Wiktionary:Tea room/2024/May

комунистички on Serbo-Croatian
Hello. I need a Serbo-Croatian meaning of "комунистички"! Frozen Bok (talk) 10:55, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

spaghetti
"Spaghetti" needs sense of "becoming nervous," very common in internet slang. Originally deriving from the infamous 4chan copypasta about a person buying Atelier Totori at GameStop, but becoming nervous and spaghetti falling out of their pockets. Perhaps also influenced by Eminem's "Lose Yourself" which has the line "mom's spaghetti." 73.151.120.25 20:13, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Can you give an example/examples of how this sense is used in a sentence? Mihia (talk) 19:46, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * After researching a bit more it seems it is more localized to the online communities I personally frequent than I thought. Still exists, but perhaps not worthy of its own entry. 73.151.120.25 17:49, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

(Ukrainian) гольф
I have a question about the declension for the Ukrainian word гольф - golf (uncountable) or an item of clothing (countable).

The declension table and reference of R:uk:SUM-11 shown on the existing Ukrainian entry shows the genItive for golf (uncountable) as гольфа.

However, Kyiv Dictionary - R:uk:Kyiv shows the genitive for golf (uncountable) as гольфу, and the genitive singular for that item of clothing (knee sock and possibly also a type of upperwear) as гольфа. GT and Ukrainian wikipedia pages also seem to consistently use гольфу as the genitive for golf (uncountable), i.e. м'яч для гольфу, etc.

Any suggestions? Would it be safe to start changing the page and various links to follow the KyivDic declensions? Thanks. DaveyLiverpool (talk) 21:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)


 * @DaveyLiverpool: Hi. Your findings are correct. (genitive, not genetive)
 * @Voltaigne: Hi Are you able to split the term into senses, change the declension for one and add the reference? I will do it myself when I have time, if you don't get around. Quite busy now. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:03, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅. Voltaigne (talk) 08:53, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you both, @Voltaigne and @Anatoli T.. I will sort out the main entry and links with the split senses today. I think I'll leave the clothing sense as "knee length sock" for now, and maybe somebody else will add any different meaning as appropriate. (And thanks for the genetive genitive correction - it's not the first time I've done that!)
 * I got there first but feel free to edit further if necessary. Voltaigne (talk) 09:01, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Voltaigne, @DaveyLiverpool, @Benwing2: Hi and thanks, all. I think it's fair to add both genitive form and  for the sport sense, since this is what most other dictionaries say.
 * A quick quote (even if it may sound illiterate):
 * I changed the following way:
 * гольф
 * гольф
 * Pls add a note if "го́льфа" is considered proscribed. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

be on someone&
I don't remember how we lemmatize this kind of expression. Do we usually include the verb? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:21, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * ✅ to . Ioaxxere (talk) 17:55, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * As Ioaxxere said in the edit summary, it depends on whether it can only be used with forms of be, or can also be used with other verbs. (This can apparently be used with other verbs.) BTW, you can also be up someone's ass in a similar sense: . - -sche (discuss) 20:46, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

crack up

 * To become insane; to suffer a mental breakdown.

Does anyone perceive this as "dated"? It does not seem at all dated to me here in the UK. Is it perhaps dated in the US? Or is it in fact that I am "dated" myself? Mihia (talk) 19:42, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It seems dated to me (US), though I am myself rather dated. DCDuring (talk) 01:27, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn’t seem dated to me, though I can’t speak for the US. As far as synonyms for madness are concerned, it does seem to me that doolally is a word that’s going out of fashion these days, though perhaps not enough to call it ‘dated’, and we already have a ‘dated’ tag for the longer form doolally tap. Overlordnat1 (talk) 07:04, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's a fair bet, then, that "dated" was added by an AmE speaker, and I have changed it to read "dated in US".
 * While we are looking at regional variations in "crack up", I was also a bit puzzled that I have never heard of the sense "To crash an aircraft or automobile". I would expect to know that if it exists in BrE. I see that Collins lists it as "US", so I have added that label to our entry. Mihia (talk) 08:33, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Dutch gat
We have two entries for, both under the PoS Noun. The first has the basic meaning of “hole”, the second of “arsehole”. Is there a good reason to treat these as a pair of homonymous words, rather than one word with several senses? The second noun is assigned the gender “n or m”, but the entry on the Dutch Wiktionary gives only the neuter gender, irrespective of sense. --Lambiam 21:15, 3 May 2024 (UTC)


 * However, Dutch Wiktionary does provide a reason, which is also that given by the WNT. Namely that plural and diminutive for "arsehole" are, rather than . We should ping , (who else?) and ask them how absolute this distinction is. I've definitely heard "gatje" in the relevant sense. 82.82.152.162 22:41, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * So then we have this plural and diminutive wrong. --Lambiam 07:29, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I would personally lengthen the vowel for the plural and diminutive in each sense, but those forms are not very common. I doubt that the WNT's note would be nonsensical, however, so I see no problem with maintaining the split POS headers. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  22:10, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That's exactly what I suspected: there's no 100% split. So I suppose we should have noun 1 (hole) with long-vowel forms and noun 2 (arsehole) with both forms. I'll edit accordingly. 82.82.152.162 22:40, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

reasonable time
Does having a Wikipedia legal article save this from being SoP? What else could it mean? Equinox ◑ 22:00, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It might interest you that there is a translingual concept behind it that must be denoted by something. I can link it as a translation of, defined in § 121 and pervasive in our whole legal system, without needing further explanation at the foreign language entry. We can conclude that it is not anyhow simply a reasonable time but a time normatively required or deduced from the laws applicable to the case according to , hence passes WT:FRIED. Fay Freak (talk) 22:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Any MWE's use in a given context is determined by any special meaning of the components terms in that context. In the case of a legal context, a judge or similar gets to play Humpty Dumpty, at least within the courtroom, providing any special meaning required (in the judge's opinion) in the context. I don't know what discretion a judge has with respect to time, but reasonable would seem to provide plenty of room for judicial discretion. DCDuring (talk) 01:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think this is SoP. At least at English common law it just means a period of time which is reasonable in the circumstances. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:12, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Readers might benefit from a general (law) gloss at the adjective entry, by which we would also (albeit redundantly) shed light on the set term , for instance. I would not have created  if I had formed the law definition of before. But then again Equinox complains if we pompously define terms by a generally applicable abstraction, and it does not abscond the consideration that the long entries are useful when searched or linked for explanation and hardly harmful. If we don’t agree in dogmatic constructions then we can agree on proliferation risks, practical use and SEO. Fay Freak (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think a "legal" sense is warranted here. It simply means "a time that is reasonable", which is entirely SoP. It's not a term of art that has some special meaning which one cannot discern from the words reasonable and time. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:53, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This is because you put your reasoning into it a lot. It is non-obvious that it means “as soon as circumstances permit”, or “convenient” by a fair balance; I might have thought it rather means a “non-insufferable time”; as a foreigner, I would not have expected it to correspond, in corpora, to . It is one thing whether one can discern the meaning from the parts, another whether it is more effective to have an entry in spite of your ability, for clarification, that’s where my consideration of proliferation risks of further sum-of-parts entries, that should be greater than the clarification usefulness of the entry in order to delete it, comes in: I voted to keep Talk:antique shop by the same. Fay Freak (talk) 13:02, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You don’t disagree, you are right and I see it the same way, it is exactly what happens, though I don’t know whether and how you make the conclusion of the term not passing WT:FRIED, withsaying mine. Fay Freak (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Clearly, unverzüglich = +, that is, “without delay”. The legal uses mentioned on Wikipedia in  allow for some delay (but not a delay by an unreasonably long time). BTW,  is listed in the Deutsches Wörterbuch by the Grimm brothers, who write it appears to have fallen into disuse after the 17th century.  --Lambiam 08:04, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, but what constitutes a delay is decided, and provided, by weighing the conflicting values and interests, by the token of applicable legislation that has already outlined some thoughts in general. The Civil Code technicalized terms that had been mere everyday terms before; and the Anglo-Saxon jurists achieved the same result in their fashion. Fay Freak (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

proper adjective
Our def says "an adjective derived from a proper noun, such as British derived from Britain". But derived how? Not all adjectives derived from proper nouns are proper adjectives: there are many types of derivation. Meanwhile the Wikipedia article suggests it's just any adjective with a capital letter (more or less). Equinox ◑ 22:23, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It probably should at least say "derived from a proper noun and retaining its capitalisation". On the other side of the coin, what kinds of capitalised adjectives would not, in some way, derive from proper nouns? The potential exceptions in the Wikipedia article, that I can see, are "For example, in Canadian government documents, Native and Aboriginal are capitalized", but who's to say that they do not, or would not, capitalise "Native" and "Aborigine" as nouns too? Also, there could be an overlap with the fusty practice of Capitalising Words that are thought to be Important. Mihia (talk) 00:50, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that Native and Aboriginal are intended to be proper nouns in Canadian public discourse so that they can serve as convenient hypernyms for the various native and aboriginal peoples of Canada, having meaning distinct from the meanings of the adjective. BTW, I would expect that there is virtually no truly adjectival use of such words, but rather attributive use of the proper noun. Comparative, superlative, and gradable use seems to me to risk being felt as insulting or demeaning. But perhaps there really is predicate use. DCDuring (talk) 01:25, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I was imagining such uses as "Native languages" or "Aboriginal culture". Personally I would naturally read these as adjectival, even if the words are also used capitalised as nouns. Actually, I thought that "Aboriginal/aboriginal" as a noun was an error, even almost offensively so. Our article Aboriginal, says, of the noun, "was for a time considered incorrect", implying no longer so, whereas Collins dictionary says "could cause offence" and AH says "Often Offensive". I think we should probably add a caution to our entry. Mihia (talk) 08:45, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think such terms do not commonly, unambiguously meet any of the tests for adjectivity, though usage as predicate looks like the best possibility and there is a clear pattern of exceptional usage that applies to almost any proper noun. Examples that do are terms like American, Japanese, Swedish formed by adding an adjectival suffix to a proper noun. I believe we stipulated that all English proper nouns can be used in plural form (as well as singular). I don't recall whether we also stipulated that they can be used comparatively and gradably: "a very/more/typically New York style/manner/expression/dialect"). Why would we want to duplicate semantic content under an Adjective PoS for virtually every proper noun. We would probably have to do so also under an Adverb PoS for some proper nouns. Please don't PoS our users so many duplicative PoSes. DCDuring (talk) 15:38, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

except
Conjunction example: Anyone agree/disagree that this is a conjunction? The definitions distinguish conjunction "with the exception (that)" from preposition "with the exception of", yet "... with the exception that teasingly" makes no sense, while "... with the exception of teasingly" makes some sense. So, is "except" actually a preposition in that example? Any views? Mihia (talk) 00:37, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I never made fun of her except teasingly.
 * It occurred to me also to notice that we list "other than" only as a preposition, and, of course, "I never made fun of her other than teasingly" is fine ...
 * The object of a preposition in English grammar, traditionally at least, must be a noun (including a noun clause). And I would expect normal users who have had any English grammar would object to except being called a preposition.
 * I normally like to stick close to a surface analysis, but I would read the conjunction example as I never made fun of her except ((the times) when I made fun of her) teasingly. DCDuring (talk) 01:17, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I notice that we have excepting (and its opposite including) as a preposition too, so that would seem to be the best classification to me, or at least the most consistent. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 06:54, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Another fly in the ointment is that the other modern conjunction example, "You look a bit like my sister, except she has longer hair" can be seen as short for "You look a bit like my sister, except that she has longer hair", so does that mean that an implied that-clause, i.e. noun clause, is the object of "except", i.e. "except" is again a preposition?? I see that M-W give a conjunction example "was inaccessible except by boat", which is another awkward use with adverbial. Collins says that modern conjunction sense is "informal" for "except that", which I think basically I agree with. Mihia (talk) 08:56, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I suppose another way to explain the "teasingly" sentence could be as theoretically meaning "I never made fun of her except I made fun of her teasingly", but this does require reversal of polarity in the "except clause", e.g. "you can travel any way except by bus" = "you can travel any way except you cannot travel by bus", and also for the verb-as-complement cases: "I did everything except steal" = "I did everything except I did not steal". Is this fair, I wonder? Mihia (talk) 20:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm coming around toward the conjunction PoS. There seem to be some uses that are informal but others seem broadly acceptable. The evolution seems to be from preposition ("except that [content clause]") to conjunction ("except [elision of content clause]"). A gloss of "other than" covers many cases (non-clause phrases?), but "but" seems best for others (full clauses). I haven't tested this out against enough collocations to be confident. DCDuring (talk) 15:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't feel confident enough to change the PoS anyway, so I think I'll leave that aspect as it is for now, but what annoys me is that the definitions look the wrong way round in terms of substitutability, as I mentioned at the top. Presently we have prep. "with the exception of; but" and conj. "With the exception (that)". Unfortunately it is the preposition definition that substitutes into the problematic supposed conjunction cases: "except teasingly" = "with the exception of teasingly" (just about), while "with the exception that teasingly" makes no sense at all, and "I did everything except steal" = "I did everything but steal", while, again, "I did everything with the exception that steal" makes zero sense. I wish there was some way to avoid this. If we were sure, we could explicitly mention the omitted full clauses, but again I do not feel totally confident that e.g. "I did everything except steal" really is a shortening of "I did everything except (that) I did not steal". Mihia (talk) 09:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In any case, even the "obvious" prepositional example, "There was nothing in the cupboard except a tin of beans", can be given the same treatment: "There was nothing in the cupboard except there was a tin of beans". Mihia (talk) 17:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I sometimes bolster my confidence about this kind of thing by consulting CGEL (2002). I haven't read what they say about except and about shortening. I'll see what I can find. DCDuring (talk) 19:41, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * From CGEL (2002) pp. 641-2:
 * Matrix-licensed complements
 * Some prepositions appear with a wide range of complements that are licensed not by the preposition itself but by an element in the matrix clause to which the PP in question bears a modifier relation. One clear case of a preposition of this kind is except, as illustrated in the following examples:
 * [There follow 12 examples: NP, "bare role NP", PP, AdjP, AdvP, bare infinitival, to-infinitival, gerund-participle, declarative content clause, closed interrogative, open interrogative, subjunctive clause]
 * What this indicates is not that except licenses complements of all the different phrasal categories in the grammar, but rather that it takes as its complement something licensed by features of the clause containing it. That is, the internal syntax of a PP with a head like except is, unusually, not independent of the syntax of the matrix clause in which it appears.
 * The authors go on to identify excepting. excluding, save, and including as similar in this regard.
 * Elsewhere they say that they don't believe that the different complements do not warrant different PoSes. They seem to prefer 'preposition' as PoS. DCDuring (talk) 20:21, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You wrote "Elsewhere they say that they don't believe that the different complements do not warrant different PoSes", but, I wonder, should the words "do not" be deleted? Mihia (talk) 17:52, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed. So corrected above. DCDuring (talk) 16:19, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
 * This makes me wonder whether we should have a non-gloss definition with usable idiomatic glosses as subsenses, with usage examples for each type of complement, for the benefit of learners and translators. DCDuring (talk) 20:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Unless anyone can come up with preposition definitions that substitute only into preposition examples, and conjunction definitions that substitute only into conjunction examples, I agree about the non-gloss def if separate PoS sections remain. But, in fact, can we put all types of complement under one heading, "Preposition and Conjunction", and add a usage note saying that these are difficult to systematically distinguish for all complement types? (I see that also suggests the possibility of combining them, below.) Or, if for reasons we can't have "Preposition and Conjunction" as a heading, maybe put everything under Preposition, with a note citing your source? Mihia (talk) 17:43, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Regarding what you call the "polarity", I think that is explained by introduction of never:
 * "you can travel any way except by bus" = "you can travel any way except you cannot travel by bus"
 * "you cannot travel any way except by bus" = "you cannot travel any way except you can travel by bus"
 * "I did everything except steal" = "I did everything except I did not steal"
 * "I did nothing except steal" = "I did nothing except I did steal"
 * * "I made fun of her except teasingly." = "I made fun of her except I did not make fun of her teasingly"
 * "I never made fun of her except teasingly." = "I never made fun of her except I made fun of her teasingly"
 * 1, 2, 3 and 6 seem fine; 4 sounds slightly clunky to me, and to me 5 doesn't work in this pattern (it would actually mean "I made fun of her, but I did it teasingly").
 * —DIV (1.129.111.153 12:55, 14 May 2024 (UTC))


 * I'll try to look through grammar works myself soon and see if I can find anything useful. Many other dictionaries do seem to have both above-mentioned parts of speech for this, but there does not appear to be much semantic difference, so the difference must be grammatical. Also, some of the dictionaries do something interesting, which is mention both parts of speech in one 'header' and then put all the definitions under that one lumpenheader, leaving it to the reader to decide which part of speech they think a given usage is. Whatever we do (whether we keep both above-named POS sections or consolidate to one POS section) we could have a usage note explaining the situation: A, B, and C reference works consider the word to have parts of speech X and Y, while D, E, and F reference works consider it to only be part of speech X. If there is an issue with the substitutability of the definitions, I suspect we can fix that, regardless of any POS changes... - -sche (discuss) 21:35, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've put some possible usage examples at Talk:except. I don't know whether there are glosses other than the synonyms but, save, excepting (which seem to take just about the same range of complements). It looks like any complement type (clause, phrase; PoS) a verb could take can follow except when it follows that verb. DCDuring (talk) 23:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hans F. Nielsen and Erik W. Hansen's 2007 Irregularities in Modern English, page 283 on, discusses the history: "Except that (or except): as a conjunction it is a late formation (sixteenth century); the form's prepositional function is earlier (OED). They argue except was originally a preposition, it was used in clauses such as except that that... where for a variety of reasons the structure came to be simplified to except that, and there was a "reinterpretation of the functional status of the now dangling preposition, in our case except, as a conjunction. the original preposition, except, is lexicalized/generalized as a conjunction (cognitive economy!). Michael Skiba's 2021 Participial Prepositions and Conjunctions in the History of English, page 71, also says preposition except is older than conjunction except; "A special item is except as a preposition with a prepositional phrase as a complement (e.g. "except in the time of his sickness"; CEOFFIC2) This syntactically rather complex construction is attested last of all functions of except." (They imply date of attestation may be an artefact, however, in that they note that some verbs' participles are attested as prepositions earlier than as participles.)
 * Both parts of speech seem to be widely regarded as existing now. We'll probably have to take some care to make sure we're assigning the usexes to the right POS, but the same is true of many words (save and but also come to mind). I would not be inclined to have a combo header; it feels like a copout compared to having and trying to explain the difference between the two parts of speech. (It also seems like a pandora's box; are e.g. aliquot and woman to have "Noun and adjective" headers next?).
 * (Other reference works I came across and will mention: the 2008 Random House Webster's Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation, page 187, "Except is usually a preposition or a conjunction"; the 2010 AMA Handbook of Business Writing, "Except is a preposition or conjunction that means not including.".)
 * Also of note: Thomas Elliott Berry's prescriptive The Most Common Mistakes in English Usage (1961, reprinted 2017): "'except' is generally either a preposition or a verb. It is never a conjunction. Wrong: He will not do the work except I give the order. (Wrong because “except” is being used as a conjunction." In the process of making its argument that except should not, prescriptively, be a conjunction, it gives a type of sentence (which it's easy to find more of) where it says it is, descriptively [or so he says], a conjunction!
 * - -sche (discuss) 03:33, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "He will not do the work except I give the order" presumably is the archaic sense "unless". On the face of it, this seems the clearest case of conjunction. One issue I have with modern "except" being a conjunction, even with a clause, is the fact that "that" can be inserted. E.g. "You look a bit like my sister, except (that) she has longer hair." If "except" alone is a "pure" conjunction, why would this be? For example, "unless" is normally a conjunction, let's hope, and we say "I'll go unless it rains", never "I'll go unless that it rains", at least not in modern English. It would appear, therefore, that "except that" is the "true" conjunction, and that "except" is just a shortened form. By that token, our main conjunction entry should be "except that", and our entry at "except" should point to that for these cases. As you say "We'll probably have to take some care to make sure we're assigning the usexes to the right POS", well, yes, but therein lies the rub ... or do I mean nub. If the clause complement cases were hived off to "except that", or "except-as-short-for-except-that", could we list all other complement types under preposition? Mihia (talk) 15:05, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * An analysis as a preposition can handle complements that are NPs, that- and wh-clauses, and possibly some other types of clauses. A subordinating conjunction PoS can only handle. A coordinating conjunction analysis can handle any PoS but only if it is the same PoS as the coordinate. I don't see how these analyses handle AdvPs, AdjPs, and PPs. The CGEL analysis says that the complement in most (all?) cases is licensed by the clause (usually specifically the verb thereof) in which it occurs. The CGEL analysis is more general, but doesn't satisfy our need for a PoS header. I suppose what we need to do is have our usual PoSes covering the cases that they can and add a usage note, with usage examples, as if the AdvP, AdjP, and PP cases were exceptions. DCDuring (talk) 00:47, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It did occur to me that something like "I always beat him, and easily" is just about possible, i.e. conjunction joining disparate elements à la "I never made fun of her except teasingly" -- at least, what could we call "and" there other than conjunction? Again, one could posit "I always beat him, and easily" = "I always beat him, and I beat him easily", but again it is not totally obvious to me that "I always beat him, and easily" is allowed only as a shortening of the longer version. Also "He gave it to me although grudgingly", etc. So, OK, having gone all round the houses and back again, let's make/leave all the non-NP complement cases as conjunction. I think I definitely will make the definitions non-gloss, though, for the reasons I mentioned earlier (defs for one PoS substitute into examples for the other). By the way, I wonder whether you might be able to look at my question a little earlier in the thread as to whether the words "do not" should be deleted from what you wrote? Mihia (talk) 20:46, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

transparence
Does anyone else think that transparence should be marked as an alternate form/spelling of transparency? Here is the Ngram, if you need to see it: Multiple Mooses (talk) 08:56, 4 May 2024 (UTC)


 * My instinct would be to make it a synonym of (rather than alternative form of) since -ence vs -ency seems like a separate word. (Compare dependence, dependency.) - -sche (discuss) 09:04, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with . It's not pronounced in a similar way to transparency. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:54, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * May be worth mentioning also that "transparence" is a much less common word. Mihia (talk) 18:20, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer synonym of, too. DCDuring (talk) 16:29, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This type of alteration is extremely common. Examples for just the first three letters of the alphabet:
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In almost all cases the two forms are synonyms or have overlapping senses. The simplest approach is listing them in a section Related terms. --Lambiam 21:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * They’re certainly not just alternative spellings, given the differences in pronunciation. I’d mark them as altforms when their meanings are the same and related terms when they are different. Nicodene (talk) 00:06, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It would be interesting to see how consistently we deploy altform in line with our Appendix:Glossary definition: "A word etymologically related but varying slightly from another, such as variant spelling (e.g., sulfur/sulphur) or variant morphology (e.g., tenosynovial/tendosynovial).". It is not self-evident what range of allowable variation is covered by variant. In any event, altform should apply only at the level of definition, so semantic divergence should be shown in our entries, if we can muster evidence, preferably citations, but lemmings too. DCDuring (talk) 16:40, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The various cases are: 1., straight definition (usually a single-word gloss, ie, synonym)), 2., syn of, 3., altform, 4., altspell, and, I suspect, template-free versions of the latter 3. DCDuring (talk) 17:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

play out
Somehow I have looked at this word for so long now that I can't see the wood for the trees. A few Google hits exist for "play out the rope", "play out the cord", "play out the line" etc. Notwithstanding that "play" has senses connected to manipulating something in a certain direction (e.g. "play the hoses onto the fire"), are these "play out the rope/cord/line" always errors for " pay out"? Or is "play out" a valid expression in this sense? (Search results for "play out the string" are dominated by a set expression whose origins seem to be unrelated to what I am asking about.) Mihia (talk) 18:07, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't see these as errors, might be related to the 'slack' sense of "play" Justin the Just (talk) 21:34, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I do see omissions in the entry. Def. 4 would be a bit clearer is it were "to develop, to unfold". But just as defs. 2 and 3 emphasize the result/conclusion/completion of something (often an aspect introduced by the "particle" out) I wonder whether we need a variation of def. 4 like "conclude". There is a related usually intransitive sense of "exhaust". "The internet stock boom had played out within 5 years."
 * The 'play out the rope, hose etc.' sense makes sense as a literal base for the metaphorical "develop/unfold" definition, but I suspect that 'pay out the rope, hose, etc.' preceded 'play out', so perhaps for a time 'play out' was an error. But the "play the hoses/water on/over/onto" expression makes sense where "pay" would not and does not seem to occur. I don't think that play out the string is a distinct idiom, rather an expression using a metaphorical sense of string. DCDuring (talk) 21:59, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, "play out the string" derives from a different sense of "play", a sporting sense, so nothing to do with "playing out rope". Mihia (talk) 09:49, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I searched on "rope played out" in Google Books, and found 487 raw hits, 363 of them from the 21st century. Quite a few were in the context of mountain climbing, some of it quite technical, but mostly in stories. It doesn't seem to be that rare. By contrast, "rope paid out" gets 1,450 raw hits. Those tend to be older, with only 288 from the 21st century, and more about machinery. All of which sounds like there was a point at which younger people weren't being exposed as rigorously to the correct "pay out" form, so they just went with what they heard in other contexts that sort of sounded the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That would include people like me growing up in the 1950s and '60s, for whom payed out seems wrong or, at least, archaic. DCDuring (talk) 20:46, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks, I have added a new entry for this sense. Mihia (talk) 09:49, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

demising
Not sure where to list this (it has elements of an RFM, RFV and TR discussion) : We have a sense at demising labelled "of a wall or partition". I can, in fact, only find that sense as part of the phrases demising wall and its synonym demising partition. Is it used with other phrases, or should the definition be moved (mutatis mutandis) to, with demising left with a pointer like only used in or ===See also===? - -sche (discuss) 19:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Chícharos in Spanish Cookery
It seems, that from at least a video by the YouTube channel Spain on a Fork, the term means "white bean" in European Spanish.

What does anyone here think?

Thanks for reading. -- Apisite (talk) 05:52, 5 May 2024 (UTC)


 * This is the Spanish descendant of, which was displaced by . Judging by the DRAE entry, it can be applied to "el , el , la o la ." That's a pretty broad range of legumes, from peas, to garbanzo beans, to kidney beans or green beans, to grass peas or chickling vetches. White beans definitely fall within that range, so it's not surprising to see them referred to as chícharos. I'm not sure if it's a vague term that can refer to all of those things without being specific to any of them, in the same way that vegetable can refer to spinach or sweet corn or tomatoes or cucumbers, or if it's a term that means different specific things to different people (in the Americas, at least, it does seem to refer specifically to peas). Chuck Entz (talk) 07:24, 5 May 2024 (UTC)


 * So is it okay to add the following definition?
 * In any case, thanks. --Apisite (talk) 08:54, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Most of the images in a Google image search show peas (plain peas, snow peas, split peas). This recipe for potaje de chícharos informs us that in much of Andalusia the term refers to the alubia blanca, said to be a large white bean in the Wikipedia article, but other sources suggest it is not particularly large. The same recipe distinguishes the Andalusian chícharos from chícharos canarios, said to be another legume (chickling vetch?), and chícharos cubanos, said to be peas. lists eight species that may be referred to by this term. Apparently, the type or types covered vary from region to region.  --Lambiam 20:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Most of the images in a Google image search show peas (plain peas, snow peas, split peas). This recipe for potaje de chícharos informs us that in much of Andalusia the term refers to the alubia blanca, said to be a large white bean in the Wikipedia article, but other sources suggest it is not particularly large. The same recipe distinguishes the Andalusian chícharos from chícharos canarios, said to be another legume (chickling vetch?), and chícharos cubanos, said to be peas. lists eight species that may be referred to by this term. Apparently, the type or types covered vary from region to region.  --Lambiam 20:35, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

dyopoly

 * What does German have to do with it? It's simply a more faithful transcription of the Greek etymon, whereby <υ> is rendered as , by people who are aware that the prefix is actually Greek and not Latin (there is a rule in compounding that states you're not supposed to mix up roots of different origins). Compare . PUC – 10:13, 5 May 2024 (UTC)


 * @PUC I have no memory of this, but on the basis that I also added the NNSE label, I suspect I noticed that a great majority of the uses were from authors with German names, who probably assumed the typical English word was dyopoly on the basis of their own Dyopol. However it seems that the usual German word for duopoly is, so perhaps I was wrong. Happy for a correction to be made if needed. (Although I think calling that principle a "rule" is overstating it just a little.) This, that and the other (talk) 12:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You're right, "rule" is probably too strong, but you get my point: some people (and I would include myself in the lot...) frown upon mixing up Latin roots and Greek ones, so it makes sense that they would write dyo- rather than duo-. PUC – 17:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

shamone
Definition: "An onomatopoeia popularly heard in songs by Michael Jackson." But what does it mean? Many sources say it's a form of "come on": can we confirm this? Equinox ◑ 10:36, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

caviar to the general
posted a question on the talk page about what is meant by "general" in this phrase. I was surprised to discover that it goes back to, and is generally interpreted as referring to the "general public", not the military rank. Does anyone feel inclined to upgrade the entry along those lines? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:48, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting; is this ellipse of "general public" used elsewhere than in this expression? PUC – 17:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This?
 * So play the foolish throngs with one that swounds,
 * Come all to help him, and so stop the ayre
 * By which hee should reuiue: and euen so
 * The generall subiect to a wel-wisht King
 * Quit their owne part, and in obsequious fondnesse
 * Crowd to his presence, where their vn-taught loue
 * Must needs appear offence: how now faire Maid.
 * Shakespeare, Measure, for Measure, Act 2 Scene 4
 * I think that here “the generall” is a noun, modified by the adjectival phrase “subiect to a wel-wisht King”. --Lambiam 19:25, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

χράω and Nicander
The usage notes at § Etymology 1 state, “Only used by Homer Thucydides and Xenophon and Philo”, but there is an implied (unquoted) use in ’s . What gives? --Lambiam 18:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

manticratic
My entry (which you can find archived here) was rightfully deleted for not fulfilling CFI - the word is attested in the English corpus solely in the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T. E. Lawrence making it both a hapax legomenon and most likely a nonce. Should it be added to Appendix:English nonces? Possibly with added? In detail, I refer to our discussion with S URJECTION on the topic.CaptainPermaban (talk) 20:29, 5 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, per your commentray with -sche on this topic. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:34, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Old Norse fœða/fǿða "food"
Claimed to originate from. But if so, where does the umlaut come from? Influence from and/or the class 1 weak verb? Benwing2 (talk) 05:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Etymology has been updated. Please see Leasnam (talk) 15:58, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Leasnam Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 23:05, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What about ? The Low German is also umlauted. According to the OED food has no precise cognates, so no reconstructed term is justified, right? @Sokkjo —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 23:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Middle Low German has beside, and there is the 🇨🇬. I've added it to the page. Leasnam (talk) 00:49, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

"SORRY" abbreviations

 * Moved from Grease pit/2024/May

Hello, Can "sorry" word made into abbreviations of both phrases &mdash; "someone is really remembering you" and "showing our remorse restores you"? Yuliadhi (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Those are just cute backronym or folk etymology-style wordplays like how "stands for" Every Mom Is Nice Except Mine. But this doesn't really belong here at the Grease Pit, which is about technical issues. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:47, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

da
This entry, da, has many many entries, including a translingual "symbol" for 'deca-'. Then at the top right of the page is a funny box showing that the CJK compatibility Unicode stuff includes an encoding for the two letter combination "da", with unspecified meaning (at least in the Unicode PSEUDO-ENGLISH DESCRIPTION). "Compatibility" means that it is a bureaucratic entry to cover the existence of an entry in some national character encoding (probably Japanese), allowing a person doing CJK typesetting to include the combination "da" as pseudo-character, occupying the space of a single character box. I suggest that this is not meaningful information for readers of en:WIKT, so I would like to remove it, unless there is some fixed principle that absolutely anything in the Unicode standard must be included wherever it can. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:27, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Weetabix
As an adjective. I hesitate to add this as it might be too limited in usage, and also I'm not sure about TMs being used as adjectives. Are there any restrictions?. Usex:- "... many voters are looking for a 'Weetabix candidate' – reassuring and uncontroversial ..." See Grauniad today. Thanks. -- A LGRIF  talk 09:03, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Is this a or are we just hosting a brand's name? Vininn126 (talk) 09:07, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your interest. Please address that comment to the Noun entry via rfd. If it is acceptable as a noun, only then can we move on to whether there is adjectival usage enough to warrant an expanded entry.-- There are many many examples of TM nouns. This is just one. -- A LGRIF  talk 09:56, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

‘|‘ (left single quotation mark) as a leading apostrophe


I have collected uses of ‘|$⟨‘⟩$ (left single quotation mark) as a leading apostrophe at Citations:‘ and included images of two notable examples on the right side. In 2022, I requested verification of ‛|$⟨‛⟩$ (single high-reversed-9 quotation mark) in this sense, which has since been removed. However, as I found uses of this character instead, I asked Sgconlaw about it at Talk:‘, who suggested that I discuss this further at the Tea room. Should it be added an alternative form (with the “proscribed” label) of ’|$⟨’⟩$ (right single quotation mark) (e.g., “ ‘  n  ’  ” instead of “  ’  n  ’  ”)? J3133 (talk) 17:56, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * For ease of reference, my comment during the discussion on the entry talk page was that if this is just an uncommon error for ’, then by analogy with our rule for uncommon spelling errors there shouldn't be a separate sense for it. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:17, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Use of the left single quotation mark in this way is a common result of overzealous autocorrect functionality in word processors; it’s quite possible none of the examples we’ve found were intentionally written by humans at all (1960 quote excepted). Given that, IMO this probably falls under our policy on typos and (if so) should simply be excluded: ‘Typos are words whose spelling comes about by an accident of typing or type-setting, without the intention of the writer. Typos should not be included, not even if they are relatively frequent’ (emphasis added). — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 19:13, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I found an image on the site of body care brand ‘Jentl (from the 2 November 2022 quotation) that has the name handwritten with $⟨‘⟩$. I have also added four more quotations, from the Lincoln Journal Star, The New York Times, The Spectator; and the cover art of the album The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1979), including the poster for the film of the same name (1980; see the Wikipedia articles for images), which use “‘n’”. J3133 (talk) 06:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As a proper name, I don't see how "‘Jentl" attests any use as a punctuation mark at all. "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" example is more convincing, since "Rock 'n' Roll" is not just a proper name and you'd expect the typography on an album cover to be intentional; however, it appears to actually use the spelling "Rock ‛n’ Roll" not "Rock ‘n’ Roll".--Urszag (talk) 22:45, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for informing me about the cover album spelling; I found it at, which I have fixed. I moved the quotation to Citations:‛ (single high-reversed-9 quotation mark), which as I mentioned is the one that had this sense and was removed after I requested verification. J3133 (talk) 02:05, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There's no doubt that incorrect use of ‘ as an apostrophe (especially leading) is quite common. Per Vorziblix, Word used to auto-"correct" to this (maybe still does, I haven't used a recent version), which may have contributed to this punctuation anarchy. Very many English speakers have no idea how to use apostrophes anyway. I think it wouldn't hurt to include a note "Sometimes incorrectly used as an apostrophe", perhaps also with a mention of the auto-"correct" issue. I'm not myself a fan of the "proscribed" label. The readers who would benefit from learning that this use is incorrect most probably have the least idea of what "proscribed" means (yes, I know that you can click on it, but even so ...). Mihia (talk) 14:57, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I very much agree with Mihia.
 * The usage is common, and in modern typed material it is undoubtedly mostly due to autocorrection in applications such as Word (I confirm that it still does this, although it can be disabled or worked around) exacerbated by ignorance/indifference of this subtlety among the general public. (Besides that, in handwriting outside of school many people probably just use ambiguous marks like ' or ".)
 * I likewise am ambivalent about the "proscribed" label: my hunch is that it is too easily misapprehended by the average person as meaning prescribed!  I wouldn't proscribe application of the "proscribed" label, but backing it up with a Usage Note would ultimately be more helpful.
 * —DIV (1.129.111.153 13:16, 14 May 2024 (UTC))

churtle
The definition says "to chirp", but none of the quotes in the entry are about chirping. A chirp is a short, sharp sound, but these refer to soft sequences of longer sounds...sort of. One describes the vocalizations of a particular bird species as "churtle-churtle-churtle-churtle or wurtilee-wurtilee-wurtilee", another compares chanting in a Turkish mosque to "doves churtling". Doves make a variety of sounds, depending on the species, but none of them would ever be described as "chirping". Then there's the one making a joke about a cat, which doesn't mean much of anything. I'm not rfving this, because this does seem to exist- but the definition and the quotes don't add up. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And the quote about the cat is actually a noun POS. Leasnam (talk) 17:24, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Spanish "corresponder": a "false friend" of the English "to correspond"?
At corresponder, we read "[c]orresponder is a false friend, and does not mean 'to correspond via letters'". The phrase for that in Spanish is escribirse con." However, the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy suggests otherwise. Is this usage in fact so obscure, or at least so uncommon, that its characterization as a "false friend" is justified? Animadversor (talk) 16:41, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It is listed as a verbo pronominal, which we might include in the form se corresponder. A group would say of itself,  nos correspondemos por e-mail. --Lambiam 18:48, 14 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to remove the "false friend" notice because the main senses do correspond, and even this secondary sense which the usage note is singling out...can also correspond, as you say. I think the usage note is more confusing than helpful; surely someone can tell by looking at the definitions that a definition which is not present is ... not present. - -sche (discuss) 15:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

What language is Lipović?
I copied this from el:Lipović, but the fact that creating this categorises it into Category:Slovene terms spelled with Ć, suggesting that ć is a rare letter in Slovene, makes me think το Βικιλεξικό got the language wrong. My impression is that this surname is, but I assumed the Greek Wiktionarians knew better. Can anyone who recognises this surname correct this entry, please? 0DF (talk) 21:44, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'll defer to our Balkan editors if they can comment, but as best I can tell, it seems to be Serbo-Croatian (one bearer, Vladimir Lipović, is affiliated with a company in Šibenik, and the name looks to be formed using -ović), although names have a tendency to wander (e.g. Thériault making its way into English), and another bearer (Iva Lipović) seems to be affiliated with an institution in Trieste(?), so it's plausible there are also bearers in Italy and Slovenia these days. - -sche (discuss) 22:19, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response. Yes, migration would plausibly explain why Lipović ended up on the Slovenian government's list of the country's surnames. Would we then call it a Slovene surname, though? I know it's difficult to tell when a surname gets borrowed into another language, but that seems like too low a bar to me. 0DF (talk) 23:44, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. If a Serbo-Croatian surname got into Slovene surname system, per Keber(2021), it is a Slovene surname of Serbo-Croatian origin with - ć unchanged, without any graphical adaption. In Slovene surname dictionary we came across lots of Slovene surnames with SH origin. Sometime it is hard to tell the origin of a surname because of migration and linguistic similarity (consider surnames derived from South-Slavic toponyms), in that case we must turn to onomastician. Chihunglu83 (talk) 09:28, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Sabid Lipović was Premier in 1998–2000 (representing the Bosniak ) of the of the  and, né , was a Hungarian footballer of Croatian descent. Given all this, I'm going to change the language to Serbo-Croatian. If anyone knows better, please correct me. 0DF (talk) 00:12, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Done. 0DF (talk) 00:36, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

how are you? fine, thanks
It would be nice to have at least one reply to this question in the phrasebook, don't you think? Justin the Just (talk) 17:05, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

no-no boy
Can somebody check the meaning of no-no boy? It says:


 * During World War II, a Japanese man who agreed to renounce the Japanese emperor and to serve in the United States armed forces.

But when I read the linked two questions at Internment of Japanese Americans, I came into a completely different conclusion: a Japanese man who did not agree to renounce the Japanese Emperor and did not agree to serve in the US armed forces. --91.150.26.100 15:11, 12 May 2024 (UTC)


 * ✅ Fixed. My mistake. Equinox ◑ 15:14, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

only son
"A sole male child among multiple siblings." and "A son without siblings." Are these different senses, or just different ways that a person can be an only son, to handle by combining them onto one sense line? Likewise for only daughter. (We also had the same sense twice at only child, but I've gone ahead and cleaned that entry up.) - -sche (discuss) 17:33, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * The first sense implies he may have sisters, but he has siblings, just the only male child. The second is the only child who happens to be male, no siblings. Vininn126 (talk) 17:41, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Right, but my question is: are those different senses? I don't think they are, because AFAICT you can't say "no, he's not their only son: he doesn't have any siblings" (using "only son" to mean "a sole male child among siblings"). Nor do I think you can say "he's not their only son: they also have a daughter" (using "only son" to mean "only child, who is male"). AFAICT, the meaning is "sole male child (who may or may not have siblings)", hence I think the senses should be merged, but I want to know if anyone has counterarguments. - -sche (discuss) 21:00, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I would say that "a son without siblings" is an incorrect inference in a world where speakers follow the Gricean rules. That is, if the speaker is speaking the truth and is being clear and brief, they can only mean "a sole male child among multiple siblings". If they meant "A son without siblings", they would say "Only child" (or possibly "only adult child"). It could be that the second definition would have been a more common inference when the King James Version of the Bible was written: "His only son", Jesus.
 * I think that combining the two may be a good way of showing that the expression is ambiguous. Perhaps a usage note could refer to the Gricean maxims or to their implications in this case. DCDuring (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Presently it reads "A sole male child, whether one among multiple siblings, or one who has no siblings". Personally I have to think a bit about what "a sole male child among multiple siblings" actually means, until I reach the conclusion that presumably he has only sisters. I wonder whether this thinking step could be eliminated if we simply said "A sole male child, either with no siblings, or with only female siblings". Mihia (talk) 14:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem with "A sole male child, either with no siblings, or with only female siblings" is that it is a particular example of the generic "A sole male child, for which proposition P is either true or false." This fits exactly for absolutely any proposition P, and it thus vacuous. Consider "A sole male child, one or both of whose parents have red hair, or neither of whose parents have red hair." Imaginatorium (talk) 03:50, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't understand. The "either ... or ..." part excludes the case of male siblings so clearly is not vacuous. (However, I would say that "either with no siblings, or with only female siblings" is supposed to explain or elaborate what "sole male child" means, not qualify or restrict it. If read as restrictive then it would be vacuous in terms of not actually restricting. The comma is meant to indicate this, and I think the common-sense reading is as an elaboration, but if thought unclear then "either" might be changed to "whether" or "one".) Mihia (talk) 08:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

not me being unsure about the part of speech
I've a popular informal usage of, recently designated the "spotlight not". I placed it in the Adverb section but I'm not sure where it should go. What do you think? Einstein2 (talk) 22:27, 13 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I think that's an interesting usage, but I'm not convinced it's adverbial. The best PoS fit seems to be conjunction to me at the moment, which is potentially problematic given that the current sense there only indicates examples where two clauses are joined.
 * I read the current example
 * [...] “Not y’all trying to get into it! [...]” [...]
 * as
 * [...] “Not inquisitiveness from all of you! [...]” [...]
 * or
 * [...] “Not an instance of you all being busybodies! [...]” [...].
 * To me this is akin to phrases like
 * "Oh no! Not another flop!  How are we ever going to pay our many creditors?!"
 * "Damn! Not noodles again for dinner!  That's every night this week!"
 * "Oh my God! Not this again!"
 * I presume that in those sentences not is acting as a conjunction, in the same way as a similar way to and in, "I'll have the soup and the lasagne, please. And just water to drink, thanks."  I think this is handled a bit more clearly more explicitly & comprehensively at and.
 * There is another pattern referenced by Backinstadiums at Talk:not#[~_+_"a/one"_+_noun] — sorry, I don't know how to wiki-link that anchor — which is not clearly aligned with any of the existing senses in the entry either, and perhaps likewise fits best as a conjunction.
 * —DIV (1.129.111.153 13:47, 14 May 2024 (UTC))
 * I don’t see how for instance ‘Not this again!’ is at all structurally different from ‘This again!’ Which to me suggests ‘not’ is behaving here exactly as it does generally. The above examples are all either ungrammatical, for me, or structurally equivalent to their ‘not’-less counterparts. Nicodene (talk) 20:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hmm, the issue I see with considering it a conjunction is that it doesn't necessarily connect anything; there need not even be a second clause. "And" or "But" usually follows something, even if it starts its own sentence ("It was blue. And it was big."). "Although" can start a text, with no clauses before it, but only(?) if the second clause then follows: "Although it was X, it was also Y" works, but bare "Although it was X." seems not to (unless you put the second clause somewhere else, like the sub-grammatical but still findable "It was perfect. Although, it was expensive."). In contrast, things like "not me [doing x]" are complete tweets, e.g. here (more at ). - -sche (discuss) 21:58, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * * Not me being verbose again!*
 * Hi, @-sche.
 * You would know the grammar better than me. I pointed to conjunction as a candidate for PoS because I couldn't perceive a better match.  I note that in the existing definition for not the emphasis was on joining clauses within a sentence.  In contrast, at the and entry the linking of words, phrases, clauses and sentences are all explicitly allowed.  But I would go further and say that conjunctions can work across more than two sentences and can also join ideas.
 * Example 1: "I'm just off the the shops now.  And when I get back I'll cook dinner.  Don't forget to pack your bag ready for tomorrow!  But now that I think about it, it might be better if I wait until Jean comes home before going to the shops, so I'll just get the veggies ready now."  (But linking 4th sentence to 1st [& 2nd?] sentences.  And linking 2nd sentence to 1st sentence.)
 * Example 2: Person walks in the door and is immediately greeted with, "And just how many times do I have to tell you to wipe your shoes before coming indoors?!" (Linking rhetorical question with prior complaints/warnings/reminders — possibly occurring several weeks ago, with numerous unrelated conversations in between.)
 * —DIV (1.129.111.108 04:49, 20 May 2024 (UTC))
 * P.S. So under which PoS would you file "Oh no! Not another flop! How are we ever going to pay our many creditors?!" and "Damn! Not noodles again for dinner! That's every night this week!" and "Oh my God! Not this again!"?


 * I have never heard of this, and wouldn't care to comment on the PoS, but I would say that the sole present example is unintelligible to me. I have no idea what it means, even with the help of the definition. Can a clearer example be crafted? Mihia (talk) 19:04, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The example itself seems reasonably representative of the usage I'm familiar with: IMO the issue is with the definition, little of which seems definitional to me, at least with regard to the usage that I'm familiar with (which may represent an 'older' usage, either in the sense that modern usage may have evolved to be even less attached to its origins in the 'usual' senses of not than the usage I'm familiar with, and/or in the sense that teen-and-younger speakers may use this differently than 20-and-30-something speakers). The way I'm familiar with this sense of not being used is... basically to reverse the meaning of the sentence. Etymologically, it may have originated as irony or sarcasm (although it no longer seems to convey any more connotations of irony or sarcasm than older, long-established rhetorical moves like "I think he has bad judgement, not to mention his many crimes", which serves to mention his many crimes while professing not to), but as I understand it, conveyance of 'some attitude' is secondary/connotational, compared to what it denotatively does, which is just: mean the opposite of what "not" would normally mean (like in the "not to mention" example). "[This is] Not me wondering what's going on..." ⇒ "This is me wondering... / I am wondering...". "Ugh, not you trying to drag me into this again!" ⇒ "Ugh, you're trying to drag me into this again?!" (with connotations, yes, that I have emotions about this). What part of speech would we consider "not" in "not to mention", and does the fact that this modern use is more amenable to being used at the start of a sentence change our view of its POS? - -sche (discuss) 19:40, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * So when he says “Not y’all trying to get into it!" he means “Y’all trying to get into it!" + connotations? Mihia (talk) 20:13, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In my experience (and in at least some examples), yes. (But if someone has evidence that in e.g. Gen Alpha usage it has evolved even further, beyond that, I would not be surprised.) In the instances I'm familiar with, you could replace it with a (weak) "look at" or "here's" or similar. "(Ugh,) look at y'all trying to get into it." / "and here's y'all trying to get into it🙄", "and here I am wondering what's going on😮", etc. - -sche (discuss) 21:58, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If that's all it means, then I would interpret it as a quirky or cutesy rearrangement of the normal ironic negative, or possibly a shortening of ironic "It's not that ..." or something ... but I could be completely wrong. Mihia (talk) 22:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, despite its high prevalence on social media, I had a hard time defining this usage so I used this recent article when adding the new sense. Now that I looked into the source again, I see it distinguishes two similar constructions (see page 7): The paper admits there may be some overlap between the two usages, e.g. in the not + [DP] constructions (e.g. Not the cheeky smile!) which resemble the first usage in structure but are closer to the second usage in meaning (and which commonly occur in informal contexts online). I am not sure how we should handle these but maybe we could split these two uses accordingly. (And then choose a fitting PoS section for them.) Einstein2 (talk) 11:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * the “not X!” (as per Cappelle 2021), which is the older and more mainstream construction, is composed of not + [DP/PP/AdjP/AdvP/subclause], and usually conveys outrage/shock/sadness (often in response to a previous proposition) – e.g. Not you again!; Not the face!; Not in my house!
 * the “spotlight not”, which is the newer construction (popularized around 2020 and often associated with Gen Z), is composed of not + [non-verbal small clause/gerund-participial clause], and usually conveys somewhat milder emotions such as embarrassment/surprise/etc. – e.g., Not you wearing that cap!; Not me on my way to the mall again!


 * I may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick with this earlier. The two patterns that I am familiar with, and which must presumably be decades if not centuries old, are normal ironic "not", e.g. someone is making a big mess, and you say "Not making a big mess, then!", and the "Not the TV on the blink again!" usage, which is not ironic but conveys a "Oh no"-type negative reaction. If you're saying that "your" usage is a development of the latter, I think it would be useful to make this explicit, e.g. make it a subsense, so that there is more of a lead in to what it's all about, for the benefit of people like me. Mihia (talk) 13:33, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

full gas and full noise
What is happening with the entry full gas? It is shown as a Swedish(OK) noun(?), but not as an English term at all, and specifically not as an adverb. That contrasts with full throttle, full bore and full tilt. Besides that, full noise doesn't have an entry, but has a similar meaning in English (search, say, for the phrase "going full noise"). —DIV (1.129.111.153 12:30, 14 May 2024 (UTC))

Classical Indonesian
Definition:
 * 1)  The classical form of the Indonesian language used in literary texts, developed from main liturgical languages spoken across the Indonesian Archipelago specifically.

Note that the Malay language is not mentioned at all, even though every source I've seen says that Indonesian arose about a century ago as a standardized form of Malay. I'm not sure if it's using some extremely loose definition of "Indonesian language" (as in "a language spoken in Indonesia"), or if this is some kind of revisionist hoax. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:12, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I am all but certain this was created by a User:Eiskrahablo sock, so I'd be inclined to just speedy it. They are a long-term tendentious vandal with an Indonesian nationalistic POV that tries to promote their view that Indonesian is a language based not on Malay, but on local languages, especially Javanese. Their attempted erasure of the term Malay Archipelago too fits with this pattern. There is no doubt that it is them. &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 06:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

German's and English stand, suppletive past forms
For German, forms in stand- date back to OHG and should be said on the paradigm's pages as suppletive. Now, OE 's past forms are on the stood page stated coming from PGM, the which bearing the exact same past forms as (in *stōþ). Then, in PWGM the two verbs get a different past inflection with the former distencing itself (in *stōnd-) from the latter. Then, the past forms of english stand must ultimately be either suppletive of PGWM  (or even PGM stāną) or we must assume the keeping of the former *stōþ- forms for  along the *stōnd- forms listed on the website. Besides, has also been productive in German but its derivatives are now dialectal whereas  has no descendance in the english tongue (if not its past forms). Tim Utikal (talk) 18:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * English "stood" continues PG *stōþ, *stōdun; that's clear. We cannot construe PG *stōnd because neither Gothic nor Old Norse support such a form. The question is whether the innovation is common West Germanic or later. It doesn't seem to occur in Old English, but there are a few such forms in Middle English. Modern West Frisian uses the analogous derivation "stie" (also attested in Middle High German, by the way). All in all it would seem that *stōnd is a later Frankish/German innovation. Just to rule out any confusion I want to add that modern German "stand" is from stund < stuond < *stōnd. The "a"-vowel is due to analogy with verbs like binden, finden, schwinden (originally sg. -and vs. pl. -unden). 84.63.31.91 22:06, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, should we then complete the page with according suppositions or just clarify it on the stood page ? Tim Utikal (talk) 19:48, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, in my opinion Proto-West Germanic should have the same past tense as Proto-Germanic. I don't see the form stônd going back that far. But we should probably have other opinions before we make such a change. Particularly I don't really know what forms are attested in Old English and Old Frisian. 84.63.31.91 01:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, the current simple past form in German is not suppletive but Rückumlaut-analogy of, which is the valid literary form in 18th century German (e.g. in , search combinations like , for ease). Fay Freak (talk) 20:39, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hm, I don't really see how Rückumlaut applies here. Otherwise please explain :) I mentioned my interpretation of stand for older stund above. Expanding on it: MHG had stuont, which became stunt by pre-cluster shortening. Now the plural stunden touched on forms like bunden, funden, schwunden and a singular stand was accordingly backformed (by analogy with band, fand, schwand). Ultimately all of these verbs generalized the a-vowel. With stund, the older form lasted significantly longer than otherwise, which is quite understable because it wasn't original in this case. 84.63.31.91 01:46, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You are also aware of course that "stünde" is still common to this day alongside "stände", which is not the case with *bünde, *fünde, *schwünde. 84.63.31.91 01:52, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Zhuang for water chestnut
馬蹄 says it's borrowed from a Kra-Dai language, and links to Zhuang makdaez, which does not have an entry. The translations at water chestnut say it's maxdaez. I don't know any Tai languages. Which is right? PierreAbbat (talk) 05:43, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Factions and fractions
Looking at the translation box for, I see that many languages (including English) have words derived from , but many other languages have words derived from. Some languages (Dutch, Finnish, Romanian) even have words from both sources. I suspect the similarity between the two groups of words is not a coincidence, and since actually has the meaning, I suspect that somewhere along the way, the two words got mixed up in some European language. Is there any evidence of this, and if so, which language it was? I suspect German, since the languages with fractio-words tend to be those of northern and eastern Europe (as well as post-Soviet languages), while the Romance languages all have factio-words (though Romanian has both). Has anyone ever looked into this before? —Mahāgaja · talk 15:22, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Nobody has looked into this. Allists are super-confused when they have to own up to their living in a tribal feedback loop. Hence their fondness for, which is from before 1979 when one thought autism to be an emotional disorder. Group-identification is emotional, no rational category. (If you are not crazy – paradox!)
 * So what can I tell you about the distinction of the terms? In German there is indeed none, because there isn’t an application of the term outside of picking up historical or Romance terms. It does not occur in German-language legal systems, in law texts it is either historical or international or a typo (e.g. search De Gruyter restricted to category Legal Art). The term Faktion is made-up stuff from sociology, even those who have made it up have probably forgotten about it already.
 * If you read in the NZZ “Kürzlich haben die staatlichen Medien gar die gegnerischen Faktionen, welche Xi Jinping im Machtapparat anvisiert, genannt: die «Sicherheits-, die Öl- und die Shanxi-Bande»”, this is a blatant Romanism and not understood by most people in Germany; while I try to hedge the statements about Switzerland, of course, due to its situation within the areas of four national languages, three of which are Romance, it still looks mostly translated there, too (DDG).
 * We only have the term  for parliaments, and by extension municipal councils, in Germany. (If not large enough, a, legal definition missing on Wiktionary.) In Austria even this is missing, there they call it ; I defined it for you before going into the law exam, which I won especially due to my public law knowledge.  is no word at all (barring the said extensions), super contextual. Fay Freak (talk) 16:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

"Correct" way to say "Palestine" in Belarusian?
I have so far come across four variants: (what Google Translate and Taraškievica Wikipedia give),  (what regular Belarusian Wikipedia gives),  (used in at least one Naša Niva article), and  (used in a few places as well).

The problem is, phonologically speaking it should probably be one of the forms, since it's  in a pre-tonal position. And we have documented cases of this happening in borrowed place names - see. So 1. Why does Wikipedia still use the form, and 2. Is there an institutionalized "correct" way to say the name? Pinging @Ssvb @Наименее Полезное if you have any input. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2024 (UTC)


 * FWIW, when I search Палестына OR Палесціна OR Палясціна OR Палястына site:.by and look for 'official' results, the results are mostly Палесціна : the Belarusian state website belarus.by uses Палесціна, the website of the president.gov.by speaks of Lukashenko congratulating the leader of the state of Палесціна, uzda.gov.by speaks of relations with Палесціна, and FWIW catholic.by also speaks of the Pope receiving the head of the state of Палесціна (although Google returns Палестына as the title of the page). - -sche (discuss) 18:21, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The 2005's update of Taraškievica contains chapters dedicated to how the foreign words are borrowed. It even uses the word "Палестына" as an example (with the explanations for both "е" and "ты" choice). Basically, "я" is used in the pre-tonal position for the commonly used native words, but not for the borrowed foreign words.
 * As for the official spelling, it borrows foreign words exclusively from the Russian language after the 1933's reform, trying to mimic both the Russian spelling and the Russian pronunciation as much as possible. The pronunciation of the Russian word Палестина and the Belarusian word Палесціна is effectively the same when spoken by the Belarusians.
 * To sum it up: Палестына is the correct Taraškievica spelling and Палесціна is the correct official spelling. These are different words with different pronunciation. The other variants are non-standard. As for Пецярбург, apparently it got a special treatment and was adopted as if it were a native word. --Ssvb (talk) 22:50, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help with this, in particular in the explanation of . So in this case, I suppose the Łacinka version of "Palestine" would be then? And I suppose  would also be non-standard? Insaneguy1083 (talk) 01:13, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Łacinka version is "Palestyna" and multiple usage examples can be found in Belarusian Wikisource if you search for "Palest*" there. The oldest Wikisource example here seems to be dated 1913. At least it's the form, that was most commonly used and is attestable in durable archived sources.
 * The official spelling vs. Taraškievica standoff is highly politicized. The soviet commissars abolished both Taraškievica and Łacinka via their 1933 reform. Considering that this language reform was accompanied by large scale repressions of Belarusian writers and linguists, it wasn't seen as something that was done in good faith. Additionally, a lot of Belarusians lived on the territories outside of the USSR control in 1933, so they didn't feel any obligation to comply with the decree of the communists and kept using the Taraškievica orthography. Today some people believe that the 1933 reform was a malicious act of Russification, the others are trying to argue that it was an honest effort to save the Belarusian language from the allegedly harmful Polish influence. As a result, we have Палестына vs. Палесціна, Швайцарыя vs. Швейцарыя and the other annoying differences here and there, mostly affecting foreign loanwords. --Ssvb (talk) 11:55, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

go

 * To start; to begin (an action or process).

I'm not convinced about either of these examples. Any opinions? Mihia (talk) 18:59, 17 May 2024 (UTC)


 * In "let's go and hunt" and myriad other "go and [other verb]" examples, go seems semi-vacuous, like the sense of take discussed at Requests for deletion/English (which can probably be archived to Talk:take now...), which we have as an intensifier (at take) and which seems to be what we have as "To proceed (especially to do something foolish)" at go. - -sche (discuss) 22:08, 17 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It sort of reminds me of "up and", as in "he up and hit him" or "she up and left him". That one seems to be used in informal narratives to emphasize that the action it introduces was sudden and unexpected. It would be interesting to figure out the role of "go" in something like "Why'd you have go and do that? We almost had everyone on our side." Chuck Entz (talk) 23:03, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There are actually now two "go and"-capable definitions -- the one you mention, and also "To move or travel in order to do something, or to do something while moving", to which I recently added the example "Please go and get me some envelopes". There does seem to me to be some kind of valid distinction. I thought the "hunt" example fitted the latter, albeit, as you say, the sense of actually moving or travelling may be weakish, depending on exactly what the context is supposed to be. Mihia (talk) 23:03, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Then there's the usage in imperative constructions: "go sit down", "go and make me a sandwich", "go and get ready". I suppose there's an implication of leaving the speaker's presence in order to do whatever it is, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to treat those as imperatives of the same "move or travel in order to do something" sense. But, to get back to the original question, do you see either of those examples as supporting the definition "To start; to begin (an action or process)"? I'm planning to remove them, but I want to check that I'm not missing something. I don't understand the construction of "here goes nothing". In "here goes a hundred dollars", "here goes my life's work", etc., it means that a hundred dollars, or one's life's work, is at risk and could be lost, yet "here goes nothing" apparently does not mean that nothing is at risk. In any case, may we be confident that "goes" does not mean "starts" or "begins"? Mihia (talk) 08:14, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Other verbs that form catenative constructions using and are try/try and, come/come and, and, possibly help and dare. Try and is commonly used instead of try to. Come and could often be interpreted as verb + normal conjunction for a two-step process. (Come and go with me is part of the actual lyrics of the prescriptively titled  (1957).) Dare and and help and are much less common in this catenative usage. I don't think calling up and an adverb is accurate: What true adverbs can be inflected, as in "upped and left"? DCDuring (talk) 14:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If we remove all the usexes/quotes from the sense, I would fold it into the other senses at that point (probably "to proceed"). "Here goes nothing" is what you say when you're about to make an attempt but you are downplaying its likelihood of success; if you're just making an attempt (without downplaying its likelihood of success) you can just say "here goes". We actually have entries for here goes and here goes nothing. (Which means, IMO, that from an RFV perspective they wouldn't count as uses of this sense of go, because they're using a longer phrase which we have a separate entry for.) - -sche (discuss) 16:51, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There is actually another usex, "You've got thirty seconds to solve the anagram, starting now. Go!", which I added in replacement for the earlier "On your marks, get set, go" on the basis that it couldn't refer to physical movement, and also a couple of archaic quotes which I find hard to assess. I would like some more, stronger usexes, but I think what we have just about stands up. Anyway, since no support for the two usexes that I questioned has been expressed, I will delete them. Mihia (talk) 18:02, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Word request: "sleep diagonally"
Meaning: (figuratively) Used for when a situation is confusing. IceCreamProductions2024 (talk) 19:05, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Any examples? DCDuring (talk) 13:48, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Portuguese x
It is common in Portuguese to write adjectives derived from (foreign) anthroponyms by adding a suffix and keeping its original spelling. For instance, there are, from Newton, and , from Nietzsche. The adjective refers to Thomas Malthus, and therefore should be written with th. However, the main entry seems to be. I haven't found this form in the main online dictionaries. Is it correct and, if so, why? OweOwnAwe (talk) 21:52, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

English
Specifially, A cross or gallows.

insists that this should have the label "religious" (and that it shouldn't have the label "archaic"), since it's used in certain translations of the Bible (i.e. the King James Version). To me, this seems completely unnecessary, as exactly the same logic could apply to any Early Modern English that features in Biblical translations. For comparison, words like, , , etc. do not stop being archaic simply because they come up in Bible discussions, and nor does it make them religious terms.

Thoughts? Theknightwho (talk) 03:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Please see below. I clearly don't know how to use this thing properly, but I hope my point can be taken seriously despite that. BryanKaplan (talk) 04:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * That's not an accurate portrayal. The usage is archaic today, outside of modern religious practices, yet commonplace within religion. It is therefore wrong to simply label the term “archaic”. I have labelled it “archaic|or|religious”, which is accurate. Theknightwho keeps removing “or religious”, as if it's archaic within the church. But the usage is active within the church. So “archaic|or|religious” is accurate.


 * If you're trying to tell me that the usage of “tree” to mean “cross” (as in the thing upon which Jesus Christ was crucified) is **not** religious, you're making an absurdly unconvincing argument.


 * BryanKaplan (talk)
 * As I have already explained: this applies to any term used in Early Modern English translations of the Bible. People will obviously use archaic terms when discussing archaic texts, but it does not stop them being archaic. I have given several examples above, where you could make exactly the same argument, but the end result would be that we'd be labelling a bunch of Early Modern terms as "religious" simply because they occur in certain well-known religious texts, not because they actually carry religious connotations. As someone with quite a lot of experience with Christanity in my everyday life, I know very well that is hardly ever used like this anyway: its use is entirely restricted to direct references to the KJV (or similar), which means it's simply a plain old archaic term, because the KJV is an archaic text. There's nothing specifically religious about it at all. Theknightwho (talk) 04:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, as a side point, the label under contention should be "Christianity" - labelling any terms like this as "religious" is clearly not appropriate, however you slice it, because it's far too broad. Theknightwho (talk) 04:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Theknightwho Thank you for fixing my reply.
 * I'm not advancing that claim about any of those other words. I'm saying that the label “religious” is essentially appropriate here, if it's appropriate anywhere. We're specifically discussing the cross upon which Jesus was slain, and you're saying there's nothing religious about that. Seriously?
 * If the word “tree” was in use to mean ”cross” or “gallows” outside of Christianity, then I'd agree with you that it's inappropriate to label this usage as religious. But in secular contexts it's extraordinarily rare to encounter that usage.
 * I hadn't been aware that “Christianity” is a label, but indeed I agree that's the label properly under dispute here. BryanKaplan (talk) 04:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We're specifically discussing the cross upon which Jesus was slain
 * No we aren't: we're discussing the definition A cross or gallows., which is not specific to Christianity in any way, shape or form. Theknightwho (talk) 04:40, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's only used this way today in Christian churches, specifically to refer to that one particular cross. Perhaps in the past it was used generically to refer to any old wooden death apparatus in the town square, but that usage is archaic. The common use today is specifically Christian. BryanKaplan (talk) 04:45, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Not true: it's also used in any performance of , but that doesn't stop it being archaic. The same applies to : the fact it occurs in the Lord's Prayer is irrelevant to the fact it's archaic language, and any use outside of direct quotations is done to specifically evoke Early Modern English as an archaism. Theknightwho (talk)
 * I happen to agree with you that “trespass” as “sin” is implicated by this discussion. Certainly not “thee” and “thou”, but sin is a religious term that is rarely used outside religion, and “trespass” to mean “sin” is definitely never used outside religion — and I think maybe not outside Christianity, but I'm not sure.
 * Look, the purpose of these labels is to guide the usage of learners. When we learn new words or new usages of words, we look to these labels to understand proper context. When someone encounters this novel (to them) usage of “tree”, they may well land here trying to wrap their head around it. We can aid in that by honestly reporting “archaic|or|religious”. BryanKaplan (talk) 04:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, “archaic|or|Christian”. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:00, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It would be disingenuous: terms like these are not used organically in religious contexts. They're used only to quote or evoke specific religious texts which use them. What's relevant is that it's archaic language, and it would be downright misleading to label such terms as though they're used freely and naturally outside of the context of Early Modern texts. Theknightwho (talk) 05:01, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * How does the distinction between “used organically in religious contexts” versus “quoting religious texts” matter whatsoever? They're both religious. And there's a blurry line between the two, as religious people frequently quote scripture. And again, they're both religious. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:07, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Because obviously people will use archaic language if they're quoting archaic texts. Shakespearean language doesn't stop being archaic simply because it's taught in tons of classrooms today, because it's not used outside of direct reference to the original texts. It's just quoting from it. Theknightwho (talk) 05:13, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Alright, I see your perspective. Reading old words aloud doesn't count as active usage. I agree on that point.
 * The question then is whether anyone ever uses “tree” to mean “cross” (or “gallows, I suppose) in any context. In my experience the answer is “yes”, though only in Christian discussions which are certainly informed by the Bible.
 * And so here we are. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:17, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't buy it: looking through Google Books for "on the tree" reveals it's completely archaic when used in the sense you refer to . The latest uses that aren't direct Bible quotations are mid-19th century. Theknightwho (talk) 05:22, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah? Check this out. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:28, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That's very few hits. It's dwarfed by the number of archaic uses, and archaic terms are still sometimes used in the modern day anyway. Theknightwho (talk) 05:29, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What's “very few”? The top three results are books from 2013, 2018, and 2023. How many do you require to acquiesce? BryanKaplan (talk) 05:33, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me that this could be clarified by doing a search to see if tree is used in that sense in a non-religious setting. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:24, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I'd gladly drop my case for the “Christian” label if any modern secular usage can be demonstrated. Thank you for chiming in. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:31, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * to clarify, I am referring chiefly to the “religion” label. I think the usage is probably archaic, but of course if there are sufficient contemporary uses which don’t refer to historical settings this can be reviewed. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:36, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Sgconlaw Yes: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fatal-Tree-Jake-Arnott/dp/1473637740. It's literally in the title of this book, and there are plenty of other examples in modern historical fiction. Theknightwho (talk) 05:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly certain that I have heard the word tree to mean "the cross (that Jesus died on)" used in Christian songs, even contemporary Christian songs written in recent decades. Just Google "upon that tree" + lyrics and many come up. This is not archaic language, but religious (Christian) usage of tree to mean "cross". Leasnam (talk) 05:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. So we have consensus on modern Christian active usage.
 * Does active usage in secular historical fiction indicate we should drop all labels for this usage? I don't think so, as historical fiction seeks out archaic usages.
 * So I remain a proponent of “archaic|or|Christian”. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that make it an intentional archaism, thus not justifying removal of the “archaic” label. Seems unlikely that anyone would use the word in modern times to refer to a gallows in a non-Christian setting (for example, when describing a form of capital punishment), not least because it would be very confusing, unless the person was hanged on a literal tree. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I agree that the usage is archaic in secular contexts, but in active usage in Christian contexts. Thus “archaic|or|Christian”. BryanKaplan (talk) 05:45, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Disagree: both the 2023 and 2013 works in the search above (I can't see any from 2018) are clearly using archaic language to evoke the KJV. It's not a natural usage from any kind of ordinary text. "Christian" and "archaic" are not mutually exclusive, and intentional archaisms used to add gravitas do not justify an additional label, regardless of any other context. Theknightwho (talk) 05:47, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's normal modern poetic religious language, influenced by Scripture for sure, but modern nonetheless. The same goes for modern gospel lyrics. If there's a “Chistian-poetic” label I guess that'd be specifically appropriate, but so much of religion is poetic, so it would seem a bit redundant. I don't understand why you're so opposed to this, @Theknightwho. What do you deem “ordinary text”? The point is it's in active usage. The 2018 publication is this: . BryanKaplan (talk) 05:53, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm opposed because the only modern uses I can find (other than maybe that one song with it in the title) only use it alongside a bunch of other archaic language, showing that it's only being used for effect. Theknightwho (talk) 05:56, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * All carefully chosen words are used for effect. That doesn't nullify the context of their usage. BryanKaplan (talk) 06:03, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Look, the crux of the problem here is that you're coming across like you're trying your hand at religious persecution, because you want to label something Christian as strictly archaic, despite multiple pieces of evidence to the contrary. BryanKaplan (talk) 06:07, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Theknightwho I should have pinged you on that follow-up. ^ BryanKaplan (talk) 06:09, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've been accused of many things, but religious persecution is a new one. You clearly believe you are axiomatically correct and work backwards trying to justify it, but the real world doesn't work that way. I'm not interested in engaging with that kind of manipulative comment, really, especially when you ignore arguments you don't like to declare yourself correct. Goodbye. Theknightwho (talk) 06:10, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it to make you feel bad, but to make you see how you're coming across.
 * You're gatekeeping on an actively used word, insisting it's archaic, even after we've demonstrated that it's not. Why is that? Is it so wrong to infer you want the world to think Christianity is archaic?
 * If that's not your goal, then acquiesce. The usage is Christian in the modern era, though it's archaic outside the church.
 * Thus “archaic|or|Christian” is accurate. BryanKaplan (talk) 06:17, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not gatekeeping anything: I'm saying that the only contexts you've shown it's used is alongside other archaic language, which demosntrates that the relevant facet is the fact it's archaic, and not anything to do with religion itself. This isn't surprising, because religious texts are often evoked for their gravitas, but it's certainly not exclusive to them (which is why I brought up Shakespeare before). What we work from here is the evidence, not from what you feel you would like to be true, even if that makes you feel persecuted. Sorry. Jumping to accuse me of some kind of anti-Christian bias because I won't acquiesce to you isn't a good look, saying things like "If that's not your goal, then acquiesce." really gives the game away that the only thing you're interested in here is getting your own way. Theknightwho (talk) 06:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You've been shown hundreds of books from the 20th Century and three from the 21st. You have numerous gospel songs, some of them new, all of which use the term. You continue to find bizarre reasons like claiming the usage isn't “organic” enough for you, which is patently absurd. It's a word I've personally heard spoken in conversation. The usage is undeniably active in a Christian context. BryanKaplan (talk) 06:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The search results from earlier contained 7 books, 2 of which are from the 19th century. If you're just going to make stuff up, there's no point in continuing this. Theknightwho (talk) 06:27, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I misremembered: there are twelve results from the 20th C. Please forgive me, as it was an honest mistake. Still, while hardly “hundreds”, a dozen books are a dozen books, with three more in the 21st. BryanKaplan (talk) 06:30, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Theknightwho (It's worth considering that the dozen plus three were just for that specific phrase. Probably other books use other phrases.) BryanKaplan (talk) 06:36, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've added a few cites to the entry demonstrating modern usage not directly quoting older works (like scripture). The added usages are characteristic of language you would hear in any modern non-denominational church service, or from a Christian commentator's podcast, or in any Christian cell group meeting in someone's home today. Leasnam (talk) 15:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, @Leasnam. Those quotes are good and especially useful in light of this discussion. BryanKaplan (talk) 19:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A question that should be answered is that if the word "tree" in this context is used solely in modern times to refer to Jesus's cross. All the sources so far refer solely to Jesus's cross, and not any other gallows. OED doesn't say that the gallows sense is obsolete (then again, it hasn't been revised since 1914), which it does say it is for the Christ cross sense. I'll check and see, and add the cross thing as a subsense. CitationsFreak (talk) 02:44, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

to furrow
I have doubts with:

3. To pull one's brows or eyebrows together due to concentration, worry, etc.
 * As she read the document intently her brows began to furrow.

which in my opinion should be intransitive, not transitive? (as in "her brow furrowed in concentration"). Even in the given example furrow is intransitive! Also, frown is given as a synonym, for which the first sense matches and is also intransitive. Some examples for what I mean are shown here. Also, if the transitive case is used ("he furrowed his brow") it's already covered by 2. (transitive) to wrinkle. What do you think? [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 20:04, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

go (2)
10. To become.

13. To come to (a certain condition or state).

The first two examples for #13 are not copulative anyway, as far as I can see, but just based on the "local shop" example, can anyone see exactly how this is distinct from sense #10? Yes, you can say that "going global/digital" is directed/intentional, whereas e.g. "I went crazy" is not, but "decided to go straight" is intentional in essentially the same way, isn't it? So what is the difference? Am I missing something? Mihia (talk) 21:47, 18 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Looking at the edit history, I see the entry had had only the "become" sense (complete with the maybe-incorrect "copulative" label), with the usexes "go blind", "go crazy", "go straight [noncriminal]", prior to me overhauling it: I added the "go Hollywood" cite to the "become" sense, and added the "come to a certain state" sense with the usexes "they went into debt, she goes to seep around 10 o'clock". Someone else added the "digital" usex, maybe to the wrong sense. In adding "come to a certain state" as a separate sense, I was influenced by the fact that other dictionaries separate those senses, but you may be right that the senses should be merged. (FWIW: Merriam-Webster has "14b: to come or arrive at a certain state or condition: go to sleep, " … I finally went to pieces and couldn't stop crying for two hours…"—Gwendoline Christie; see also go into sense 2 (below). 14c: to come to be : become: the tire went flat—often used to express conversion to specified values or a specified state: gone Hollywood, go condo. 14d: to undergo a change: leaves go from green to red" and Dictionary.com has "4 to become as specified: to go crazy. 5 to continue in a certain state or condition; be habitually: to go barefoot. 6 to act as specified: Go warily if he wants to discuss terms. 7 to act so as to come into a certain state or condition: to go into debt; to go to sleep.") BTW, in checking the NED, I notice we're missing a sense, "be pregnant, be gestating". - -sche (discuss) 03:11, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking into this. I don't see a problem with the "copulative" label for the "become" sense, only for the "come to" sense (or the first two examples thereof, anyway). But based on what you say, it could be that what has happened is that someone incorrectly added the "go digital" example to #13, and then someone also incorrectly added the "copulative" label to #13 (which doesn't seem to be present in your original "overhaul" diff), making a muddle of the distinction. Therefore, what I propose is removing both the "copulative" label and the "go digital" example from #13. Does that make sense as far as you can see? I think it makes sense to keep separate defs if one is copulative and the other is not. I think that "To come to (a certain condition or state)" should be "To come (to a certain condition or state), however. Mihia (talk) 09:01, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * That would work; I suppose the person who added the "digital" usex to the second sense may have been led astray by the first sense saying it's usually negative: maybe we should weaken that to "often" negative, or even remove it? (A criminal going straight is also not negative, nor going green, nor the go digital and global examples.) It occurs to me that another difference between the senses is that the first sense is "go" + directly followed by an adjective ("go blind"), or noun being used like an adjective ("go Hollywood"), whereas the second sense requires(?) a preposition or other particle, "go into debt", "go to pieces", "go to sleep", etc. - -sche (discuss) 15:12, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Regarding your last comment, right, that is exactly why #10 is copulative and #13 minus the "go digital" example is not. To my mind, this is a, or the, key differentiator between the two senses. Unfortunately I originally started out looking at this the wrong way round, i.e. that the label on #13 was correct but the non-copulative examples were misplaced, instead of that the label was incorrect. Mihia (talk) 17:48, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

free will
The difference between the two senses is not at all clear to me, and the quotes don't bear this distinction out imo. PUC – 11:38, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Three grounds for distinction:
 * 1.:Naive vs. sophisticated views.
 * 2.:Subjective vs. "objective".
 * 3.:Older vs. newer
 * The first two grounds probably converge. The third seem likely to be unsupportable.
 * Do people under threat have "free will"? Not necessarily under def. 1, but they do under def. 2.
 * I think these are supported by usage, though the current attestation doesn't seem to focus on that, except associating older cites with the naive definition, clearly ignoring, say, 750-year-old Thomist philosophy and more ancient schools of thought. DCDuring (talk) 14:11, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


 * If we keep these separate, we need to better explain the distinction, which seems to be that sense 2 is philosophical and the alternative is predestination, whereas sense 1's alternative is coercion or threat, as DCDuring says. A philosopher would make a statement like "all humans have free will (at all times)" which is demonstrably incorrect under sense 1, but correct/defensible under sense 2 (as a statement that predestination doesn't exist). - -sche (discuss) 15:21, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't really like either definition. Personally, I would opt for a definition such as "a person's power to freely choose the good" (deliberately being vague with regard to what it means to "freely" choose).  Anyway, I think the first definition is too vague or unclear (I mean, it says "free will" is "a person's natural inclination", but it also says it's an "unforced choice".  So which is it?  Is it an "inclination" or is it a "choice"?  Those are two very different things.  I personally don't think it's an inclination or a choice.  I think it's a "power".  Also, "natural" and "unforced" are poorly-defined).  And I think the second definition is too libertarian ("free will" need not be understood as being at odds with predestination or fate, and compatibilists hold that it is in fact compatible with predestination and fate).  I can see that we're going to run into a problem since different people define "free will" differently.  I personally would go with two very broad and general definitions: "1. the human will insofar as it is free" and "2. the free exercise of the human will".  Also, usually "free will" has a moral dimension to it, which should probably be noted.  We could perhaps also give subsenses for the libertarian definition and the compatibilistic definition and any other notable definitions. 2601:49:8400:26B:7139:D563:BA85:9142 22:18, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I do like user -sche's two senses though (the former as opposed to force or coercion; the latter as opposed to determinism). 2601:49:8400:26B:7139:D563:BA85:9142 22:28, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I couldn't comment on any technical philosophical definition, but what is presumably meant to be the "everyday" definition, "A person's natural inclination; unforced choice", is poorly worded, IMO. Mihia (talk) 22:31, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps "intention" or "intent" would be better, so the definitions would be something like "[intention]/[intent] formed without control or coercion" and "the capacity to do so". Chuck Entz (talk) 22:50, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I would say at least that the idea of "capacity" or "ability" ought to be included somehow. Mihia (talk) 23:15, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Although, I suppose this does apply to the concept or notion of "free will", which may be distinct from an individual application. Perhaps the idea is that the "everyday" definition should be the latter, but I'm not sure whether the former really needs a "philosophy" label. I think it is generally understood. Mihia (talk) 23:45, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I just took another look, and I like the edit that user -sche made. But I think the second definition might still be biased a little too much towards libertarianism.  (I also took a look at the libertarianism and libertarian pages as well, and they seem to suffer the same problem.  It's like incompatibilism is being assumed up front when it probably shouldn't be.) 2601:49:8400:26B:E471:271D:474A:EF7F 16:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Case and point: Let suppose that we humans have free will, but our choices are nevertheless determined in some way. (This is exactly what compatibilists try and argue.)  If this is the case then the second definition doesn't work because it isn't broad enough.
 * Now maybe compatibilistic free will is already completely covered by the first definition, but I'm not sure that it is.
 * I think it's probably important to define what constitutes "freedom", apart from an absence of force/coercion. It's been a while since I've studied this, but I recall that libertarians and "hard determinists" seem to say that freedom requires "open options" and aseity or whatever, whereas compatibilists don't seem to set the bar as high. 2601:49:8400:26B:E471:271D:474A:EF7F 16:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I just thought of something. Oftentimes when people say "free will", what they actually mean (whether they realize it or not) is "libertarian free will".  As if the two phrases, "free will" and "libertarian free will", have become synonymous.
 * I think the second definition needs to be broader, and then a third definition "libertarian free will" needs to be added (perhaps along with a brief explanation as to what libertarianism entails exactly). 2601:49:8400:26B:E471:271D:474A:EF7F 16:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, this may be a sidepoint or perhaps even irrelevant, but I do think the will's freedom also has a moral component. Since humans have a duty (as well as a natural desire) to choose the good, then it would seem that the will is not truly "free" in situations where there are no good options to choose between.  Rather, the will is enslaved to the situation.  Or the will is enslaved to whatever or whomever put it in that situation.  The will is enslaved regardless of whether we're talking about libertarian freedom or not.  Just a thought. 2601:49:8400:26B:E471:271D:474A:EF7F 16:42, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I am skeptical of our ability to produce a single terse (say, 12-word) 'philosophical' definition that would encompass much of the usage of philosophers, other than the first, "popular" definition. OTOH, I am certain that we could find citations that some would find compelling for perhaps scores of different "philosophical" definitions. DCDuring (talk) 18:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

new word definition
pan-centillion 50.21.205.121 14:00, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


 * You may create the page "pan-centillion" on a blank page, request its creation or create it using the New Entry Creator! If you prefer to make a request, then it would be helpful to make a suggestion about the general meaning, if you can.  —DIV (1.129.111.108 05:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC))

When I play fantasy games, I always be a gnome
Is "When I play fantasy games, I always be a gnome.", added to be in diff, a valid/grammatical sentence using the sense of be it was put under, 2.12, dynamic be ? It seems... off, to me; unlike the two usexes that precede it ("When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead." and "What do we do?" "We be ourselves.", which are perfectly cromulent). And when I search for examples, I can't find any: the hits I can find for "I always be a" are "will I always be a [...]?", and the hits for "I always be an elf" are "can I always be an elf?"). - -sche (discuss) 17:46, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think this can be understood in two ways: as an example of the kind of bad English that some people use, an error for "I'm always a gnome", and then, just about, in the actual sense of the relevant definition, though it seems pretty unusual, even strained. The latter interpretation would be a similar sense to "What are you dressed up like that for?" / "I'm being a gnome!" I don't think it's a great example, and probably a better one can be found. Mihia (talk) 20:10, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not a linguist and don't really know what the "dynamic / lexical be" is, but from a grammatical perspective I think all three of those examples are wrong.
 * "When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead" should be "When I get sad, I stop being sad and I start being awesome instead" (or "When I get sad, I stop being sad and I become awesome instead"). Maybe it's rhetorically correct as an instance of elision (maybe something like "When I get sad, I stop being sad and [I choose to] be awesome instead"), but rhetoric is distinct from grammar.  Grammatically it's wrong.
 * I think the question "What do we do?" is idiomatic and probably needs to be understood as "What shall we do?", in which case the answer should be phrased as "We shall be ourselves". Or, since the question sounds kind of like something you'd find in one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books, you could answer with an imperative, "Be ourselves" (but if you do that, you need to omit the pronoun).
 * As for "I always be an elf", this should be "I always am an elf" (but changing the word order to "I am always an elf" would sound a little better). You could use "be" for a subjunctive ("Would that I always be an elf") but this is probably not what the speaker has in mind. 2601:49:8400:26B:7139:D563:BA85:9142 20:24, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The first two definitely aren't wrong, and the fact you have to add additional verbs to "correct" them suggests that. The third is possibly a use of the - I'm not sure. Theknightwho (talk) 20:29, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand. If the first two "definitely aren't wrong", then why did I need to add words to make them correct?  If the sentence grammatically doesn't work, then the grammar is wrong. 2601:49:8400:26B:7139:D563:BA85:9142 20:53, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You didn't need to do that - you just rephrased them in a different way. I'm sure you'd agree that the common motivational phrase "Just be yourself" is correct, which is exactly the same sense of "be" as "We be ourselves". Theknightwho (talk) 20:56, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Some varieties of English use be this way to indicate habitual aspect; to the best of my knowledge "I always be a gnome" is grammatical in AAVE, for example. In Hiberno-English it would probably be "I do be a gnome". Even speakers of varieties that don't normally indicate habitual aspect this way sometimes feel the need to supply one: I was once talking to a white American woman (thus not a speaker of AAVE or Hiberno-English) who said of a wealthy man who didn't seem to actually do anything other than own businesses, "He just bees rich". So I would call this construction nonstandard, but not an error. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:22, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What you call "AAVE" is my "bad English" sense. But look at my example "What are you dressed up like that for?" / "I'm being a gnome!". This is a slightly different nuance from "I'm a gnome". If you did want to express this nuance in the original sentence, how would you do it? Not "When I play fantasy games, I'm always a gnome", but presumably "When I play fantasy games, I always be a gnome". I believe that this may be what the example is trying to get at, not the "AAVE" sense. However, because it is rather unusual or even unnatural, the "AAVE" sense comes first to mind. Mihia (talk) 21:42, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm familiar with "habitual be"; my apologies for not clarifying that what I'm asking was whether this was a valid/grammatical example of the sense (2.12, "dynamic be") it was given as an example of, rather than whether it would be valid if it were re-assigned to sense 1.5. - -sche (discuss) 22:02, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, now I see what you're getting at. And now I think about it, "He just bees rich" is probably also dynamic rather than habitual; she was saying that "being rich" is what he does for a living. (It's habitual too, but I think the reason she said bees was to make it dynamic rather than to make it habitual.) "I always be a gnome" is definitely nonstandard, but no less valid or (descriptive-linguistically) grammatical for that. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:27, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Archetypal vs. archetypical
I noticed that archetypical is listed as a synonym of archetypal. I could be wrong as I don't use these words very often, but my gut reaction is that these two words are not synonyms. I'm thinking "archetypal" means that the thing is an archetype (or establishes an archetype), whereas "archetypical" means that the thing conforms to an archetype (or is an instance of an archetype). And this seems to be what the definitions suggest as well. So, for example, the "archetypal hero" is something abstract, not found in any story. But in various stories we find all sorts of "archetypical heroes", such as Hercules, Perseus, Romeo, Superman, and so on. (And I think this holds for other word pairs ending in -typal and -typical as well.) I just figured I'd bring it up in case somebody knowledgeable agrees that it's a mistake and wants to correct it. 2601:49:8400:26B:7139:D563:BA85:9142 20:41, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


 * This is a typical instance of a broad class: although one might wish to prescribe sense differentiation for the pair, that usage prescription (1) does not currently hold descriptively and (2) predictably will not start doing so in real-world usage. When one looks up this pair in various blue-chip dictionaries (such as AHD, OED, MWU, and MWC), one finds that they all show the descriptive fact that these words are generally synonymous in attested usage; and some of them also offer clues about frequency (for example, "archetypal or less commonly archetypical", or corpus frequency graphs). The type of reference work that says "you should maintain such-and-such differentiation even though descriptively it is not upheld" is a usage manual (such as ) as opposed to a general dictionary; that class of reference work is useful too, but it's not what Wiktionary is. The most that Wiktionary can do is (1) enter any discrete sense that is descriptively a fact of usage (for example, both broad and strict ones) and (2) in some cases also give a short and simple usage note that basically conveys the idea that "some people prescribe a sense differentiation but this suggestion is often ignored" [in so many words]. The reason I emphasized short and simple is that there is a pretty strong consensus among many Wiktionarians that usage notes at Wiktionary must either be (1) powerfully terse-yet-accurate/accurate-yet-terse (call it dumbed down if you will, but in fairness, they're correct about the use case and user persona) or (2) ruthlessly deleted. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

small bikkies / big bikkies
Australian/NZ slang for not much or a lot (of money, or perhaps importance). —DIV (1.129.111.108 05:17, 20 May 2024 (UTC))
 * There are many spellings of bikkie (see biccy), and I'm not completely sure whether these idioms would likewise use all of them.
 * There's no mention of this sense at the 'main' entry: biccy.  Maybe there shouldn't be, if small bikkies & big bikkies are the only forms allowed?  But perhaps someone will then find an example such as tiny bikkies or huge bikkies.


 * Examples of huge bikkies are easy to find online., ,  & .  I didn't notice tiny bikkies, but it may exist somewhere.  —DIV (1.129.111.108 05:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC))
 * Also a couple for "large bikkies" and "massive bikkies": "Why fork out large bikkies for silver polish when classic toothpaste shall do?", "It may not be your cup of tea, so better to find out before you lay down the large bikkies", "We're not talking about massive bikkies here, unfortunately". Possibly should go under bikkie(s), however spelled. Mihia (talk) 21:15, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The joy of alliteration makes big versions way more common than those based on any other word, including small, etc. DCDuring (talk) 22:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If we did put this under "bikkie(s)", we could always include a note "especially in the phrase 'big bikkies'". Mihia (talk) 12:35, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It is both the entries small bikkies and big bikkies (and alternative forms) that are SoP. Big bikkies and some of the others might be worth having as redirects to bikkie, which should have usage examples. I'm surprised that the biccies spelling is about 70% as frequent as bikkies on Google N-Grams, but bikkie should be the lemma. It shows as more common in all time periods. DCDuring (talk) 13:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I just noticed that the bickie(s) spelling is a bit more common recently (since 2005) than bikkie(s). DCDuring (talk) 13:41, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Latin and other t-starting suffixes
I think saying t-starting suffixes are in latin added to the supine form is inherently wrong when most of the concerned suffixes use the same "uses the participe/supine as it's base..." wording for their Usage Notes. See Etymology scriptorium at "Latin cursim, passim, sparsim, etc.". Tim Utikal (talk) 21:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

go (3)

 * To be in general; to be usually;.

It doesn't seem to me that the definition is actually substitutable into the examples (in fact, it could even be seen to create the opposite meaning), but, that aside, and assuming we can understand anyway what this is referring to, is this sense ONLY used in the pattern "as ... go", or are there other examples? Mihia (talk) 20:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)


 * FWIW, Merriam-Webster has this as "7b: to be in general or on an average: cheap, as yachts go" and Dictionary.com has it as "13. to be considered generally or usually: He's short, as basketball players go." The OED's entry is laid out differently than ours, but has "14b. To pass for, to be currently accounted. [...] 'Had he apply'd himself wholly to his Book, [he] might have gone equal to the most famous Church-men of this latter age.'" and "15. To have ordinarily a certain degree or range of value, amount, excellence, etc. As men, things, etc. go: judging by the standard commonly attained." with quotes ranging rather widely in type, from "Whan rentys went at a moch lower pryce" to "[He's honest] as lords go now a-days that are in fashion" to "I think, as the world goes, he was a good sort of man enough". - -sche (discuss) 22:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I didn't think I could access the OED without subscription, but a search for "Whan rentys went at a moch lower pryce" yielded https://www.oed.com/dictionary/go_v?tl=true, which I seem to be able to freely view. What's going on, I wonder? The definition numbering on that webpage is different from yours, and, most pertinently, "Whan rentys went at a moch lower pryce", which is the only "non-as mixed with as" amongst your quoted examples, is, in the version I see, in a different section from the "as" examples, under "Of a commodity: to be sold or offered for sale". In the version that I see, "as things, people, etc., go: judging by the common or typical standard of the things or people specified" is a definition by itself in a section "Phrases without complement", and all examples are of the type "as ... go". Mihia (talk) 18:49, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, they must have updated this entry (neat, since it so many other cases they haven't). I was looking at the ~1933 OED, which archive.org has. I tried searching for various substitutes for "as" like "like", but couldn't find anything. (I can, of course, find other inflections of go, like "as women went", but I can only find it with as.) - -sche (discuss) 20:39, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

top
Adverb:
 * Rated first.

Before I remove it, does anyone agree/disagree that "top" is an adverb in this usage example? Mihia (talk) 17:33, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Well, you can somewhat translate it as on top so it's definitly an adverb. We're not saying she is top, are we? Tim Utikal (talk) 17:53, 25 May 2024 (UTC)


 * "she is top" isn't the best tense for that example, but "she was top" works OK. "on top" can be adjectival if you like. The issue here is that "come" can be a copulative verb, e.g. "come true", "come undone", "come alive". In those examples, "true", "undone" and "alive" are adjectives that describe the resulting state. It seems to me that "come top" MAY be of the same nature. Does "top" actually describe the manner in which she came, or does it describe the resulting state? Mihia (talk) 19:33, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I guess you're right saying it's an adjective. I was (and am) just not use to it being used predicatively as in "I was top" = "I got the best place"/"I won". Either way, (perhaps me being not used to it) I feel it does not bear a different meaning from other definitions we have for now. The meaning "rated first" seems strictly related to the copulative verb and the "in her french exam" part, giving simply a more strict sense to it's more general one, the which being: "best". This example is nonetheless a great case to be added to the others. Tim Utikal (talk) 15:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

gaybait (to pander a gay person through demagoguery)
Ety 2, sense 2 "To entice or pander a gay person through demagoguery." reads like it was copied from some 19th century dictionary. (It was added by Luciferwildcat, one of our rogues' gallery of adders of wonky entries and definitions.) Can I just remove it, or can anyone discern what it was trying to get at, and word it better? Is it like red-bait (to attack someone, trying to provoke them to respond, by calling them gay)? Is it analogous to queerbait (to draw in gay people as viewers/fans, without directly making a character gay)? We seem to be missing an analogue-to-queerbait sense, in any event (see e.g., ). - -sche (discuss) 20:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Removed. (Restore it if you can work out what the sense was getting at and word it better.) I also added a queerbait sense. - -sche (discuss) 18:26, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

A bit off-topic, but the first definition of (and ) seems a bit restrictive as it is often used to refer to celebrities conveying a sense of queerness in an ambiguous manner. I am not sure whether a new sense should be added or the current definition should be revised to include such contexts. Einstein2 (talk) 19:18, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * My gut feeling is that a show/movie/etc queerbaiting by how it depicts characters, and a real person 'queerbaiting' by how they act, seem like separate senses. At least, it seems like it would be hard to rewrite the existing definition to cover both things without losing detail or just having two clearly different definitions joined into one sentence by the word "or". I could be wrong; in particular it probably hinges on how definitional the details of media queerbaiting that would be lost in a redefinition-to-cover-both-things are (e.g., does media queerbaiting have to be done by creating homoerotic tension between characters — btw I would probably change "two" to "two or more" — or can it be done by having one character act very gay without necessarily having sexual tension with anyone?) On a practical note, it seems like a good idea to not have the definition in two places, i.e. let's either define the verb as "to engage in queerbaiting", or define the noun as something like "the practice of queerbaiting" so that we can give the lengthy details in just one place. - -sche (discuss) 20:14, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

down
Another adverb:


 * As a down payment.

Anyone agree/disagree that "down" is an adverb in this example? Mihia (talk) 20:39, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't like that as the sole example, but it does represent a common usage of the word in that sense. There is an implicit pay (in some form) that, in my mind, legitimizes the PoS. DCDuring (talk) 22:57, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You could be right. Anyway, I've added another example with an explicit verb. Mihia (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

xeet
Understandably this got locked last year when a fake story was going around that Elon Musk was renaming "tweets" into "xeets", but "xeet" has been adopted widely since last year for being grating/weird on purpose and as an in-joke between online people, and being a kind of ironic comment against the way the site is. Something like for verb and noun seems fine but I'd appreciate some other input since the situation of it being coined as a hoax, never being official in any way, then being adopted as a joke/protest is so weird. Nicerink (talk) 10:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Being official, coined as a hoax or whatever is not relevant to inclusion - all that's needed is that it passes WT:CFI. I agree that the labels seem about right, though. Theknightwho (talk) 16:54, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I was about to post a request to un-protect at the information desk then I realised you're the person that put the protection on there! Can you please unlock the page? Thanks Nicerink (talk) 09:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Mom, Pop, and apple pie (U.S. culture)
Virtues like neighborliness and civic pride, that Americans believe have traditionally characterized U.S. culture JMGN (talk) 10:42, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Check if you can find at least three qualifying quotations supporting this term. It appears to be a variant of (the lemma) and  which are already in the dictionary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:10, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Google books shows several tens JMGN (talk) 09:34, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

បច្ចុប្បន្ន
Khmer, pronunciation query. The pronunciation /pac.co.ɓɑn/ is based on the phonetic repelling ប៉័ច-ចុ-បន់ entered by. However, SEALang gives the pronunciation as /paccopbɑn/, implying that second gemination is not ignored in speech, corresponding to a phonetic respelling ប៉័ច-ចុប-បន់  --RichardW57m (talk) 12:44, 23 May 2024 (UTC) (UTC)

upon
Our entry for upon is a bit hopeless. It lists a small and selective subset of senses for which "upon" can be used as a (typically higher-register) alternative to "on", then gives up and just lists "on" as a definition. In fact, "upon" can be used in place of "on" for many (though not all) prepositional senses of "on", which amounts to a fairly long list. The sole example that I can think of where "on" cannot be used in place of "upon" is the set phrase "Once upon a time". Are there others? Now, what to do with the entry for "upon"? Duplicate all the applicable definitions from "on", or simply define "upon" as an elevated or higher-register alternative to "on" for many senses? We could also label all the applicable senses of "on" as "also 'upon'", but it could get a bit tiresome. What do you think? Mihia (talk) 21:32, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Many other online dictionaries define upon as "on", some suggesting that it is formal and anglicole. Collins has 4 definitions, all of which look like definitions of on. I don't have convenient access to the OED. It would be interesting to see which definitions of on that could not be replaced by upon. I think there are many phrases where upon seems not merely stilted let alone formal, but dead wrong to my US ears: on hold, on call, on order, on base (baseball), on time, on TV/on radio, on campus, on high, on budget. Note that not all of these are set phrases or idioms. Is upon somewhat limited to the more physical senses of on? Also, compare on the TV (ambiguous) with upon the TV (physical only ?). DCDuring (talk) 22:57, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * One can go through our listed senses of (prepositional) "on" and determine which seem to work with "upon". I began doing this, in order to create a "complete" entry at "upon", then wondered whether I should be bothered. There are plenty of non-physical possibilities for "upon", I think. I think that the idiomatic phrases are a different matter again. Yes, I guess that if we go down the route of one definition for "upon", it would make sense to mention these too, as possible/probable cases where "upon" cannot replace "on". Mihia (talk) 23:08, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The 1933 OED says: "Originally denoting elevation as well as contact, the compound has from the earliest period of its occurrence so far lost the former implication, that it has been regularly employed as a simple equivalent of on, in all the varieties of meaning which that preposition has developed. The use of one form or the other has been for the most part a matter of individual choice (on grounds of rhythm, emphasis, etc.) or of simple accident, although in certain contexts and phrases there may be a general tendency to prefer the one to the other. For ease of comparison, the following arrangement of the senses corresponds as closely as possible with that of on." It then lists six pages of senses, which I am not going to transcribe or compare to their many pages of on senses right now. I'll try to look later to see if I can spot any senses of on or upon which cannot be interchanged; one sense which comes to mind is the sense used in "I'm on Twitter"'/"he's on Twitter" ("on Facebook", "on AOL", "on Discord", "on Reddit", etc), where "I'm upon Twitter"/"he's upon Twitter" gets zero Google hits. Nonetheless, unless the number of non-interchangeable senses is larger than that, it might make still sense to define upon as on and just explain that a few senses (specifying which ones) only exist for one or the other (and of course, that set phrases may only work with one or the other). - -sche (discuss) 23:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
 * But from on radio, on the radio, on campus, on the campus, on budget, which can accept upon in UK English? In the US, at least, I can almost always substitute on for upon, but not the other way around. DCDuring (talk) 02:48, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We are probably not going to be able to document the exact match between definitions of on and upon. In any event the overlap approaches total. Maybe the best we can do is a long usage notes section, lots of usage examples and collocations. The most important thing might be to note those cases for which upon is strongly preferred, at least in the UK sphere of influence. DCDuring (talk) 12:47, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think in BrE "upon" is mostly a higher-register stylistic choice rather than actually being preferred for many individual senses. It can vary from moderately higher-register, acceptable in (educated) conversational English, such as "depend upon" or "he took it upon himself", to the pedantic-sounding "I put it upon the table", and then to cases such as "I saw it upon TV", which are impossible. A couple of individual senses where "upon" is "often" used are already marked as such. Perhaps one of the strongest might be the sense I recently added, example "the season is upon us", but this is inherently a literary or poetic sense anyway, where one might expect the higher-register word. Anyway, if nobody is objecting, I think I will abandon the idea of re-listing numerous senses separately at "upon", and instead make "upon" point to "on", with some explanatory notes. Mihia (talk) 16:34, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm looking through the OED, and I note that while many of their definitions of upon end with an explicit "=on", some don't. I'll list them here so we can see which can nonetheless be replaced with on. So far I've gone through their senses I.1 through I.3 (many more remain to be gone through). They note that I.1.a. ("rest [...] upon this [...] seat") is =on or even =up (with scribes writing uppon as a variant of uppan=up). 1.b. ("upon the [...] sea") and 1.c. ("upon one knee") and 1.d. ("rode upon the fragments [of ice]") and 1.e. ("Oathes upon the [Bible]", "upon my word") they also specify as "=on".
 * They don't explicitly equate their sense "[1.]f. Above, more than. Obs. Cf. up prep 1 8." to on, but they only have 13- and 1400s cites for that:
 * 13??, Guy Warw. (A.) 359:  Opon al other y loue the.
 * c 1430, Syr Gener. (Roxb.) 969:  Son, vpon al thing Doo aftre Nathanaels teching.
 * Symbol abstain vote.svg They don't don't explicitly equate "[1.]g. fig. Over (a person, etc.), in respect of rule, authority, or supervision. Obs." to on; can it be replaced with on? Cites include:
 * The kyngis of hethen han lordeschip vp-on him. [...] Thi powere es grete apon thi subgets. [...] Oure Lord god enoyntyd Saule Kynge vpoon Israell. [...] He aught to haue lawde That . . hath lordship vpon his ennemyes. [...] A man that wolde be chefe ruler vpon the commentye.
 * For their sense 1.h. they merely say "cf. on" rather than "=on", but the cites (like "serving upon juries") can all be replaced with on AFAICT. They equate 1.i. and 2.a. ("feel the gold rim [of the crown] upon his temples") to on. 2.b. "Used of immaterial relationships, or in figurative expressions. [...] There was a tale Upon thy tongue" is probably also replaceable by on (certainly something can be on the tip of one's tongue).
 * Symbol abstain vote.svg "[2.]c. By means of; with. Now dial.":
 * 1590, Shaks., Mids. N. [...] To die vpon the hand I loue so well.
 * [...] run a Man upon the Nose like an Hound. [...] Explaining before them, upon a working Model, the Method I proposed. [...] I intended to have printed it upon what is called an English letter. [...] Which eye can you see me upon?
 * 2.d. they equate to on ("A Triangle is equal to a Parallelogram upon the same Base, but half the Altitude.") Likewise 3.a. "On the bank of (a river or lake); on the shore of (the sea); on the borders of (a territory, etc.); close by, near to, bordering upon; beside or by; = on prep. 3.":
 * [...] He fauȝt..aȝenst the Saxons..uppon the ryver Gleny. [...] The tounes vp-on the see. [...] Alger..is situated vpon the Mediterane Sea. [...] Upon the heads of Joniady River. [...] Caerlon upon Usk.
 * Symbol abstain vote.svg They don't explicitly equate 3.b. "About; near; close on (a specific number, etc.). Obs. In later use only with 'close' 'adv. 1 d, 'near' adv.2 5 c, 'nigh' adv. 12 c." to on. Cites are:
 * A steppe modyr of hyrs, wyche is upon 1. year of age. [...] Ther wylbe in aull with blottes apon xxvij or xxviij sarplers wholl. [...] He had but a doughter only, apon a twelve yere of age. [...] He had a kryed a nomber of horsemen..vpoon the poynct of syx thousand. [...] There were upon two thousand & five hundred taken alive.
 * 1660, Nicholas Papers (Camden) IV, 226:  To pay mee my allowance..as it was regulated upon three years since.
 * - -sche (discuss) 16:43, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

on twelve minutes

 * 1) Should senses 12 and 13 of on be merged? "12. At the date of. Born on the 4th of July. 13. Sometime during the day of. I'll see you on Monday. If you work from 1am to 5am, you could still tell your colleague "see you on Monday", so I must conclude "day" in sense 13 means the 24-hour period (rather than only the sunlit portions thereof), in which case the person "born on the 4th of July" was "born sometime during the date of" the 4th of July. Is some other distinction intended, that different usexes would make?
 * I'd have guessed that the definitions were distinguishing usage with a date as a "point" in time, vs. a date as a "duration". But that seems to have more to do with time scales than on. Maybe it makes a difference to ESLers and amateur translators. DCDuring (talk) 14:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd merge them. I don't see a worthwhile distinction. The same sense works with dates and days of the week, that's all. Also, in AmE, people say "on the weekend", right? Is that the same sense? I notice this creeping into BrE usage too (traditionally we say "at the weekend"). Mihia (talk) 17:40, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Or, in fact, not just named "days of the week" but days generally, e.g. "on Christmas Day", "on this day in history", etc. Mihia (talk) 23:50, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * On the weekend, over the weekend, ∅ this/last weekend are all commonly used. I'm not sure whether there is any semantic distinction at all among them, other than the specificity brought by this/last. DCDuring (talk) 20:13, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I have merged these now. Mihia (talk) 17:40, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Is sense 14 of on, "At a given time after the start of something; at. Smith scored again on twelve minutes. I'll see you a week on Friday.", missing a label? The cites seem to be British; I have not offhand managed to find American cites, though my search was only cursory. - -sche (discuss) 03:35, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd expect it only from a British sportscaster narrating a soccer match on US TV. DCDuring (talk) 14:23, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I question whether those examples are the same sense at all. Mihia (talk) 17:47, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "a week on Friday" could be the same sense as #12/#13, with idiomatic use of "a week", e.g. an idea of "on Friday, it'll be a week until ...", or something like that. Mihia (talk) 17:55, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And, in fact, in "a week on Friday", Friday is the start of the measured period, whereas in "Smith scored again on twelve minutes", "twelve minutes" is not the start of the measured period at all. I don't think the "week on Friday" example is anything to do with this sense, so I think I'll remove it. Mihia (talk) 14:11, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Speaking as a single data point, but possibly as a representative of US usage: I read on in "on 12 minutes" as an adverb meaning something like "later", ie, as "12 minutes on". I find it hard to accept the preposition reading. Is the adverb reading plausible to a UK ear? DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * To me it seems like a preposition. "on 12 minutes" is like "at (the elapsed time of) 12 minutes". Should I put a "UK" label on it, do you think? Mihia (talk) 17:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And, I should have said explicitly, it definitely does not, in this usage, mean "12 minutes on (later)". Mihia (talk) 19:25, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't express myself well. I thought that in this context it meant 'after the beginning of'/'into' the match. DCDuring (talk) 23:05, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Couldn't it be used to specify a time in, say, a recording/transcript? Couldn't it be used with about/approximately and about different time scales? Couldn't it be used about distances in an analogous way? DCDuring (talk) 23:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In principle it seems possible for this pattern to be used about any situation where there is an elapsed time, but so far I have actually only found examples relating to sports. To my perception it is most often used as a kind of sports reporter's formula. Nevertheless, it's very likely that other uses could be found if one looked hard enough. I added an "especially sports" label to allow. "on X minutes" has a sense of a certain precision, within minute-resolution I suppose, so "on about X minutes" doesn't work tremendously well to me. Like anything, probably somewhere it has been used. Mihia (talk) 08:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, yes; I haven't been able to find American cites, although perhaps a more exhaustive search (or other phrases) would. (Ideally we might ping some Australians, Canadians, Irish editors and others to see what the exact scope of use is.) - -sche (discuss) 18:42, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As a Canadian, I have no idea what "on twelve minutes" means, without further context. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for labelling "on twelve minutes". To me, "I'll see you a week on Friday." (currently labelless) also sounds weird. Does it sound normal to you? (What does it mean? If it's currently Wednesday, is it saying I'll see you in a week and two days? Is this a dialectal thing, or a common usage that's slipping my mind? Is it saying "I'll see you for a week, we'll spend a week together, starting on Friday?) I am inclined to (a) replace it with a (hopefully) more widely valid usex like "We will have been married a year on Tuesday", and/or (b) label it as dialectal, if appropriate. - -sche (discuss) 15:30, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * If it's now Wednesday, "I'll see you a week on Friday" means I'll see you in a week and two days. It does not mean I'll see you "for" a week. To me in the UK this is a normal and familiar usage. Also we can say "a week Friday". I have been debating what to do with this. Originally I removed it altogether, then I added it back as a sub-sense. Now I am thinking that maybe we should just remove it again. The problem is, I'm not sure it is a separate sense of "on" at all, not even a sub-sense. I think it may be exactly the same sense as normal "on Friday", with any additional meaning down to the other words / pattern, and nothing to do with "on" per se. It would make more, or as much, sense to have it as a definition of "week". Your example is different and, to me, seems transparently the usual meaning of "on". It just means "On Tuesday, we will have been married (for) a year". It is possible in theory to say "a year on Tuesday" referring to the future, a la "I'll see you a week on Friday", but a year is almost too long for the idiom to support. A month might be a better limit. Mihia (talk) 16:57, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It sounds perfectly normal to me too. There’s also ‘I’ll see you Friday week’ which also seems to be mainly used in Britain, the Commonwealth and the former Commonwealth, rather than North America, judging by the results of a Google search I did. Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:58, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds like it's a UK usage, then (future-event-referencing, time which will start elapsing-referencing "I'll see you a week on Friday", as opposed to past-event-referencing, time which will have elapsed-referencing "it'll have been a week on Friday [since it happened]" which I'm gathering is pan-dialectal?). Or are any of our American editors familiar with it? (It we keep it as a distinct sense, it seems like we need to change "on which a specified elapsed period of time begins" to "on which a specified period of time will begin" or "...will begin to elapse", because the time will not have already elapsed, past tense, when Friday arrives, in the "I'll see you" example.) - -sche (discuss) 23:04, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You're right about the existing "elapsed" wording being confusing (my fault). It's since occurred to me that, as well as saying "I'll see you a week on Friday", we can say "I'll see you a week this/next Friday", in the same sense. This only solidifies my feeling that this usage has nothing to do with "on" per se. I think we need to cover 's "Friday week" sense at "week" anyway, and we could perhaps somehow incorporate "a week (on) Friday" at the same time. Mihia (talk) 23:58, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh ... the "Friday week" sense is already there ... but under "adjective". Is it an adjective?? Mihia (talk)
 * I started a new thread for this topic at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/May#week.

the blame vs responsibility is on me

 * Sense 3 "Expressing figurative placement, burden, or attachment. All of the responsibility is on him." and sense 40 "To the account or detriment of; denoting imprecation or invocation, or coming to, falling, or resting upon. On us be all the blame." also seem like they could stand to be distinguished better, and maybe the usex of one would be better placed under the other, since the two usexes seem to be using the same sense. (Both senses, looking at their other usexes, seem like they may actually represent more than one sense apiece...) - -sche (discuss) 05:08, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * IMO "On us be all the blame" and "A curse on him!" should be moved to #3 (or just deleted if too similar to examples already there). In these, broadly speaking, with grammatical allowance, "on" has a sense of "placed on", as it does in the existing #3 examples. The other examples at #40 seem as if they may be different. These do not, even with grammatical licence, seem to mean "placed on". Mihia (talk) 17:47, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There is also another sense:
 * At the peril of, or for the safety of.
 * Is this the same as the "To the account or detriment of ... etc. etc." sense? Or is it the same sense as the example "I swear on my life", presently assigned to definition "By virtue of; with the pledge of"? Or are all of these actually the same thing? Mihia (talk) 19:34, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Is this the same as the "To the account or detriment of ... etc. etc." sense? Or is it the same sense as the example "I swear on my life", presently assigned to definition "By virtue of; with the pledge of"? Or are all of these actually the same thing? Mihia (talk) 19:34, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

sum of its parts
I feel like the definition doesn't define the phrase insofar as explain it, what I mean is that you can't replace the phrase in a sentence with its listed definition. I think the current definition should be moved to the etymology section and the new definition should go something like "(chiefly compared) a group that has the same effectiveness when working together as it does when working individually" Maddylicious (talk) 18:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Well spotted; I've tried rewording it, but suggestions/improvements are welcome. PUC – 19:11, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There should maybe be something in the usage notes about how something is rarely described as just a sum of it parts but is rather usually compared to a sum of its parts as either greater than/more than or less than. Maddylicious (talk) 13:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

"zone" - suffix or some kind of verb?
As a back-formation of, you can be relationship-zoned in various ways, meaning "to be seen by another person as being in a specific type of relationship with them (usually one that's not desired by the object of the verb)". So for instance "wifezoned" or "wife zoned" - "to be seen as a potential wife (when you consider the relationship to be more casual)" There are a lot of Twitter hits for "classmate zoned", "teammate zoned", "colleague zoned", and there's also hunzoned. But how should we enter "-zone"? It sometimes acts as a suffix ("wifezone"), but more normally it seems to appear with a space ("wife zone"). How do we format that? Smurrayinchester (talk) 19:05, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I view the noun sense of zone as an extension of the geography/real definitions, with friendzone an alternative spelling that supports the possible idiomaticity of friend zone. It would be natural to add -ed to the noun to form an adjective/participle, from which it is a short distance to zone in this sense being used as a full verb. A fully general sense of the noun would be "a restricted category", with the verb being "to place in a restricted category". DCDuring (talk) 01:15, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * If we view "nouny" zone (as in the wife zone) and verby zone (to wifezone / wife zone someone, she wife-zoned her) as primarily standalone words that sometimes occur in unspaced or hyphenated compounds, then we only really need to enter the standalone words, just like how we only have bird, not *bird-, even though bird can occur in unspaced or hyphenated compounds like birdhouse and bird-brain. (For the verb, we could supplement zone by defining -zone as an alt form, I guess, and some people might do likewise for the noun although it's arguably unnecessary. I'm pretty sure there are examples of things which are currently handled like this, English verbs that start with "-", but it's hard to search for.) Conversely, if we view something (say, ass) as primarily a suffix (a big-ass fish or even a bigass fish) which can sometimes occur as a standalone word (a big ass fish), then what we (I?) did there was to define the standalone word ass as a ===Particle=== synonym of the hyphenated -ass that covers the unspaced and hyphenated examples. - -sche (discuss) 19:57, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

What template for mentioning a term preceded by the name of its language in running text?
m and l don't appear to provide a way to display the name of the language indicated by the given language code (and link it to the corresponding Wikipedia article) before the term itself, the way that, for example, cog does by default. Is there a template that does this, or do I have to manually construct a Wikipedia link with the language name? Brusquedandelion (talk) 06:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * See (use w if the Wikipedia link is needed). We also have . J3133 (talk) 06:39, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I had tried, but it didn't seem to be working; I only just realized that it requires an arbitrary (non-white space) string after w, which was not immediately apparent from the docs. Thank you! Brusquedandelion (talk) 08:26, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

asbestos fingers, asbestos hands
These terms are used to mean someone has fingers/hands with a high heat tolerance (e.g., ), normally literally but occasionally metaphorically (e.g. ) which is new to me. Should these be given separate full entries or just an adjective sense at asbestos? Or is it just a metaphorical attributive use of the noun (made of asbestos)? While "hands" and "fingers" are the most common (with the latter more common in my personal experience) I've found single uses of "asbestos toes", "asbestos arms" and "asbestos knees" in this context. Searches for "asbestos feet" seem to be exclusively feet ("projection on the bottom of an object to support it") made of asbestos or linear/area measurements of asbestos. Thryduulf (talk) 15:07, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * : it should be covered by asbestos under the noun, perhaps as a metaphorical sense. I'm sure I've encountered expressions like "I wouldn't touch that one with asbestos gloves!", so it's more about the noun as a metaphorical protection from hot things. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure "asbestos gloves" (which exist and are literally just gloves made from asbestos) is the same sense? Thryduulf (talk) 13:22, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * We list silver and leather not only as nouns but also as adjectives. For iron as an adjective we give the literal sense, “made of the metal iron”, but also a figurative sense: “strong (as of will), inflexible”. We could treat asbestos similarly. --Lambiam 16:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed we could. I’m surprised no-one’s mentioned ‘asbestos guts’ yet, surely the most common variant? Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:50, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Interestingly I don't know that I've heard "asbestos guts" before. A quick glance at usage seems it's used with multiple meanings - temperature (e.g. being able to drink "coffee straight from the pot"), being able to eat spicy food without adverse complications, and not being particularly sensitive to food that is not of great quality (after it's sell-by date, dodgy kebabs, etc). One hit suggests it's a replacement for the "now offensive" "cast iron guts", cast iron sense 2 ("durable, tough, resilient") would seem to match the third and possibly second meanings of "asbestos guts". Thryduulf (talk) 13:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

piere'd
I found several instances of this contraction (which might mean "pierced?"): Shakespeare, Eagles, a poem. Neither pier nor piere have a verb for this, any ideas? Do you think this deserves an entry? If so, which would be the root word? [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 12:49, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not an e, it's just pierc'd (pierced). The poor quality of the print or scan makes it hard to tell. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:00, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Think you're right. Thanks! [Saviourofthe] ୨୧ 14:35, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

busted my neck
Correctly if I'm wrong: normally redirects of one verb conjugation to an infinitive or another conjugation ARE ALLOWED, right? Some time back, I created busted my neck as a redirect to bust one's neck. Busted my neck is a first-person past conjugation of bust one's neck, and one that easily passes RFV due to the amount of times Joe Biden has said it.

It was deleted earlier today as part of a strange spree another editor is on. Should it...

Purplebackpack<b style="color:#FB0">89</b></b> 17:16, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) Be recreated as a redirect?
 * 2) Be created as a entry?
 * 3) Stay deleted?


 * We have "Redirections" but it is a draft proposal, not a policy. It says "Other forms of multi-word idioms: for example, burn his fingers may redirect to the pronoun-neutral, uninflected form burn one’s fingers". Personally, I'm not convinced that it is desirable to have multiple redirects of this nature. To be comprehensive we would have to create bust my neck, bust your neck, bust our necks, bust his neck, bust her neck, and bust their necks, and then what about all the inflections such as busts my/your/our/his/her/their neck(s), busting my/your/our/his/her/their neck(s), and so on? I think this is ultimately unsustainable, and that there will be plenty of missing redirects. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree. The combinations could balloon. In these cases we should be able to depend upon the search facility finding "bust one's neck" from feasible variants. A couple that I tried did put "bust one's neck" at the top of the list, but then again "busted her neck" did not. Although once upon a time this would have been asking a lot, nowadays we tend to expect such "intelligence". The cases that are more difficult to legislate for, in my opinion, are those that have no clear "base" form, such as the recent "time stands still". Mihia (talk) 18:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Why is ballooning a bad thing? Shouldn't we strive for as many entries as possible?  Conversely, nobody's putting a gun to anybody's head and saying that if we let one through we have to create more, even less so create them immediately (although creating a set of redirects or conjugations of the same verb).  Finally, some of the conjugations are used more frequently than others. <b style="font-family:Verdana"><b style="color:#3A003A">Pur</b><b style="color:#800080">ple</b><b style="color:#991C99">back</b><b style="color:#C3C">pack</b><b style="color:#FB0">89</b></b> 20:11, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't really see the value of these. It's better to use a neutral pronoun like one, oneself, one's, etc. Vininn126 (talk) 20:12, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I would even take this further and question whether we need to list inflections of (long) verb phrases, e.g.:
 * To me, this looks faintly silly. Mihia (talk) 20:34, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * For highly inflected like Polish, this would be ridiculous even! As for English, I'm not sure. Vininn126 (talk) 20:36, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think inflections for long verb phrases are a problem. In this instance, I favour consistency with other verb entries. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:08, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've always found it pointless: we could just point to the entry for the part that actually inflects. These inflections take up space and attention for no good reason that I can see. PUC – 21:13, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've been against those for a long time, especially for expressions that have several variant forms, which would multiply the forms even further, and even more so for those expressions which rarely occur in their conjugated forms. I'd even say they shouldn't be listed in the headword line since only one word changes and we can just link to that. However my opinion only applies to these very long expressions where someone finding the main entry is sure to know the conjugated forms without the need for them to have separate pages. — Soap — 19:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I've been against those for a long time, especially for expressions that have several variant forms, which would multiply the forms even further, and even more so for those expressions which rarely occur in their conjugated forms. I'd even say they shouldn't be listed in the headword line since only one word changes and we can just link to that. However my opinion only applies to these very long expressions where someone finding the main entry is sure to know the conjugated forms without the need for them to have separate pages. — Soap — 19:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I support using redirects in cases like this, I don't see a problem with it and I do see benefit (helping people who look up the forms with specific pronouns). (I think we use redirects too little, but this is a use that's explicitly allowed/encouraged, as noted above. If we have a lot of redirects, so what?) It especially helps when the noun varies, e.g. someone who sees the phrase man of his word might not think to look up person of one's word (where the entry was initially moved to) or bare of one's word (where it is now), so the redirects we have help. Whether to list inflections in the entry seems like a separate question entirely; I too (like others above and in past discussions of that question) don't see having all the en-verb (etc) inflections as useful in most cases, and think we could just get by with head / no inflections on the headword line and no inflection templates in most cases, unless there is something unexpected about the way a particular idiom inflects. (The fact that some "VERB one's NOUN" phrases inflect like "I VERB my SINGULAR NOUN, we VERB our STILL-SINGULAR NOUN" but others inflect like "I VERB my SINGULAR NOUN, we VERB our NOW-PLURAL NOUN" is arguably unexpected, but our headword-line inflection info doesn't help with that; that's something we'd have to illustrate it with a usex.) - -sche (discuss) 21:07, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * IMHO, for English, a lot depends on whether one can find the lemma entry using the search box when one uses inflected forms and various specific personal pronouns. Redirects seem much better than inflected-form-type entries for these when search doesn't yield the lemma at the top of the list. DCDuring (talk) 15:59, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This may be what you meant anyway, but ideally what we need is for the item not merely to be listed prominently in the full search results, but to pop up in the drop-down list when sufficient of it has been typed. For example, I can search "bust my neck" and find "bust one's neck" in the results, but some people may not even have the attention span for this. How much better if "bust one's neck" popped up in the dropdown and I could select it there. Mihia (talk) 21:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with that, @Mihia.
 * Here was my (ranty) take on it: Discussion of off his own bat — under "O", in Wiktionary:Requested entries (English) — with @[[User:Equinox|Equinox], 07–08 January 2024].
 * Long story short, I think it's been too difficult for the novice/inexperienced user to find phrases that include pronouns.
 * I do not advocate for manually creating lots of standalone pages for variant pronouns. I am not sure whether using a script to automatically create the variant entries as pure redirects is really the ideal.  If there's technical wizardry that can add the corresponding phrase using "one" or "one's" to the drop-down list and/or display it prominently in the search results, that may provide the improvement sought.
 * BTW: just checking the current Search functionality, I notice that not only are the results still presented as a 'wall of noise', but the radio buttons to search Google, Bing & Yahoo (maybe I hadn't tried them before) are not particularly user-friendly:  they respectively link to external searches that completely ignore the term typed in the search box(!), and only for Google is it apparent that a subsequent manually retyped search would be restricted to Wiktionary.
 * —DIV (1.145.80.164 06:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC))

Polish raz
The "senseno" template has been used here in a very disfunctional way. Three different senses are now referred to as "sense 1". ("Sense 1 is a generalization of sense 1. Sense 1 is a semantic narrowing of sense 1.") I don't know if this can be mended within the template by overriding the gloss. Otherwise is should be done manually. 84.63.31.91 00:01, 28 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I have mentioned this before. It could be fixed were there a . Vininn126 (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

week
Adjective sense:


 * 1)  Seven days after ( before) a specified date.
 * – "I'll see you a week from Thursday."

Anyone agree/disagree that this is an adjective? The theory may be that "week" describes which Thursday is meant, but I'm not convinced that this is the correct analysis. Of the other dictionaries I've looked at, several list this sense under noun, while one (Chambers) says it's an adverb. I would be happy to list it as a noun. Any opinions? Mihia (talk) 14:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * In fact, it's just occurred to me that the fact that we can analogously say "tomorrow week" seems to bust the adjective theory. "week" clearly cannot be describing which "tomorrow" is meant. Mihia (talk) 15:00, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "A week from Thursday" isn't a noun, and this functions the same way. Looks like an adverb to me. At the very least "Thursday week" is a prepositional phrase with some words elided. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Thursday" is primarily a noun, yet can be used adverbially in "I'll see you Thursday". Likewise, "Thursday week" is primarily a noun, meaning the Thursday after next, yet can be used adverbially in "I'll see you Thursday week". Whether we could say that the adverbiality of "Thursday week" in that case transfers to the word "week" itself seems a bit dubious to me. Furthermore, the PoS of "week" does not, of course, have to be the same as the PoS of "Thursday week". Mihia (talk) 15:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc.
Adverbial senses of days of the week (e.g. "I'll do it Monday", "I'll see you Tuesday", etc.) are presently labelled "US, Canada". I see no reason for this, since this usage is common enough in the UK too. BUT, in the UK it is, as far as I can think, mostly a colloquial sense, whereas in US/Canada perhaps it is not seen as colloquial. I have a feeling it may be used in formal language too. Is that right? Or is it just journalese that I'm thinking of? Would an American English or Canadian English speaker be able to comment on this? Mihia (talk) 16:39, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Be back in court Monday" is certainly more informal in the US than "be back in court on Monday", but it appears in the Congressional Record and the New York Times, so I don't think an informal label is warranted. DCDuring (talk) 17:27, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks, I added "informal in UK". Mihia (talk) 14:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

make (verb)
Sense 32 reads: "To be engaged or concerned in" and is labelled obsolete, yet isn't this the sense used for, , etc. ? Leasnam (talk) 17:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "make war" is presently an example for #1.3, "To bring about; to effect or produce by means of some action". Mihia (talk) 17:24, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see it now. This example follows closely with make peace, which leaves make love rather stranded...I cannot think of another parallel to this... Leasnam (talk) 18:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * At the moment, we have make love as a separate entry, something idiomatic / unexpectable based on just combining make and love. So, I would not expect it to be using any sense listed at make. (If we do decide to view make love as just using a regular sense of make, and list that sense at make, then make love becomes SOP and should stop existing as a separate entry, no?) - -sche (discuss) 20:27, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Personally I would advocate that "make love" should be kept in any case. Mihia (talk) 22:29, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We apparently want users to find what they want where they expect it. If a user thinks make love is an idiom, we've got it. If a user thinks there should be a sense of make that fits make love, we should try to define it. Like duplicating definitions of determiners and pronouns etc and having phrasal verbs and particle both often defined. DCDuring (talk) 02:08, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think even if we have relevant definitions at "make" and "love", it is too much to expect readers to match these together and choose the right sense of "love", especially given the somewhat different meaning that they might encounter in old books (potentially startling mentions of couples "making love on the couch" etc.), which can really only be explicated at a separate entry "make love". Mihia (talk) 08:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
 * IMO, a citation of a given word or collocation can (in regard to its use of that word or collocation, in a given place in the citation) only be used to cite one dictionary entry / term. So, if we view citations of make love as using the separate entry-having term make love, then they can't be used to cite a sense of make: such a sense would need cites of other phrases. If other phrases exist (e.g. make amour), then we can have both entries: in a recent RFV, it looks like beside has a particular sense which can be used in beside the point, but also in beside the mark / topic / subject / focus, and it seems like people may be inclining to consider beside the point idiomatic, but also consider keeping the relevant sense of beside on the basis of the mark / topic / subject / focus cites, which is reasonable. But if the only place a particular sense of make can be used is in the phrase make love and nowhere else, then either we should just have a sense at make for en linking to [[make love]], but not an actual definition, or alternatively we should redirect make love to a sense of [[make]]. I don't see how we could justify having both with the same (type of) cites. - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
 * One justification is that having mutually inclusive, collectively exhaustive sets of definitions is not a requirement for a resource that serves humans who have different views of how words hang together. With a highly polysemous word like make and an encompassing set of definitions more than one sense of it can be made to fit its use in make love. MWOnline, not just us, has an entry for make love and has (at least) one definition that fits: "to carry out (an action indicated or implied by the object)". DCDuring (talk) 23:56, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Etymology ... screed? ramblings? ... at Ancient Greek Κύπρος
I happened upon the entry earlier today out of curiosity regarding the etymology, and found myself stymied by a wall of text that appears to mostly describe pre-monotheistic Arabic days of the week and other turns of phrase. ???

Could someone knowledgeable in Ancient Greek please have a go at fixing this? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:25, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * @Fay Freak, I don't doubt that this is sensible, but it's just one theory. You say "more at Wikipedia" but what's at Wikipedia is actually much less. You should move it there. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)


 * That’s what I tried to tell, who added this text repeatedly. Since the way he adds further paragraphs seems obsessive-compulsive, to the point that could edit-war with him about line-breaks, I forwent affording further attention to it, since I wasn’t sure that others are repelled by this stray line the same degree (remember, I am neurodivergent, but not dumb).
 * I won’t move anything to Wikipedia, they are too much into secondary references already containing every single statement, rather than working out the merits of the linguistic material in favour of one theory but not the other (WT:WINW: “Wiktionary is generally a secondary source for its subject matter … whereas Wikipedia is a tertiary source for its subject matter”; the latter does not even allow interpreting or putting into perspective references, if only to find common denominators or a harmony between contradictory sources, per w:WP:SYNTHESIS), which also answers ’s concern about the length of the etymology. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to be presented for the otherwise, on first glance, unbelievable idea that Cyprus is , which suggested in an article about the pre-Islamic Arabic week-day names, kind of shyly; I expanded upon his suggestion, after etymologizing the weekday names with his help as well: you can begin at day 1 one of the week,  (or not, this is just for illustration on how thin a textual basis one sometimes has to work with). Certainly on Wikipedia they would not know anything else than to fall back to the old antinomy whether the name of the metal copper is from Cyprus or vice versa, which, busted if there is a third etymon from which both hail, is more perplexity (i.e. the authors didn’t know further) than a prevailing opinion of literature, in other words: authors writing about the history of a place all they know including about difficult etymologies even if they don’t know or understand much, “a result of the ‘publish or perish’ culture, which pays no heed to the required scope of a research topic, that's so prevalent in academia.” All not surprising if you are long enough on Wiktionary: even to brandish the “best-referenced” etymology of Berlin supposedly agreed upon by linguists (only if you take just a quick look as a Wikipedia author does) we had to talk ourselves out of because it was irreconciliable with more specialist sources.
 * It reads quite good and informative after  copy-edited the text; we discussed it with him and at the talk-page Talk:Κύπρος. I think we made a good job. Though of course there is always a chance that things were completely different, four thousand years ago; I provided for this by cautious wording. And I have talked enough for half an hour in this thread: lots of cautions and reframings done so you don’t have to. If there is a lot to say, explain or justify, on word-history, it is apt that we say it, WT:NOTPAPER. Fay Freak (talk) 20:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Apparently circular etymology at Spanish chicharrar ↔ achicharrar
The entry for says it's an alternative form of.

But then says it's derived from.

Does anyone have information on which of these is the chicken, and which is the egg? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:30, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * That’s because “alternative form” is not necessarily also an etymologization. Often an alternative form becomes the dominant form later, i.e. is not alternative form by our synchronic description, guided by current word frequencies. Then the original, from which we derive what was historically a less common alternative form and is now the lemma, gets . Things are as said in the entries. Fay Freak (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * As the entries currently stand, they are defective.
 * has no etymology section at all.
 * has a minimal etymology section, claiming just that it is "from", with no explanation of how or when derived.
 * Both entries should have an  section.
 * These  sections should ideally do more than just say "from  ".  What does "from" mean, in detail?  By what processes was one word derived from another?  What affixation processes or sound mergers occurred?  When do we get first attestations?  What intermediate forms were there, if any?  How and when did the senses evolve?  Etc., etc.
 * Even just from the minimal information we already have, if is indeed "onomatopoeic", as claimed over at the  entry (not where such information belongs), how is it onomatopoeic?  What sound is it supposed to imitate?  And if  is "from", what process derives the one from the other?
 * Both entries would benefit from a reworking / addition of etymological information. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 17:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Misplaced German translation at
The English adjective gay lists the German translation Homofürst, which is a noun and not an adjective. The entry is protected, so I can't edit it myself. Could somebody with sufficient permissions please remove that translation? – Rummskartoffel (talk • contribs) 20:00, 29 May 2024 (UTC)


 * ✅. I've never heard "Homofürst" in my 25+ years living in Germany as gay man. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:47, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I assume this is good faith, but I can't help but think of that time Shumkichi accused me of discriminating against him for being a gay black woman. Vininn126 (talk) 21:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I have heard it before, once in some meme video from many years ago and once in a somewhat less old video, in reference to the former. But I don't think I've ever heard it used in any other context. And even so, it still wouldn't be an adjective. – Rummskartoffel (talk • contribs) 21:15, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

-ment words with mental vowels
I not infrequently hear -ment words pronounced with the same vowel as their -mental counterparts rather than with schwa, so for example judg(e)ment day not as but as, temper(a)ment not as  but  with the same vowel in the last syllable as in the first syllable, and similarly for acknowledgment. Is anyone else familiar with this? Is it an older pronunciation, a newer pronunciation,...? Should we mention it in entries? Examples from Youglish which seem, to my ear, to do this: 3:33, 1:52, 10:01, 45:52; 26:16, 30:58 (compare e.g. 4:52 or 16:11 pronouncing tempermental, a word for which /ɛ/ is already the usual notation). - -sche (discuss) 23:32, 30 May 2024 (UTC)


 * What I hear in these samples is approximately [ɪ̈̃], which I have in my own pronunciation of /-ən(C)/, as in resist a nt, garris o n, Amaz o n. At any rate this is predictable/sub-phonemic. Nicodene (talk) 01:54, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I only had time to listen to the first two clips. The second one sounds like a reduced to me; the first one sounds like a computer-generated voice anyway. I'm not convinced that's a human being speaking. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:45, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think we should allow computerised audios. In fact, we should go  further and allow only computerised audios.   can make some code. Denazz (talk) 18:50, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

psych
The etymology for psych is given only as "Clipping". Since the words are clippings of psychiatrist, psychology and psychedelic, shouldn't it be split into different headers? Or do we count that as one etymology because it's all clipping from the same prefix? 2601:147:4600:3880:94A0:B8DE:EB71:D360

The formatation for these tend to be unconsistent, see for example alt, where the nature of each clipping is given under one ety section. Tim Utikal (talk) 16:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

margaritiferous synonym
There's another single word meaning pearl-bearing. What is it? Denazz (talk) 12:03, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

sharp
Adverb sense:
 * In a higher pitch than is correct or desirable.

I replaced the previous example, "the tenor kept going sharp on the high notes", because this seemed copulative and not adverbial, but I am not 100% sure that the new example does not suffer from the same issue ("play" can be copulative in some senses). Partly this is because "sharply" does not appear to work in this sentence, or would mean something different. There is no imperative that adverb "sharp" should be replaceable with "sharply", but it seems suspicious somehow. Any opinions? Or any better or more watertight examples? Mihia (talk) 20:42, 31 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't think the musical sense of sharp ever appears as sharply. In other words, sharply doesn't have a pitch-related sense. (If you said someone played sharply, that would mean they played firmly and with conviction, not out of tune.) Also, as a tenor, I can confirm we are far more likely to go flat on high notes, not sharp. This doesn't answer your question of whether "played sharp" is an adverbial use of "sharp" or a copulative sense of "play", though. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * All examples of played sharp that I happened upon appear to mean, “played one semitone higher” and are IMO copulative. But this seems genuinely adverbial:
 * Whereas Matilda Milner frequently sang sharp, in spite of the efforts of Miss Brown, who played the accompaniment, to give her the right note and keep her in tune.
 * (From Chapter 8, “Music Hath Charms”, of Hobson's Choice by, published in book form in 1867. The installment in the weekly magazine Once a Week linked to above appears to date from 1866 and forms part of Chapter 3, “The Reverend Mr. Barlow”, which has been split into several chapters in the book.) --Lambiam 08:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks, I think your "sang sharp" example is more convincing as an adverbial use. I'll bung that one in. Mihia (talk) 14:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

projections in brick wall
When a line of bricks projects out from a wall, like the three bands in File:Hartington auditorium SE corner brick bands 3.JPG, or the decorative vein-like projections of File:Hampton stacks.JPG, what's the word for such a projecting ridge? Is there a word beyond just "a ridge/band/ledge projecting out from the brick wall"? calls the first picture "corbelling", but our entries suggest that corbels only refer to projections that other stuff structurally rests atop. If the projection were at the top of the wall, it could apparently be called "coping" (judging by ). Sometimes, projections are made of creasing tiles, but creasing tiles are just thin tiles and can also be used without projecting. (Is the term in fact corbelling and we're missing a sense whereby the corbel does not need to "carry a superincumbent weight" but can be purely decorative with the wall above it being on the same plane as the wall below it?) - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A string course is "A decorative horizontal course, usually projecting from the facade." ("The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms", 1984, Edward Lucie-Smith). Various sources say that synonyms are belt course and sill course. But a course is strictly a single layer of horizontally laid brickwork. WP has articles: Course (architecture), etc., none of which give a definitive answer.
 * The US Brick Industry Association has a 10-page pdf glossary at.
 * It has "CORBEL: A shelf or ledge formed by projecting successive courses of masonry out from the face of the wall." DCDuring (talk) 23:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The picture at our entry for stringcourse seems to better show a corbel than a string course/stringcourse. Perhaps the top row of the band is a stone string course. DCDuring (talk) 23:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Another glossary with images of products and architectural features is at . DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Modern architecture, at least for buildings of more than two storeys, seems to ignore structural function for corbels (and some other features), often imitating the features to meet traditional taste or fit into a neighborhood's architecture. Contemporary masonry is usually a non-structural facade (as it is for the front-facing first storey wall of my house, built 1936). DCDuring (talk) 23:36, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * (String) course is promising, thank you! - -sche (discuss) 20:32, 1 June 2024 (UTC)