss) 02:36, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree with -sche on all points.  04:26, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is English though, so I am not inclined towards an RFD, I must defend here. If it hadn’t the macrons below and above, you wouldn’t assume it to be ”not English”, or “a transliteration” that somehow does not count. There is a horror diacriticorum amongst Anglo-Saxons which is irrational. Surely  is a perfect English word – by the way even if spoken with a ridiculous Slavic accent in an English sentence –, and you also would have less such ideas of delecting spellings with diacritics if it were about German; e.g. German Wikipedia editors are more inclined to have articles for entities in the Ottoman Empire in the current Turkish spellings because it is kind of obvious while those Englishers reuse some dusty vulgar transcriptions because entering “special characters” is oh-so difficult. Fay Freak (talk) 11:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is, in my opinion, an essential difference though between S̲h̲āh with i̲n̲d̲i̲v̲i̲d̲u̲a̲l̲ l̲e̲t̲t̲e̲r̲s̲ marked with a "combining low line" as in the entry, and  Sh āh, with an underscored digraph, as in the citations. --Lambiam 17:26, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If needed, change the title or the citations. J3133 (talk) 17:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is possible to have a page name " sh āh". I further think it is inappropriate to change the citations, since the authors clearly wanted to underscore the unity of the digraph; applying these low lines to the individual graphemes constituting the digraph sends the opposite message. --Lambiam 01:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously, titles with underscores are not possible, which is why your discussion is pointless unless you are offering a better title instead of an impossible title. J3133 (talk) 02:28, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I was arguing against the contention that the "macros below" in the term are diacritics similar to the haček in háček. In my opinion, this is a misrepresentation of the nature of the underlining. In the uses there are no "macros below".  --Lambiam 03:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * FWIW, iff we decide to keep this entry, we could move it to the Unsupported titles appendix and/or perhaps force the pagetitle to display with the "correct" underline using DISPLAYTITLE. However, I'm going to RFD it. - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

hooden, hooden-end
...is a nautical term. For what? See the entry and its citations page for citations. One book says it's a rendering of "woodend" but we don't have n entry for that, either. - -sche (discuss) 02:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I noticed a reference to a fore-hood, so I searched for it and found this. I'm not sure if it's the complete answer, but it may get you started.Chuck Entz (talk) 02:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica lists under "Hood": "The word is applied to many objects resembling a hood in function or shape, such as ... the endmost planks in a ship’s bottom at bow or stern, ... ." That matches the Naval Magazine link. So I think is safe to say that "hooden" is the adjective form of "hood" with that meaning, similar to the way "wooden" comes from "wood". In any case, it seems clear from the given quotations that it's an adjective and not a noun.
 * What gives me pause as far as considering it an adjective and not a noun is that in the entry and the citations page there are a total of two citations of "hoodens", although one may be an error and the other is a mention with apparently incorrect ideas about the etymology, so I suppose it probably is an adjective. I added a sense to hood, with citations and a reference which also mentions "hooding ends" and "hood ends". - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The citation page has "hoodens" twice, but both are related to meaning "hood". But it's moot since it looks like you changed it to adjective anyway. Taking a second look though, it seems like it may once have been a noun (at least partially) going by the "Diary and Consultation Book" quotation. That quote was from about 1700 and it spells "leake" with two 'e's, so that usage may well be obsolete, or maybe it's just an outlier. In any case, the entry looks a lot better now, so, rather than let perfection become the enemy of progress, I vote to keep it the way it is now. --RDBury (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

English God-breathed
Never heard this word before, but I came across it today in a debate I was watching on YouTube. The debate was between a Catholic and a Pentecostal... both debaters were using the word "God-breathed" which apparently means "inspired by God". Not sure the word's history but I'm guessing it's calqued from θεόπνευστος. (I'm a Catholic and have never heard this word before. I've always just heard/used "inspired"/"inspired by God"/"divinely inspired".) Anyway, anyone think it should be added? 2601:49:C301:D810:1DBF:7779:FA2:75 16:37, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is definitely such a word. You can find it in the hymn All Scripture is God-breathed.


 * The term/phrase is amply attested, but it may be WT:SOP: it may be that the entry breathe is missing a sense along the lines of "inspire" or "bring forth", not that "God-breathed" is missing, since is also attested, as are phrases like "God breathed the Scriptures":
 * 1917, J. C. Ferdinand Pittman, Bible Truths Illustrated: For the Use of Preachers, Teachers, Bible-school, Christian Endeavor, Temperance and Other Christian Workers, page 168:
 * that God, who breathed the Scriptures, &quot;cannot lie,&quot;
 * 2010, Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling, Zondervan (ISBN 9780310871736)
 * Paul says that since God breathed the Scriptures, they are therefore useful; he did not put it the other way around (i.e., that they are useful, therefore inspired). God breathed forth the Scriptures as His Word.
 * - -sche (discuss) 21:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I added a sense "to inspire" to breathe. - -sche (discuss) 10:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's the preferred translation of 2 Timothy 3, 16 among Evangelicals. There are no lemmings, and the hyphen makes it SOP. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  16:39, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The whole family of "breathed" forms replacing "inspired" seems to have been created because some evangelical wanted to bring theology out of a formal, traditional and distant register into a colloquial, comfortable one. Like-minded people then copied it. I would definitely label it as "evangelical Christianity", or something like that. Anyone who uses these forms will be interpreted as having certain religious views and attitudes, so they should be warned not to use them unless that's what they want. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:54, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I labelled it "Christianity". OP said they heard it used by a Catholic and a Pentecostal, and I've found uses going back to (Baptist). I'd be concerned that labelling it "evangelical Christianity" might be misunderstood as "Evangelical Christianity" and/or be too narrow. I do think the definition and/or label should be improved to note that the entity doing the breathing is (always? or only usually?) God and the entity being breathed is Scripture or the Word, but I'm not sure how to note that, since a label like "of God, of Scripture" doesn't seem intelligible. (Edit: I took a stab at it.) - -sche (discuss) 20:00, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think that use by a Roman Catholic and a Pentecostal precludes the term from being chiefly Evangelical. Mutual lexical influences between Evangelicals and Charismatics go back a long way. And many conservative American Roman Catholics, especially US American ones, have also been using Evangelical jargon since the 1980s. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  10:22, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

南面 and 北面 seating importance
On both these pages, it says that this was the most important seating position. Since both cannot be true, which was it 南面 or 北面? Languageseeker (talk) 20:43, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * To make the discrepancy more explicit: 南面 ("south side; to be a monarch") says "the person of importance was expected to sit on the south side of a room", while 北面 ("north side; to be a follower") says "the most important person in a room would be seated on the north side". On the basis of the secondary definitions, I would guess someone has gotten their directions mixed up in the etymology of 北面, but I could be wrong. (It is also conceivable both practices were attested in different times or places.) Pinging User:Justinrleung. - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing this out. There must have been a confusion when A-cai made 南面. I've corrected the mistake. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 21:27, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

(to) cap it all (off)
cap it all off presently reads:


 * 1)  To finish or complete something; to add a finishing touch.
 * We went for a walk along the beach, watched the sunset, and then capped it all off with a lovely meal.
 * ''What a day. I lost my wallet, my mobile phone broke, then to cap it all I got a flat tyre.
 * 1)  To surpass or outdo something.

I added the two usexes. I am unsure whether there really are two senses here. Can anyone provide a usex for #2 to show how it exists and is distinct? Mihia (talk) 21:53, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I can't recall hearing sense 2 myself, but based on the structure of the phrase and the meaning of the individual elements, I can see how "cap it all" (the entry linked in the header) could be used with a meaning like "be the cap (top or final piece) over it all, surpass or outdo everything else", and I can find a few books which seem like they may be using it this way, such as:
 * 1910, Minnie McIntyre, Edward E. Wood, Alexander Henry Waddell, Wilfred Jay, Wilfred P. Pond, Bit & Spur, page 16:
 * Mr. Weatherbee&#39;s hunters have achieved wonders in that country of wonderful hunters, and Mr. A. G. Vanderbilt has capped it all, and eclipsed anything that has ever been attempted in four-in-hand races, by winning two Marathons,
 * I don't know if "cap it all off" would also work that way, and the search I used to find the citation above doesn't find me anything with "off". It's also possible to argue that the citation above can be adequately explained as "to [...] complete something", sense 1. - -sche (discuss) 02:24, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks, I added an entry for "cap it all" just recently, as this can be used in the same way as "cap it all off" in cases such as the present two usexes that I added. Clearly "cap something" can mean "outdo/surpass something", and I guess the "something" could be "it all" as you suggest. This usage seems more literal / less idiomatic than the "cap it all off" expression, and I'm not sure either whether "cap it all off " could be used that way. Mihia (talk) 11:45, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the definitions may reflect differences in what the subject of cap it is. The subject could either be an agent (They [added a finishing touch|capped it off]) or an act/event (The tsunami [was the finishing touch/blow|capped off the destruction]).
 * All is just a non-essential intensifier. Off is like an aspect marker indicating completion, possibly with some other semantics to differentiate it from on, up, down, and other similar "particles" that collocate with other verbs.
 * Also we are close to a copyvio of Am Heritage Idioms for our two definitions. DCDuring (talk) 16:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, but can you think of an actual example where "cap it all off" means "surpass/outdo something"? I still can't, but I may be missing something. For example, if we look at the Am H example for this sense, "This last story of Henry's caps them all", then this does not work for me with "off", at least not in the stated sense. Mihia (talk) 18:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

MAGAts
Why has this plural word got a singular definition? SemperBlotto (talk) 10:20, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Likely because it was created by an inexperienced single-purpose editor who only comes here for the Trump-bashing. I think I've seen the singular used so the definition belongs there.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Etymology of the English word sneeze
Currently the etymology of this word is listed as being due to a regular change of fn > sn. How is this regular? It compares it to snore, but snore could have easily been changed due to analogy with sneeze, considering they both have similar meanings (in Old English means "sneeze", this might still have been the meaning of the word when the shift of fn > sn occurred.)

I personally find the orthographic idea, that is: the confusion of ſn > fn, more probable, but I don't want to start an edit war. I'm pinging, who is responsible for the change. I also want the feedback of other editors, and if possible some kind of external source on this word.
 * (forgot to sign; Mårtensås (talk) 12:35, 25 November 2020 (UTC))
 * An orthographic explanation is unlikely, because the fn → sn change happened early, at a time when the vast majority of English speakers were illiterate or semi-literate, and it's not as if these are learnèd words that only educated people would use. I understand the reluctance to consider something to be a regular sound change when it has only two examples, but on the other hand, there are no counterexamples AFAIK, and to this day /fn/ is not a permitted onset cluster in English phonotactics. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:01, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * More compelling (imo) is that languages that did not (completely) undergo the shift still have corresponding cognates with 'fn': Dutch fniezen and Norwegian fnys. (+Icelandic fnæsa) --RDBury (talk) 14:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * PS. There are English words fnord and fnar, but I'm pretty sure they don't count. --RDBury (talk) 14:23, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, looking through Bosworth-Toller and the MED, I find the following fn- words (omitting some derivatives like fnesi "sneezy"), if any more have reflexes in English: - -sche (discuss) 19:10, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OE fnæd (hem, edge, fringe) (cf. fnæs, fringe) &rarr; ME fnæd (border, fringe) &rarr; ?
 * OE fnæst (puff, blast, breath) and fnæstian (breath hard, pant) &rarr; ME fnast (breath, fiery breath of a dragon) and fnasten / fnesten (breathe, esp. hard; pant; snort) &rarr; ?
 * Dialectal English snast (snuff of a candle) is unrelated.
 * OE fnesan and fneosan (sneeze) &rarr; ME fnesen (sneeze) &rarr; E sneeze
 * OE fnora (a sneezing, sneeze) and fnæran (snort) (cf. fnærettan, snort, neigh) (?)&rarr; ME fnorten / fnoren / fnerten / fnirten [cf. OE fnora] (to snore, to snort) (?)&rarr; E snore and snort (although our entries for all of these OE, ME and modern English words may need to be updated and harmonized)
 * ME fnatted [cf. fnasten?] (flattened [of the nose]) and fnattart [fnatted + -ard?] (snub-nosed one, hare) &rarr; ?
 * The last one fnatted becomes ME snatted, see here []. Leasnam (talk) 20:32, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

anti-Semitism, antisemitism (spelling)
Earlier this year, an IP moved the content from anti-Semitism to antisemitism "per scholarly consensus". I reverted that edit because it blithely moved the quotes and ignored the issue that the rarer of the two definitions may only be attested in the hyphenated spelling, and because the hyphenated spelling is more common per Ngrams. Later, a new user made the same switch. What should be done? Our usual practice is to lemmatize the most common form, when one form is significantly more common (in this case the hyphenated spelling is a bit more than twice as common), so we could just revert. But there does seem to have been a shift towards using the unhyphenated spelling, so we could let the edit stand... but in that case, is the rare sense even attested in that spelling? - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we don't have to follow recent spelling trends that closely, especially if there are problems with rare senses and the language doesn't have an academy regulating spelling. What has been the most common form over the past ten or twenty years? ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  19:57, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Anti-Semitism has been about 2x more common. - -sche (discuss) 20:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I have reverted the move because it was obviously wrongheaded. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  12:43, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Just noting that I also reverted the move of content between anti-Semite and antisemite, where again anti-Semite is at least twice as common even as of 2019 (per Google Books' Ngram Viewer). - -sche (discuss) 02:11, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

de boter gevreten hebben
Maybe this should be moved to de boter vreten? ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  19:00, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is a (rare) use of de boter vreten. An attestable alternative form is . --Lambiam 22:34, 25 November 2020 (UTC)


 * While formally an infinitive would be logical, I don't think the expression occurs in any form but the perfect tenses. Lambiam is right that 'gegeten' is the normal form, 'gevreten' is a colloquial variation I wouldn't use, certainly not in writing. So I would move to 'de boter gegeten hebben'. PadshahBahadur (talk) 07:58, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I have put the lemma at . How standard is the participle in de bonen gefret hebben? And de bonen eten seems to occur marginally;  should it be placed under alternative forms? ←₰-→  Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  19:45, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like they prefer butter over beans:, , , , . --Lambiam 21:11, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

show around
Worth an entry? Imetsia (talk) 20:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Lemmings say yes: . DCDuring (talk) 20:52, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

赤紙
Can anyone find a free picture for this? It would be definitely better with a picture (even of a replica). -- Huhu9001 (talk) 03:49, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 応急危険度判定結果 (5581382670).jpg did not spot a free image for the sense of, but another sense is a notice that a building has been condemned as seen here on a building damaged in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. --Lambiam 21:03, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. But interestingly this 赤紙 seems not exactly fitting any of the dictionary definitions. I have no clear idea how to use it. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The term is glossed on the disambiguation page on the Japanese Wikipedia as 地震直後などに被災地で損壊した家屋やビルなどを対象に実施される応急危険度判定において「危険」を意味する赤色の紙, referring to the article . This article does not contain the term, but the caption of the image (the same as shown here) calls it a 判定ステッカ. The disambiguation page is not usable under our CFI; durably attested uses with this meaning, such as in newspapers, would need to be found.  --Lambiam 12:26, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Modern Old Church Slavonic?
What's the deal with the Modern Old Church Slavonic? Why does Old Church Slavonic Wikipedia exists and contains many modern words, place names, etc. E.g., as opposed to , didn't even exist. They even made up related adjective. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:02, 26 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Re why does an OCS Wikipedia exist: there's also a Gothic Wikipedia (essentially written in conlang), and an Old English Wikipedia; I think that, especially in the early days, the WMF let any group of editors who wanted a Wikipedia for an ISO-code-having language have one. I will say (also re what the deal with it is), I presume you know more about it than I do but my limited understanding from previous discussions is that Church Slavonic has remained in liturgical use, much like Latin, so it's plausible that (like with Latin) there might be some "attested" modern words. Should we consider them includable under some criteria or other (like with Latin), or inherently un-includable (like with modern Gothic)... - -sche (discuss) 06:29, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't really know if Church Slavonic was still used liturgically in the more modern times. It seems wrong to me, even if the idea is not to let ancient languages die completely. Yes, I think our criteria should be much stricter than Wikipedia's, which allowed "developments" of long forgotten scripts and languages. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:43, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * According to "Before the eighteenth century, Church Slavonic was in wide use as a general literary language in Russia."  I knew a guy who sang in an American choir that performed Old Church Slavonic hymns, presumably all many centuries old.  Church Slavonic in eastern Europe strikes me as similar to Latin in western Europe.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 08:32, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * But it is isn’t similar, in so far as it has stayed church language, and has not been used like a language of science. If something was used as a literary language it does not mean either that generally there was much literary production at all – maybe it was only some posh people entertaining each other by exercising themselves in writing made-up languages. Indeed this “modern use” (which is restricted to Wikipedia unless someone gives me examples of literary production, which I don’t know of Interslavic either, not even Latin original prose there is recently except by Stephen A. Berard) is more a conlang than Latin. The problem with Old Church Slavonic has always been the corpus being largely ecclesiastical texts, so it is hard to gain proficiency for every day use. I smoked through Trunte’s Old Church Slavonic grammar a decade ago but missed to progress into fluency because the choice of texts is really dull if you are a homo sovieticus incompatible with religious readings. But the answer to ’s question is that those “Modern Old Church Slavonic” people are of like motivation as the Interslavic nerds, probably combined with some religious excitement. And it has generally stayed incomprehensible to me why people conlang, so that one probably doesn’t need to understand that part. Fay Freak (talk) 12:00, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * New Church Slavonic (that is, the recensions of Church Slavonic used up through the 18th century as a literary language throughout much of the Slavic linguistic territory) should definitely be includable, though it should be clearly labelled by recension to avoid confusion with Old Church Slavonic. It would be absurd to exclude the enormous mass of medieval manuscripts and early modern texts written in these lects. Modern/revived Old Church Slavonic of the kind found at OCS Wikipedia is a different matter, should not be confused with New Church Slavonic, and should probably not be included, as it hardly exists outside of Wikipedia. Note that the language still used in liturgies is New Church Slavonic, mostly of the Synodal recension, not revived Old Church Slavonic. The previous discussion here seems to be mistakenly equating the two. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 17:03, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Dork (Dutch surname)
I am unsure what to do with this entry. It seems to be a very rare surname in both Belgium and the Netherlands  ("Dork" does not exist and automatically redirects to "Dörk"), but it does seem to be attested in Dutch, though not always as the surname of a Dutch speaker. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  10:03, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Usage of “нечего” and “ничего”?
Could someone please add Usage Notes to “нечего” and “ничего” clarifying the difference? I have asked about this on Russian Stack Exchange, where I was told that “нечего” was a predicate and “ничего” an object, which are two categories I had not expected in this context. (N.B. I checked and saw that Category:Request_templates does not include a request for usage notes.) PJTraill (talk) 12:23, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * нечего means "there is nothing to". тебе нечего есть - you have nothing to eat.
 * : As the IP above suggested, means "there is nothing to" or "there is no need", as the current definitions.
 * Compare with other words prefixed with the stressed :
 * Prepositions may separate words (it's the same with other words)
 * The entries have usage examples, so I am not sure if usage notes are necessary. You can't request usage notes but you can request usage examples with . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:32, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The list above is not exhaustive. There may be more, but there is нЕзачем, there is no reason for it, or it is waste of time to do X.
 * Usage examples should not be exhaustive. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The entries have usage examples, so I am not sure if usage notes are necessary. You can't request usage notes but you can request usage examples with . --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:32, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The list above is not exhaustive. There may be more, but there is нЕзачем, there is no reason for it, or it is waste of time to do X.
 * Usage examples should not be exhaustive. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Usage examples should not be exhaustive. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

do justice
Second def ("to enjoy to the full") seems a bit off. That's not how I would gloss it in a quote such as "a magnificent cold supper was awaiting him in the dining-room, where he did full justice to a game pie and a bottle of claret". PUC – 15:16, 27 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Seems pretty accurate to me, in the context of the quote. Perhaps you're objecting to the degree to the full?  In that case, we could make the second definition simply "to enjoy".  It seems to me that the use of "justice" here already brings a connotation of measure (as in "the scales of justice"); adding the notion of fullness just quantifies that measure.  yoyo (talk) 03:09, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I’m more in agreement with . I’m not sure enjoyment is the correct sense of do justice; I’d say it’s more like acting on something completely or fully. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:26, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Collins has the senses “to treat with due appreciation; enjoy properly” (labelled as “American English”) and “to show full appreciation of by action” (labelled as “British English”, with as usage example  he did justice to the meal). I am not sure I see a regional difference; in any case, it fits the use seen in the quotation. --Lambiam 13:04, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

cognitive bias
Illusion of external agency. Is there really no published research on this?


 * This is not a lexicographical question – we are a dictionary here. A better place for this question is at our sister project Wikipedia, such as on of the article there on, or at their . But of course there is a lot of published research.  --Lambiam 13:17, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

beroll
An example would be useful, particularly from a published quotation.

Also, some indication of currency, as it has such a distinctly archaic flavour (think of "bestir (yourself)" or "begone!") and may already be obsolete or obsolescent.

Can any editor add information as to which regional Englishes use it? In many years of listening and reading, I've never encountered it in the English language, as spoken or written, in the UK, the US, Australasia or Malaysia.

Another thing: are there any other English verbs with the "be-" prefix that are also intransitive, as this is said to be? yoyo (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * My google books search didn't turn up anything relevant. I'd be surprised if it's a word, other than a misspelling of Beryl or something like that. --RDBury (talk) 04:10, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * PS. On the other thing, bechance. --RDBury (talk) 04:24, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * It may not have made it into modern English. Beroll appears in the OED listed under the prefix be- (not updated since 1887) marked as obsolete and evidenced by a 15th-century quotation. We may need to change it to a Middle English entry. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That fits. The 15th century quote, at least, should be added to the entry. --RDBury (talk) 13:37, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

looking for a word
Hi there. Is there a word in English to denote a person who is incredibly observant, being able to perceive small details? Thank you. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 04:22, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Meticulous. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:26, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Meticulous has more to do with being thorough and paying close attention. Some I could think of: clear-eyed, eagle-eyed, quick-sighted, sharp-eyed, as well as sharp-sighted. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:57, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Observant would be a simple word without any exaggerations, just someone who is quick to notice or perceive things. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:14, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * We define hawk-eye as "a person with keen eyesight or one who is especially observant", and eagle-eyed (adj.) as "having great visual acuity, especially the ability to see at a distance" and "keenly perceptive", although some speakers might take those words as indicating good eyesight more than observantness per se (and we currently defined hawk-eyed, the adjective form, as meaning only "having very good eyesight" without reference to perceptiveness.) - -sche (discuss) 10:01, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * By the way, are we missing an entry for (have) eyes like a hawk? - -sche (discuss) 10:02, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd classify it as a cliche/hyperole but not an idiom since it assumes everyone knows hawks have good eyesight. Imo, a practical test is to translate it literally into another language see if it makes sense. I tried German and found this passage (Süddeutsche Zeitung (Morgen), 28.09.1981 via DWDS): "Die Augen des Falken, die Nase des Geiers, der Mund des Hais." -- "The eyes of a hawk, the nose of a vulture, the mouth of a shark." Going the other way, I've never heard the expressions "nose of a vulture" or "mouth of a shark" but I certainly know what they mean without further explanation. For "hawk-eyed", it's more of a single word and it may not always be clear from context what the exact meaning is. --RDBury (talk) 14:11, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ? Or should the term imply the incredibility? There are multi-word terms like keenly perceptive to strengthen the sense, up to incredibly perceptive. --Lambiam 13:23, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I always thought the conventional expression in Anglo-American culture for being sharp-eyed or observant was eagle-eyed. At Google N-Grams eagle-eyed has been more common than hawk-eyed by large margins in the 19th and 21st centuries and by narrower margins in the 20th century. DCDuring (talk) 17:10, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The expression watch like a hawk IMO refers as much to the persistence of a hawk in tracking potential prey as to its visual acuity. Hawks are often ambush predators in woodlands. DCDuring (talk) 17:19, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * What I'm looking for is a person-word. That is, a word that means "especially observant person". Something along the lines of "He is a real Sherlock Holmes." Sorry if my wording wasn't clear. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 21:00, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * ? In the light of sense 2 ("someone with good eyesight"), I wouldn't be surprised if a fourth sense ("someone who pays close attention to detail") existed. PUC – 21:04, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, like I said, we define hawk-eye as this. "Eagle eye" probably has a similar sense, as PUC says. Really, all of these entries should be examined to see that none are missing senses or suggesting (by presence or omission of senses) distinctions which are not maintained in practice. - -sche (discuss) 04:16, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

hard work
Could we re-add this? It's in the OED, defined as: a great deal of effort or endurance: it takes hard work to be successful in business | my father always taught me the value of hard work. ---&#62; Tooironic (talk) 20:58, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It is the output of working hard, which has always struck me as simply work + hard. Hard work is not much of a set phrase, accepting as it does intervening terms like day's and week's. And def. 2 of hard seems to include some relevant definitions. DCDuring (talk) 23:08, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In England, you can say "that person is rather hard work", meaning that he is difficult to deal with or cantankerous.
 * I say, at least such an entry is not very useful for translations. For Russian there exist various unidiomatic renderings for it, but this may not count because communists are averse to work. Although as Tooironic asks he might have some modern Chinese capitalist idiomatic expressions. Fay Freak (talk) 00:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Setting aside the comment above about how the people who came up with Stakhanovites wouldn't understand hard work, "hard work" in the sense Tooironic refers to does feel SOP. As DCDuring says, it's comparable to "work hard", and you can also contrast it with other SOP expressions like "easy work" or "quick work" (and a job can be a hard job, etc). Ngrams does show "hard work" to be far more common than those other phrases, but as DCDuring says other words can be interpolated, decreasing its set-phrase-ness. The 'person' sense which the IP refers to might be idiomatic, though (compare "piece of work"), and at that point we might or might not decide to provide some definitional information for the 'work' sense beyond just &lit. - -sche (discuss) 05:00, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

pomodoro
Under antonyms are only two terms the name of whose semantic relationship to pomodoro escapes me. But it is definitely not "antonym". DCDuring (talk) 23:02, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * They sound similar and/or are both "pomo de" something. I will change the section header to "See also".  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Or maybe they are simply older terms possibly used in Italian for the tomato. Entry Layout has a "Trivia" section.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 00:06, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The only thing missing in that entry are links to pasta recipes. – Jberkel 01:31, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Proto: ghutom
I recall reading in an old American Heritage Dictionary that the name God and the word god come from something like ghutom or ghutōm, as a Proto reconstruct, and was looking for it here, but did not find it. The online AHD page on Proto lists some elements related to God/god under gheu- and gheu(ə)-, or is it gheu(ɘ)? Thought I should add it here. -There is a Fabric Throughout all of Reality (talk) 23:08, 28 November 2020 (UTC)


 * If you look up the word god, the etymology links you to the Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European words from which it derives. :) - -sche (discuss) 05:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

carrot-and-stick, stick-and-carrot
Can someone confirm these are nouns with plurals, and not just attributive forms (e.g. "a carrot-and-stick situation")? Equinox ◑ 06:56, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * They're listed as alternate forms of carrot and stick which is listed as a noun. The quotations seem to bear this out, and there is even one using the plural. So if you insisted on using the hyphenated form (which is nonstandard), and needed to use the plural (which is rare), then apparently the given plurals would be grammatically correct. I'm pretty sure a good editor would insist on a rephrase though; something can be grammatically correct but so strange sounding that it should be avoided anyway. --RDBury (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about the claim that carrot-and-stick with hyphens is non-standard (see how I used a hyphen in non-standard, where you didn't?). For a start, there is no body that regulates the English language, unlike some other languages, and so what is standard merely arises from usage. If carrot and stick is used an adjectival modifier, eg carrot and stick approach, then it can be hyphenated as carrot-and-stick approach, for example, as in this Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-greece-eu/carrot-and-stick-approach-to-turkey-failing-eu-envoys-say-idUSKBN26Z1LU I agree that English usage is tending towards minimum usage of commas (eg "today" where once there was "to-day"), but there is no hard and fast rule that says "a carrot-and-stick approach" is wrong.

hot dog interjection
Should we remove interjection sense 2? I think it's just intended to mean sarcastic use of sense 1. e.g. Mr Burns in The Simpsons: "Oh, hot dog. Thank you for making my last few moments socially awkward." Equinox ◑ 08:20, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we should. DCDuring (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Remove it or RFV it, I guess, to see if there are clearer citations. Doesn't the interjection have a different pronunciation, btw? In my experience someone exclaiming "hot dog!" in the interjection sense stresses both words equally or the second word more, quite different from someone exclaiming "hot dog! get a hot dog! right here, for a dollar!" or "hot dog!? you offer me a hot dog, at a time like this?!" - -sche (discuss) 01:12, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I went ahead and made the necessary changes. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

harassment
Does it really merit the three separate senses? How would we distinguish these? "1. Persistent attacks and criticism causing worry and distress. 2. Deliberate pestering or annoying. 3. Excessive intimidation." Equinox ◑ 08:39, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I liked what one or two other dictionaries had: one definition focusing on the act by the harasser, another on the resulting feeling on the part of the harassee, eg:
 * an act or instance of harassing; torment, vexation, or intimidation: daily harassment by bullies at school;the harassments of daily life.
 * the condition or fact of being harassed
 * Our three definitions seems to distinguish by persistence, intent, and quantity or degree, none of which seem to me to be essential. DCDuring (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of splitting the entry by point of view &mdash; he drove her to suicide vs. she took offense at being called miss &mdash; but we need cites to make sure the senses really exist as we imagine them. It seems to be one of those words that is weakening over the years due to overuse. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:35, 29 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The current senses do not seem to be readily distinguished in practice. I'm not even sure that the act of harassing and the condition of being harassed are contrastive/distinguishable in practice; perhaps there are citations that would show it to be so, but e.g. "daily harassment by bullies" (the usex for Dictionary.com's sense 1, quoted above) makes as much (or more!) sense as a usex for sense 2: "her daily harassment by bullies" makes more sense as "her daily condition of being harassed by bullies at school" than "her daily act of harassing by bullies at school". Likewise, "experience of harassment" or "experiencing harassment" could be either def i.e. they do not seem distinct. But perhaps other citations support contrasting two senses. - -sche (discuss) 22:57, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

sapiutan and sapi-utan
Apparently these refer to same thing (a species of anoa). Can someone check the most popular spelling? ―Rex Aurōrum｢Disputātiō｣ 09:48, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Category:Nouns that have different meanings depending on their gender by language
Do we want this? I don't like it. It's a mistaken analysis. For example, 🇨🇬 isn't a noun with two different meanings; it's two different, etymologically unrelated nouns, which happen to have different genders. PUC – 13:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We have Category:English heteronyms and the above-mentioned category is similar in concept. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:56, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * A better name may be: “Nouns that have different genders depending on their meaning”. --Lambiam 23:50, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hm, I think Danish has some that are genuinely the same word, etymologically. Right now I can only think of (neuter when uncountable, common when countable), but I'm pretty sure there are others.__Gamren (talk) 02:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I think it's valuable from a synchronic point of view, maybe with the renaming that Lambiam suggests. Ljacqu (talk) 17:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)


 * There's also 🇨🇬 -- "lake" when masculine, "sea" when feminine. As best I can tell, this is one word with one etymology that developed a sense and gender distinction.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:50, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Apparently there's also a neuter sense as a proper noun for place name, FWIW. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 18:51, 4 January 2022 (UTC)


 * If we keep this, we should indeed decide whether it should hold unrelated homographic words, or "the same word" where the meaning differs by gender (and, in that case, whether we only want homographs, or pairs of e.g. masculine- vs feminin-suffixed words), or what. English has some examples, where words for women acquire different connotations or senses, like adventuress vs adventurer; [//www.bbc.com/future/article/20210408-the-sexist-words-that-are-harmful-to-women this article] mentions some others of that type. - -sche (discuss) 23:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

all one's eggs in one basket, put all one's eggs in one basket, don't put all your eggs in one basket
Couldn't we consolidate these entries? The last entry especially seems unnecessary. PUC – 22:01, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Except that the others are derived from the last one, which is far older. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:12, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In exactly that form? Some pretty old other versions are to put all the eggs in the same basket (1851), never to have too many eggs in the same basket (1857), not to get too many eggs in a single basket (1858), too many eggs in one basket (1860), put all her eggs in the same basket (1861), never to put all his eggs in one basket (1865), never to have all his eggs in one basket (1881), a wise man does not put all his eggs in one basket (1884), the sturdy mother does not put all her eggs in one basket (1885), and not to put all her eggs in one basket (1892). --Lambiam 00:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

shell script as a verb
One can say and.

Is itself a verb, with these being derived from it? —Suzukaze-c (talk) 03:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I could imagine saying "I wouldn't want to shell script that." Judging by Google books use of the infinitive form is rare. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Guess you have to do a search for shell-script, shell-scripts, shell-scripting, and shell-scripted and see if anything turns up. — SGconlaw (talk) 14:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

whiteness
I have questions about sense 2, added in [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=whiteness&type=revision&diff=52109512&oldid=50592654 diff] (by a user known for other ...idiosyncratic... additions, like [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad&type=revision&diff=25989424&oldid=25829825 this]). First, does it exist separate from sense 1? It might make sense to add a subsense (to sense 1) for the state or quality of being racially white, but I'm sceptical of sense 2 as written ("the collective of white people and their historical heritage"). Second, if it does exist, is it really dysphemistic? (I don't think that some people having negative views of some thing automatically makes words for the thing dysphemistic. I mean, plenty of people hate Marmite but I don't think "Marmite" is a dysphemism, is it?) - -sche (discuss) 09:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)


 * It is dysphemistic. "Whiteness" in academia appears to be written about exclusively from disapproving perspectives &mdash; I think you would have severe difficulty getting a paper published about the positive side of whiteness &mdash; whereas plenty of people have written positive things about Marmite. Equinox ◑ 09:20, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Is dysphemistic essentially the same as derogatory? If so, make it an alias in the label module.  If not, let's put in in our own glossary instead of linking to Wikipedia.  We don't need Wikipedia's psychoanalysts judging motives for using a word ("Dysphemism may be motivated by ..."). Vox Sciurorum (talk) 10:24, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The term itself is neither dysphemistic nor derogatory, and we shouldn't label it as such. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)


 * (e/c) ...that's a good question. Our own definition of dysphemism, "the use of a derogatory, offensive or vulgar word or phrase to replace a (more) neutral original", is also how I understood it. And by that metric, I don't see how this is a dysphemism (what "more neutral" word would a speaker use for whiteness than "whiteness"? speakers viewing whiteness or white privilege as problematic is different from the words "whiteness" or "white" being dysphemisms). But yes, now that you point it out, dysphemism also just doesn't seem distinct from what we label en or en; most derogatory words (coon, honky, etc) could be replaced with neutral words (black, white, etc), and it's probably undesirably redundant to add a "dysphemism" label to all of them...(?) - -sche (discuss) 11:17, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Or we could decide that anything labelled "derogatory" or "offensive" should not also be labelled "dysphemistic", leaving "dysphemistic" only for things that don't rise to the level of "derogatory" or "offensive"? But the only six entries in Category:English dysphemisms are a grab bag of things which seem better labelled in other ways... - -sche (discuss) 13:47, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems wrong, -sche. Because it always still has sense 1 and means not as suggested only “the collective of white people and their historical heritage” but the property of whitesness of people, cultural implements etc. as caused by “the collective of white people and their historical heritage”. People tend to phantasize particularly meanings which are not there but as (manipulative) connotations, one must be wary of that. For a simpler example, it reminds me of an editor that  means the termination of an employment contract, while this is the opposite of what it means. And that a sense is particularly often used by journalists and sociologists is also a red flag as these are groups of people who love  (more than jurists, which for lexicographic purposes are an exact science). I mean, somewhere words cannot also mean the opposite of what they mean. If a word ends in  it takes some run-ups for it to not signify a property or characteristic. Fay Freak (talk) 14:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In much discourse, especially written, white/whiteness, etc are unmarked. The use of whiteness seems intended to challenge the universal validity of various unstated premises in discourse. As such, it is could be seen as dysphemistic, especially by those who feel threatened by the challenge. To call something into question by giving it a name doesn't seem to me to be the same as derogation or dysphemy. DCDuring (talk) 14:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * To me, a dysphemism should be something that sounds worse than it is, just as a euphemism is something that sounds better than it is. I would even go so far as to say that whiteness is more of a classical euphemism: it's a way of talking about the asserted suppression of everything but the white identity in First World cultures without using polarizing words like "racism". It's only because we're used to reading between the lines in such discussions that it seems to be negative. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I favour a neutral and objective approach to compiling a dictionary, i.e. words should be listed in the meanings they used in, regardless of whether you agree with the motivations behind them. There is a subset of users here who seem to push political points of view in their Tea room comments. You know who you are.
 * The (semi-)academic sense should not be called a "dysphemism". It is not intended as a more derogatory alternative for another word, whatever the intentions of the people who use the word are. It may be appropriate to note that it is mainly used in criticisms of whiteness; maybe also that it often seems to rankle a decent number of white people(?). Also, is the definition quite correct ? I thought that it often means something closer to white privilege. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  12:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sure metonymy exists, but I think the underlying meaning is still something line "the state or quality of being white" in line with other -ness words, isn't it? As Chuck says, we're used to reading between the lines, and are aware that whiteness is talked about as privileged, but I don't think the word means privilege; books say things like just like they say, whereas  doesn't seem to occur and wouldn't make as much sense (being tautological at best). No? - -sche (discuss) 15:09, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

(Car) park
I came across this unfamiliar usage just now:


 * Most of the staff, however, were not a permanent part of Mar-a-Lago; they were local caterers and car parks, hired for the evening.

It's from After the Gold Rush, a 1990 Vanity Fair feature by Marie Brenner (which resulted in her having a glass of wine poured down her suit by the subject, apparently).

Given the context, the sense seems transparent, as does its evolution, but the only related entry that has a matching definition is parker, AFAI can tell. Should something be added to park and/or car park?

- 2A02:560:4262:2600:1C22:5177:8FD7:A89C 17:59, 30 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I can also find a cite (at Citations:car park), which might also refer to a person. A more usual term seems to be "car park attendant", though, judging by what turns up when I search for "(work|works|working|worked) as a car park". - -sche (discuss) 21:21, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * valet? – Jberkel 23:48, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Idiom labels
I've been working on some German idioms recently, creating some new entries and expanding others. Someone went through and removed "idiom" from the definition labels; the reason given on one of them was "The 'idiomatic' label/tag is stupid." Is this official policy? If so then why does Idioms suggest using the label? Admittedly I made some formatting/header errors which were fixed in the process, and I now understand what I did wrong with those, but I'm still confused on this issue. The entries in question are in die Enge treiben, auf den Schlips treten, auf den Zahn fühlen, Rechnung tragen, zur Schau tragen.
 * No, it's not official policy. The idiom label is completely usable and widespread across Wiktionary. But there is some reason to doubt its usefulness and application (see, for example, ). In the end, including it seems like mostly a matter of user preference. Imetsia (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion referred to above (#"idiomatic"_label_(again)) is a good summary of the issues: different people intend different senses of "idiomatic" by it, and use those even where doing so adds no useful information (e.g. labelling a phrase "idiomatic" to try to prevent it being RFDed as SOP: well, if a phrase weren't idiomatic, we wouldn't normally include it, it's like labelling senses en), or is incomprehensible (e.g. labelling one sense of a single polysemous word). Consequently, other people remove it. There may be places where it would be sensible to use the label, if we could agree on what we mean by it and then clean up inappropriate uses. In the meantime it is functionally a matter of preference, as Imetsia says. - -sche (discuss) 02:58, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I think the label does two useful things. First, already covered in the discussion you linked to, it automatically places the phrase is the idioms category, which might not be done otherwise. And secondly it distinguishes idioms from other multiword phrases. As a learner of a foreign language it's very useful to know that the reason you can't decipher a phrase is because it's meaning can't be deduced from the words alone, and not because there is some quirk of grammar that you don't understand or that one of the words has a meaning that you don't understand yet. We do have at least one multiword German phrase entry (schuld sein) that's not an idiom so it seems helpful to have some kind of indicator that the phrase is an idiom and not some kind of set phrase.
 * Speaking of which, to change the subject a bit, is there a preferred way to deal with set phrases here? I know the policy is to not create a new entry when the phrase implies the meaning. But there are occasions when the meaning does not imply the phrase. For example with the set phrase take action (another multiword phrase that's not an idiom), without the entry there would be no way for and English learner to know that the correct phrase is "take action" and that "do action" and "make action" are incorrect. --RDBury (talk) 04:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Take action is labeled as an idiom in MWOnline and appears in at least one idioms dictionary. How would someone learning English decide to look up [[take action]]. At best, the entry provides conformation that take action is a correct expression. To learn that the other light verbs don't form correct English expressions would require looking up each possible light verb + action combination, assuming that Wiktionary actually had all valid light verb + action combinations, and finally inferring that the other combinations were incorrect. Wouldn't it seem more efficient and more likely that one would go to either English Wiktionary or the Wiktionary in one's native language and look up English translations of the term in one's own language for which one is seeking a corresponding English term? DCDuring (talk) 16:25, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't account for MW, but seems that in Wiktionary the sum-of-parts rule is used. In this case take means "To practice; perform; execute; carry out; do." (def. 33) and action means "Something done, often so as to accomplish a purpose.". To me, putting those together gives an accurate definition of take action, so SOP. I think "collocation" is the term used here since we have (as I just discovered) a list of similar expressions under Appendix:Collocations of do, have, make, and take. Now that I know this appendix exists I'm thinking this is exactly what is needed, but it's too difficult to find. I think first, rename it to Appendix:English light verbs since a) 'collocation' is unnecessary jargon, and b) hard-coded lists are never a good idea. Then make sure all the 'light verbs' and corresponding objects link to this appendix under the relevant definition, or perhaps as another definition for the object. Third, since my primary focus here is German, I'd add a similar Appendix:German light verbs and populate it with (to start with) machen, treffen & tun. Apparently there is an inactive Wikollocation project for this kind of thing, and it could be useful if it's revived, though I'm not a fan of the name.
 * I think at least and  should be labelled as idiomatic, but the others probably qualify as well, going off definition 3 of . Maybe we could go some way describing what may be labelled "idiom" (e.g. clearly figurative multiword phrases that aren't proverbs) and what may not (e.g. clearly literal light verbs) even if a considerable grey area is left to personal taste. ←₰-→  Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  17:53, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Besides MWOnline, at least two idiom dictionaries, Fairlex and McGraw-Hill, call take action an idiom.
 * Light verb and light verb construction are as much jargon as collocation. I'm sure that very few English speakers know what it means. DCDuring (talk) 21:56, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I've always wondered. And disappointed that in the examples at light verb, the light verb constructions are actually heavier (longer). – Jberkel 01:24, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, light verb constructions are less direct and longer than the corresponding direct verb. (In fact, DWDS calls one of them "papierdeutsch" - "legalese") I think the point is they are light in meaning, not light in length. Yes "light verb" is jargon. Any field of knowledge, from Fortnight to philology, has it's own jargon, so some jargon in unavoidable. But avoidable jargon should be avoided. The appendix has a sentence or two which explains what a light verb is, and it's the concept that links the verbs the appendix is talking about, so I'd say that in this case 'light verb' is necessary jargon and a better name for the appendix. In general, jargon is useful for a site targeted for the general public if a) it crystallizes a concept that is under discussion, b) it is defined either at the start of the discussion or with a link to a definition c) it is not defined using more jargon d) it is consistent with usage in literature about the subject. There is a purpose for 'collocation' on this site, but I think it's use can and should be restricted to pages meant for editors (style guides, rules for inclusion, etc.). --RDBury (talk) 05:17, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I think an "idiom" (by contrast with an "idiomatic") label could be useful. I think things that are idiomatic are not necessarily idioms. When I think "idiom", I think of things like, , or . I don't think of , , , or as idioms any more than  or  are idioms. There are some borderline cases that have fairly straightforward meanings, or are merely common similes, like  or . I would support using an "idiom" label for the first group.
 * That's a good point. One issue is that when you put 'idiom' into the label is comes out 'idiomatic' on the page, which seems unfortunate since they are different things. The word 'idiomatic' often just means following common usage patterns, as in "Yoda has an unidiomatic manner of speaking." It doesn't mean Yoda never uses idioms, just that he tends to put verbs in unusual locations. Many of the labels already have 'idiom' instead of 'idiomatic' in the label, so if whatever mechanism doing the change from 'idiom' to 'idiomatic' is removed or disabled, then I think it would go a long way to clarify things. --RDBury (talk) 19:19, 1 December 2020 (UTC)