Wiktionary talk:Etymology


 * Archive 1 (2006–2020)

RFD discussion: February–October 2021
Redundant. To Appendix:Glossary and the dictionary itself. It tries to give an introduction into historical linguistics, or give an overview of common types of etymological relations. But the only specific information is constituted by the links to Category:Etymology templates on how to express etymological relations with Wikicode, which would be the punctum saliens. In reality one cannot deduct from this page how to write etymologies, one has to have seen inductively how etymology is done, in this dictionary and elsewhere, and be informed about the particular word and semantic field and participating languages to write one, and if one writes etymologies repeatedly then one seeks how one can adorn or accelerate this practice with templates. But inheritance and borrowing, blends and affixations, and what not, happen in the field and are recognized without Etymology telling about it.

What this page does is to waste potential editors’ precious time apart from leading them into more doubts and insecurity about correct approaches owing to outdated or otherwise false statements, as evidenced by Beer parlour/2021/February, and perchance scare them away utterly, which is known from the magnitude of Wikipedia’s policy forest. Tellingly the page was started by literally Wonderfool and it has been expanded like a meme that has went out of hand …

I think the page was in the past a kind of pinboard where editors noted their insights as things were new and Wiktionary didn’t have the template and language module data and category structure and lots of good examples availing us now. Let’s get rid of it to see the trees through the forest.

Lots of incoming links and views from for example Template:rfe for such a bad page. And people are discouraged instead of encouraged by this page to fill the requests. Fay Freak (talk) 22:17, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we need to have a page by this title. Etymology templates are numerous and I am not aware of any other reference resource to help find the right one. Whether this page is deleted and started again from scratch, or just cleaned up drastically to remove the editorialisation and strip it back to a "cheat sheet", I don't really mind. This, that and the other (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That’s what I also thought. Maybe delete almost everything in it, preserving its history, and keep a link farm to templates and similar with concise descriptions. So also Lambiam suggested at Information desk/2021/February Fay Freak (talk) 17:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that it would make sense to slim up the entry to mostly focus on a brief explanation of template usage. Semantic relations is a good example of what such a "cheat sheet" could look like. Looking over the page, it seems that there is also some general style guide and community standard information on topics such as the use of "<" v.s. "from", the extent to which folk etymologies are included, and which entries deserve "Etymology" sections (ex. acronyms, compound with hyphens or spaces). It might not make sense to include that information on this page, but I do think it should be described somewhere. &mdash;The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 04:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I don't see this being at all redundant with "Appendix:Glossary and the dictionary itself". Those are intended for readers, whereas this page is clearly aimed at editors, hence the extensive advice about the layout and content of Etymology sections on Wiktionary and about template usage, all of which would be inappropriate for the Glossary or anywhere in mainspace. If example code or advice is out of date, then fix it. The project absolutely needs documentation on this topic. As someone who had a fair amount of experience on Wikipedia before joining here, I've been disappointed by the lack of policy/guidelines/documentation coverage compared to WP. I often find myself confused about how to approach some problem. Absent any policy guidance, I'll start researching similar entries to see how it's handled there, or search through the archives of discussion boards like the Beer Parlour, but a) this is significantly more work than reading a policy page, and b) the research often ends in my finding conflicting approaches/opinions, and a lack of clear consensus. Deleting documentation (even if it's imperfect and hasn't passed into the status of official consensus-backed policy), is absolutely going in the wrong direction IMO. And I'm highly dubious of the idea that the current content of the page is so deeply flawed that the best solution is to TNT it and start over. Colin M (talk) 21:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per Colin M. It is absurd to think that would-be contributors to etymology could quickly learn our somewhat arcane etymology practices from the dispersed other bits of information. For those who have learned or invented our current practices, deleting this is something like pulling up the drawbridge once one is in the castle. It seems to be based on the idea that would-be contributors should face some kind of initiation rite that involves testing their strength of character (patience, search fu, willingness to bow and scrape for help un user talk pages, etc.). DCDuring (talk) 14:37, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Mybe we need a spring cleaning ritual to keep essential documentation pages from getting stale. – Jberkel 13:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, but cleanup. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 09:41, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and clean up. Ultimateria (talk) 16:55, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I do not see how you can argue that this is redundant. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:04, 19 September 2021 (UTC)


 * RFD-kept. I'll mention the need for cleanup at the Beer Parlour. Ultimateria (talk) 23:55, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

no Request for Cleanup - discussion
Contrary to the rfc-templates statement about a debate on a "request for cleanup", I am unable to find it. Utonsal (talk) 01:56, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

der-lite
I have seen der-lite used instead of "der" for derived - when is this used and what does it mean? Supevan (talk) 11:55, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Spelling mistake in "calques"
It is written "cagetorizes" instead of categorizes. 2804:14D:BE81:8312:5E6:68B:4633:BF63 23:34, 13 February 2023 (UTC)