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User talk:DCDuring/2009 QII

The rfv you added in Sept/08 to the interjection senses of dude
Hello DC -- I just came across your old rfv for the preposterous plethora of senses under the interjection POS of "dude". I think you are quite right -- there is one sense here, at the most. In fact, I think the whole "interjection" section of this entry could just be bulldozed. This is the kind of content that fouls wiktionary's reputation. Unfortunately your rfv did not generate much discussion and no action resulted. Maybe you should consider relaunching this as an rf  d  for all of these senses. This mess cries out for housecleaning. -- WikiPedant 04:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

doable
Why did you erase doabler? Confer Citations:doable, where its use is evident. I took it from there. If you wish, I shall dig up two more citations for doable from Carlyle, so that no doubt be cast. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

 * I did not delete the entry. I merely removed doabler from the inflection line at "doable". I did so because it was used only by Carlyle and in discussion of his works, AFAICT. If someone needs to look it up they will find it. If someone is trying to determine what the comparative of doable is, they will not be misled by Carlyle's idiosyncratic usage. I'm not at all sure that "doabler" is attestable. Do you think it needs more citations? DCDuring TALK 17:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I shall look for other quotations for doabler and when they become three, I shall create Citations:doabler and the respective article. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Cruciate ligament

 * See wikipedia:User talk:Anthony Appleyard. Anthony Appleyard 16:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

"Usually uncountable"
Gasp! I didn't know you could do that, even though I have cursorily read the  help page. I shall try to bear it in mind. Equinox ◑ 23:42, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Thanks to MSH. BTW, please cast your eyes on an uncountable sense of house I've added and taken to tea. DCDuring TALK 23:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

 * That is interesting. My gut feeling is that this can be done with practically any noun, though; cf. 1954 "more truck for your money", 1964 "you too can get more bookmobile for your money", 1976 "By getting more vacation for your money". Equinox ◑ 23:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

HO scale
How is this translingual? Foreign-language Wikipedias all give this a different name. --Jackofclubs 17:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Used in Japan per WP. I'll bet on non-English use in Western hemisphere (Spanish, Quebecoise, Hawaiian, etc.), possibly also Korea, Philippines. See discussion of AAA batteries. DCDuring TALK 18:03, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

pavee
Re pavee being derogatory, I've changed it to a usage note, as it really depends on who is saying it.--Dmol 01:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

"nigger" is like that, but it was not derived from a language spoken by blacks, ancestrally. DCDuring TALK 01:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

mater
Concerning mater, and festus if applicable, I wasn't aware that descendants should be listed on parent entries as well as the relevant direct etymological origin; it would help if this was cleared up, as there are other entries that would need editing if it was standard to list the descendants on all words that go back. Caladon 18:23, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

WT:ELE is the most definitive statement on the subject, but is only one line long. The idea is to be able to have wikilinks from the etymons in other languages to the descendants as well as from the descendants to the etymons. Good judgment would suggest that we not have all the English-language entries that were in any way descended from "mater" rather than representatives of the major lines of descent (ie, "matrimony" perhaps, but not "matrimonial"), but good judgment does not always prevail.

I find the etymologies themselves to be a higher priority. There are so many missing ones. If we had etymologies of some kind for all words, then contributors could use "what links here" to make complete or good selected lists of descendants. It might be possible to automate the process. DCDuring TALK 18:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

 * On WT:ALA it does state it should be listed only on the 'direct etymological progentior'. The problem I can see is if compounds of Latin verbs have descendants in English, and there are often quite a few compounds to every verb, that there will be a lengthy list on the parent entry of the compound, but then again if one did have good judgment they would know not to have such excessive lists; and I have seen other editors remove descendants from verb compounds from the compound's etymon. Caladon 12:56, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Let's parse the word "direct" in WT:ALA. Does it mean that if a Latin word had a descendant that was Middle English, Old English, or Old French from which the modern English word derived, the English is therefore not a descendant. Because almost all modern French words with Latin ancestry progressed through Middle and Old French, few French word would be descendants of Latin. I am reasonably sure this is not what is intended, though a case could be made for such a policy. In any event, in a certain sense, the Latin policy is subordinate to Wiki-wide policy, terse as it is. The plain meaning of descendant would argue against including uncles, aunts, and cousins (cognates) but for children at all removes. DCDuring TALK 16:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

 * What "wiki-wide policy"? Do you mean the "terse" statement on WT:ELE?  If so, then please note that at the top of the ELE, a header explicitly lists language-specific policies, including WT:ALA.  The ELE acknowledges ALA explicitly.

 * Listed Descendants of Latin words should include only non-Latin words whose immediate Latin precursor gave rise to the word. The word matrimony would thus NOT be listed at mater, becuase there is another Latin word matrimonium that is a more immediate Latin precursor.  In choosing descnedants, the key consideration is the point at which the "new" language received the word.  We are more flexible with English, in that many Latin words entered via French, but only to the point of the most immediate Latin precursor.  We do not list all related English terms at the Latin root; that is what the Related terms section is used for, and there is no need to duplicate that function on the Latin entry since it is a matter of English relationships and not Latin. -EncycloPetey 14:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Lord willing and the creek don't rise
I posted a comment on the origin of this phrase on Talk:Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Regards, Ecphora 01:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

 * I've added some more early uses of the phrase. Ecphora 23:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

ICNB
This isn't Translingual in the sense we normally use that term. The Polish name and abbreviation are different, e.g., as is the French. --EncycloPetey 00:56, 24 May 2009 (UTC

 * But Jamaican Creole..... Are you sure that we can't find three languages that wouldn't translate it into words with this acronym? I'm just trying to avoid Anglophonic chauvinism. I've wondered about the meaning of Translingual in this context. DCDuring TALK 01:02, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

 * True, we've never explicitly defined what we mean by "Translingual, but I don't think a criterion of three languages would be what we mean, or words that are the same in Italian, Spanish, and Galician would become "translingual". For ICBN, there is no harm in multiple language listings, but I'd want to see really widespread use for a "Translingual" entry, such as for most major European languages and a few major Asian ones. --EncycloPetey 01:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

"there" as a noun in "from there"
Hi DCDuring,

I'm not sure that "there" is a noun in "from there"; "from" is pretty flexible in what sort of complements it takes, and in particular, seems quite comfortable taking any sort of prepositional phrase (including some that we call adverbs):

 * You all look like ants from up here!
 * On coming out from inside the dark theater, we had to cover our eyes.
 * He called over from across the street where he was staying.

(This is leaving aside the near-total free-for-all in phrases of the form "from ___ to ___":

 * Things went from bad to worse.
 * We tried everything we could think of, from ask the maid to check for a key under the mat, but we couldn't find a way in.

which I think is a slightly different sort of thing.)

—Ruakh TALK 18:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Perhaps the examples are too limiting. Unless you would question any of the prepositions that can position themselves before "there". Should we call it a pronoun? The plurals are certainly uncommon. It doesn't play well with adjectives, articles, quantifiers, or determiners.
 * BTW, I was surprised at how uncommon "there's" is relative to "theres" in COCA (even excluding all spoken material). DCDuring TALK 18:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Right, I'm not questioning that it's a noun sometimes — a word this common is probably attested in every part of speech ("'No, there, there, park over there!', he said. 'Quit thereing me! I'll park where I wanna park!'"). It's interesting; I haven't checked corpora for this, but to me it seems like "at there" and "to there" are unidiomatic, while most of the more meaningful prepositions are O.K. ("from there", "in there", "on there", "out of there", "off (of) there", "near there", etc.). I'm not sure where exactly it crosses the line from "adverb" (or technically "intransitive preposition") to "noun" (or perhaps "pronoun", as you suggest — I have no idea), I'm just pretty confident that "from there" itself works just fine with "there" as an "adverb". —Ruakh TALK 18:39, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

 * It may be restricted with some prepositions, but "It stretched from here to there."
 * For common words like this, I am strongly influenced by the lexicographic choices of Longmans' (Quirk's!!!) DCE. The copula-subject sense that we have been showing as an adverb they show as a pronoun. In the article on "there" they have a usage examples "over there" and "out there". They do not have a noun sense, but MWOnline does. But that's neither here nor there. I've not yet looked at other OneLook dictionaries, but OED, Quirk, and CGEL would be better than any of them, I think. DCDuring TALK 19:03, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

 * CGEL calls it a "preposed locative" in this construction, without commenting on the part of speech. It does indicate that it is not the subject of the sentence.  The implication is that it's an adverb in constructions like "There is/are...", but I could not find an explicit statement in CGEL on the POS.  I may do some more thorough looking later. --EncycloPetey 19:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

weak cardinality
I actually intended it to be failed, I just neglected to delete it. Usually on entries like that where there are multiple points of view expressed in the discussion I try to do some very quick and dirty research to see what it looks like to me, and I couldn't readily find anything that looked even close to verifiable cites, so I went with the "no-cites-no-pass" verdict. I just forgot to delete it, I blame the hour ;). I am going to follow through with failing it and deleting it, but I have no problem with people restoring "clocked-out" entries as they see fit as long as some form of reasonable justification is used. -  14:01, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

over the top
I've moved the second "adverb" sense to the adjective, because it looks to me like a copula use of go:. However, I'd like a second opinion. If you agree, then we'll assume that's right. If you disagree, than I ought to start a discussion in the Tea Room. --EncycloPetey 03:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Yes. I see what you mean. I have no references that help me on this, but I took a look in the BNC at the verbs that precede "over the top" within 4 words. So far I have found that the usages that have that meaning are exclusively verbs that have senses that many consider copulas (be, go, regard, seem, appear, sound). I think that "go" is a little confusing because in our minds it is associated with the adverbial motion usage with "go". By way of confirmation, in COCA some of the UK sense is evident, but the adverbial is relatively more common, including with some of the same words (be, go, appear) that are more often used copulatively with the adjective meaning.
 * In short, I agree with you. DCDuring TALK 04:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking into this. --EncycloPetey 04:07, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Hello DC and Petey -- I originally added this sense. The OED sees it as an adverb, but these multi-word idiomatic modifiers sometimes seem to be toss-ups.  I can live with calling it an adjective. -- WikiPedant 04:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I've gone to like BNC and COCA for this kind of thing. DCDuring TALK 04:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Um, isn't over the top a prepositional phrase? PPs can be used as attributive modifiers (the "adjective" sense; e.g., another down day, an in-house conference) and are often used as complements (the "adverbial" sense).--Brett 17:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

chopped meat 'nyms
An alternative way of dealing with these terms is to define chopped with a new sense: ground in a grinder. That might actually be the way to go, since Google Web estimates (as a first-page estimate) 103,000 hits for and 206,000 for. Also, 3450 for to 2720 for. The number suggest, though not certainly, that — although perhaps no one phrase is used much — chopped is used to mean ground when meat of any kind is under discussion. So perhaps, as I say, a new sense is needed s.v. [[chopped]], with [[chopped meat]] and [[ground beef]] — the only bluelinks, I think — to be deleted as SoP. What think you?—msh210 ℠  18:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I honestly don't know. In the long run we may have all of these close-to-SoP entries, but for now I like the idea of using their attempted entry as a way of making sure that we have all the valid nuances of the component words. The nyms seem frivolous to me at this stage of wikt's evolution. My thinking is mostly to get folks to pay more attention to improving the core entries and less to low-value compounds (true idioms and items in other important dictionaries excepted). Of course, whether any given entry is actually low value is not so easy to see. It is easy to miss some of the more subtle ways something can be an idiom. I still don't feel I get the various possibilities.
 * As to this entry, the loose(?) sense of "chopped" as "ground" is interesting. It would be particularly compelling if there were some uses in this sense applied to something other than meat. I've really been enjoying the use of BYU's COCA and BNC for examining collocations.
 * The coal mine discussion at RfD is an example of the benefits of challenging compounds. It raised questions to me about the adequacy of "mine", for which I entered some "especially" language relating to underground mines, which much usage, especially from more than 50 years ago, usually assumed. Even now, the archetypal mine is not a strip mine, I don't think. DCDuring TALK 19:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Someone — you? — keeps quoting stats from BYU's corpora, but I've never gotten the interface there to work for me. Maybe it's just a matter of reading the fine manual. In any event: What else is often ground but meat (in a general sense of "meat")? Well, yields glass (!) as a favorite, and various nuts and grains besides. So trying  (with the last phrases thrown in to try to ensure I get hits from pages written by people not companies), it seems as though people use chopped when referring to chopping with a knife or processing a bit in a food processor, but not grinding in a hand grinder: for that they use ground. I'm not so sure about grains, though.—msh210  ℠  19:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * That's pretty much what I found. Mostly chopped vegetables, plenty of chopped meat, and some chopped nuts. What I saw were almost entirely recipes. Well, the "grind" sense should probably be at chop anyway, but sadly with the kind of context I've never liked: "of meat". We could allow for the possibility of other things with "especially of meat". I think home meat-grinding offends people these days. I wouldn't object to any decision you make about the nyms. They served their purpose by forcing us to think this through, not that there might not be more to say about it. The hyponyms seem most suspect. I'm not sure that inviting folks to add all the kinds of meat that can be chopped or ground is very productive. DCDuring TALK 20:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, with the addition of a sense to [[chopped]], the entry [[chopped meat]] can be deleted, in which case there is no decision to be made regarding chopped meat 's 'nyms. (Or did I misunderstand you?)—msh210 ℠  20:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I was waffling. That seems fine to me. DCDuring TALK 21:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Fine, I've been bold and deleted chopped meat. I've also RFDed ground beef as SoP. Thanks so much.—msh210 ℠  21:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The word utmostly
I think it's been many days and months, so I think the RFV should be resolved right now. Thank you. Steel Blade 15:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, DCDuring.

 * Based on the current evidence, the originally challenged adjective sense would fail, with the sole citation being moved to the citations page to give any effort to fully attest the adjective a place to start. I have converted the RfV to RfV-sense since the entry would not be deleted only the unattested material. DCDuring TALK 15:59, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Mills Mess
I agree with you, and yet doesn't (see the talk page for the relevant discussion). Mglovesfun 21:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I looked at usage. "Mills Mess" it is, with "Mills' Mess" second and "Mills' mess" perhaps third. Not worth multiple entries that don't aid search. I made it a proper noun. Revert if you don't think it is. I posted at the Pump on Commons about user-initiated animations, which would be better than ever-running ones. Ideal would be some initial motion to attract user attention (Not necessarily a full cycle!!!) followed by it being stationary until perhaps a mouseover. DCDuring TALK 22:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

nonkilling

 * Thank you for your comments and guidance. Please take a look to see if it's OK. Never done a dictionary entry before. Thanks!--Cgnk 20:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

 * We need titles. The sources should be from durably archived sources, which means not from ordinary websites. My cite on that page was not a good model, because evidently I failed to save the latest version of my quote and the other two quotes that I had added for the adjective. Thanks for the effort. DCDuring TALK 21:42, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Hi DCDuring! You've been doing a great work to bring quality into this entry. I'm not sure how to approach the verification of nonkilling as a doctrine (or maybe a better term would be principle or philosophy). Could you provide some ideas? Also, what can be done with the translations? I'm not sure about the gender of some of them, but I could find out (what other information would be needed?). Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you once again! --Cgnk 17:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

 * The entry has become surprisingly complicated. You should understand that, under our rules, the entry has a minimum of 30 days to get cited after challenge. Usually, it has longer, especially in a case where there is partial citation. I don't like the citations very much because they aren't clear and informative, but they may well be adequate. I reversed the tag removal because we usually leave the process of closing out a challenge to someone not much involved in the challenge, on either side, to increase objectivity. When the spirit moves me, I will try to find quotes that are a bit more illuminating.
 * The translations need to be split into the various senses. In order not to waste too much translation effort, we should get the definition wording right first. We then use templates to create a structure for the translations that people offer. Which senses do you think are worded well enough? The adjective? I'm not at all sure about the countable noun.
 * All in all, this is an interesting entry, all the more valuable because other dictionaries don't have it - yet. Other dictionaries often copy us. Even MW online might pick up something we do. DCDuring TALK 18:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Dear DCDuring. I must admit my knowledge of English grammar is very little, as I'm a Portuguese speaker. As I see it, nonkilling could possible qualify as a true adjective, as predicative and comparable uses seem to make sense (even though it's probably not a good example, a poetry book has been launched this month where "the challenge of being nonkilling" is used). But I'll leave it up to you. I'm not completely happy with the "world view" citations either. I though I would find more appropriate ones in "Nonkilling Global Political Science" but they are usually presented as adjectives. I've asked George Simson, professor emeritus of English at the University of Hawaii to help me out, as he's familiar with nonkilling and its literature. He also suggested some time ago the need to bring nonkilling into English language dictionaries, so he's partially responsible for our debate! I completely agree with the removal policy; my apologies. In relation to translations, I've gathered most of them from the translations of "Nonkilling Global Political Science" (there was a Forum back in 2007 where all the translators met and discussed the problem of translating this idea) and some new Wikipedia entries (I think it is a noun in almost all of the cases). I see three uses that have a wide use: the legal term nonkilling (which will probably have different forms in other legal traditions); nonkilling as the first precept of Buddhist ethics (I've seen uses of this in French as non-meurtre); and nonkilling as a world view that, probably coming from the previous, has been increasingly incorporated to the academic world since the 80s (we should also quote Marvin Harris' work "Our Values", 1990). Of course that doesn't mean that our definitions are worded well enough. Thank you in any case case for you great help!--Cgnk 15:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

 * You've done a good job, particularly for a non-native speaker. I'll see what I can do about the wording and better quotations in the next few days. The RfV tag and discussion might bring someone else to help, BTW. You can tell your prof that I thank the two of you for bringing the word to our attention. Many words prefixed by "non-", "in-", "un-" are not linguistically very interesting. This one is better than most and also provides a model for some of the potential complexity of their usage beside its value in its own right. Check in again in a few days. DCDuring TALK 15:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Thank you for your kind comments! Please accept this Nonkilling Barnstar. --Cgnk 17:24, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Canis pugnax or Canis pugnaces or Canes or Canes pugnaces
Hi, when you say the citations are not of the head word, would you please explain that to me. Thank you. WritersCramp 16:52, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Each citation for each entry title ( = headword) should be for exactly the entry title, including capitalization and hyphens. Even more importantly, the component words must not be separated by other words or punctuation. In the case of the quotations buried in the references that you provided, two or three were for "canes, pugnaces". Unless we can find an earlier version that did not have the comma, there is no chance that the citation would be accepted. In addition, the comma probably reflects the view of an editor that the words ought to be treated as if they were separated by a comma, that is, separately. As a result, even finding a version of the same text that didn't have the comma would probably not be good enough. You might ask EP about this.
 * You should appreciate that EP is a major contributor to Wiktionary, the major contributor for Latin. Not only does he do classical Latin, but also later versions, including the "New Latin" which is the source for taxonomic names. Taxonomic names are a mess because there are so many obsolete ones (rendered so by subsequent discoveries) and low-quality ones (coined or used only by amateurs, especially in 19th century England, never gaining scientific acceptance). The spelling "Canis pugnax" is suggestive of trying to make a species out of a dog breed. That is the kind of thing that dog fanciers and breeders do to promote their favorites. As you probably know, all dogs can interbreed and therefore meet one of the main requirements for being a single species.
 * Quotations that are not fully visible and, to a lesser extent, those not formatted are not looked at favorably because they force many others to spend more time in order to read the actual quotes. Or they force someone else to do work of low interest. The quotation formats are well worth learning. I've recently been working on nonkilling, which uses templates. clampdown takes a non-template approach, but omits things like page numbers. Many folks really prefer that I add urls to google version of the whole page for even more context.
 * There is definitely something of interest in what you have found. The quotes provide interesting illustrations of the use of some specific Latin words (treated as Latin because italicized) in English texts. Some of the Latin words for classes of dogs might belong in a Latin translation of the corresponding English word for the class of dogs (eg, canis pugnax for mastiff). I'm not so sure about it for English bulldog, but you could try. The wikipedia articles for some of the dog breeds or breed groups might be good homes for the material, especially as it is referenced. I will revisit the references you provided in a few days. They are still there, but "commented out" and not visible. You might want to copy them from the entry to save your work in convenient form before it gets deleted. I will probably do the same. DCDuring TALK 18:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

French etymologies
The etymology that bothered was that at eco-: not ecology:. While there is an indirect filiation to the Greek prefix, I HIGHLY doubt it is an accurate to make: people were thinking specifically of the suffix in "ecology" (after all, the same suffix is in economics:!), so I'd stop there, and note the connection to Greek, but not trace directly to a Greek etymology (compare narco- as in narcotrafficant: and narcoterrorism:, clearly not the same derivation as the one in narcolepsy: or narcoanalysis:). Honestly, I'm not clear about your worry. Yes the derivation could be clearer, but IMO that's more about refining the given etymology than straight up "correcting" it. Circeus 23:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Etymologies always have to be done one at a time. I was just trying to get another opinion as to the breadth of the problem. I seem to find roughly one a week (it could be even fewer) without looking. Today the word was jay:. It made me wonder whether someone had simply been assuming that any French cognate must be an etymon of a similar English word. In that case the problem etymology was mostly inherited from Websters 1913. The only questions are whether to start hunting for such things systematically and when to start the hunt.
 * I also have the impression that etymologies are not very well covered at fr.wikt so that I am often disappointed when I go there to find Middle and Old French etymons. I've just about stopped looking. DCDuring TALK 23:57, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * fr: is 90% an old dump of the Académie dictionary, which has no etymology material, hence your observation. The only widely used modern paper dictionary that has etymology material is Robert, but Trésor usually has excellent discussion of the history of terms.
 * Thanks. I've just spot-checked a few entries that have the Webster 1913 warning. That may be the source of much of the problem. They don't break French into the three stages + Anglo-Norman that ISO 639 supports. So, all I have to do is get some corroboration and I can update those fairly easily. I will check the sources you suggest. Thanks/
 * I generally agree with your assessment. It mostly comes down to me being more worried with actually adding fresh content than worrying about small details in etymology (it is I am afraid a mix of "whatever strikes my fancy ADHD-like" and "strike for the low-hanging fruits". Generally I do not have access to elaborate source from French etymology, which curtails it further: few works go farther than Latin and Greek, which I've found supremely irritating). I threw in the cognate at jay: simply to have the modern evolution of the cited O.F., but I do agree a case like lie is exaggerated. Normally what we'd want is for such a list to move to the appropriate appendix. (Category:Proto-Indo-European roots). Circeus 03:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

compound terms
On "range estimation"'s RfD discussion, you wrote: "Would it be easier if we simply strongly discouraged any multi-word terms, directing contibutors to Wiktionary:Requested entries or an improved or specialized version of it?"

Yes, that would be easier, IMHO. But not better for the future of Wiktionary.

As you can see from my final entry, which was written over the last hour while you posted yours, leaving me in the position of unknowingly surrendering the battle while you were still fighting it: I'm shell-shocked from that debate. Not due to the style or emotion; those were exemplary. Rather, due to its departure from stated policy.

The home page says you want a dictionary people want to use and contribute to and improve. However, others obviously want - and are building - a pedant's playpen. Petey's mention of "Jewish vs. Christian" was quite revealing. Some people need to be sent a "The perfect is the enemy of the good" poster.

Thanks for your help. -- Soargain 21:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

your
I changed from Pronoun to Determiner because I saw that "my" was categorized as Determiner, so for the sake of consistency... Anyway, I don't dispute your reversal since I see that "his", "her", etc. are categorized as Pronoun. —AugPi 02:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * There is a deep conflict surrounding the use of the word "determiner". The word "pronoun" is much more familiar to the user population. I object less to some of the other uses of "determiner", characterizing "some", "many", "all" etc. The newer terminology my well work in classrooms where a teacher has many ways of enforcing his choice than on the Web. COCA shows that word "pronoun" to be a one-in-a-million word (351), about sixty times more frequently used than "determiner" (6). "Determiner" was only reported there in academic journals. Using "determiner" signals a total disregard of this fundamental fact or a complete indifference to trying to communicate with the claimed beneficiaries of our efforts. DCDuring TALK 04:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * FWIW, I've never seen the possessive pronouns called determiners. I've seen them called "Pronoun" or "Adjective" depending on the language, but never "Determiner". --EncycloPetey 04:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Longman DCE shows them as Determiner. It is a more modern approach, but too far ahead of our users, I think. DCDuring TALK 06:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Oh, and I have changed the POS on my: to Pronoun accordingly. --EncycloPetey 04:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I see "determiner" not as a POS, but as a word which describes a function which some terms can perform, like the word "modifier". Following other dictionaries, we should classify terms principally by their POS's, not by functions like this. -- WikiPedant 05:22, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, under the strong influence of grammarian Randolph Quirk, treats Determiner as a part of speech. I think it is the only major one to do this. I see these terms merely as labels to help users bring some of their prior learning to bear on what we offer them. I don't think "Determiner" means much of anything to them. The old "parts of speech" have a big installed base of users. DCDuring TALK 06:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Amen, bro'. -- WikiPedant 06:14, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't want to get into another big BP discussion over this, but the possessive pronouns seem like a place where the determiner language hurts users. It doesn't make as much difference in many of the other cases. DCDuring TALK 06:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I agree with you both about not initiating another BP discussion (whew!) and about labelling possessive pronouns as pronouns. --EncycloPetey 13:06, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that most grammars that use the term determiner use it both for the category (part of speech) and the syntactical function (e.g., subject, complement, modifier, etc.). This results in confusion like the above. The correct category for words like my, your, its, etc. is pronoun even though they typically function as determiners in NPs.

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language avoids this confusion by using the term determinative for the category and determiner for the function.--Brett 17:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I was wondering when we'd hear from you on this subject. I'm glad that we made a good decision on this and didn't get into heavy controversy. I haven't noticed determiner: getting increased use in the popular press yet, but I haven't heard a complaint about it at WT:FEED either. DCDuring TALK 17:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

 * All the English determiners that I know of are already marked as such, so really there shouldn't be much determiner action, except for other languages. Glad nobody's complaining.--Brett 21:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion?diff=6784805
I'm sorry, but this edit was completely inappropriate. It totally changed the meaning of my comment. If you're not willing to fix the template — totally understandable, not everyone wants to mess with template code — you should have removed the template, or commented it out, or something, not change my comment to say something completely different. —Ruakh TALK 20:41, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Form of opinion
I can't recall whether it was you, DAVilla, Widsith, or Stephen whom I had this conversation with originally, so I'm just looking for an opinion, There has, from time to time, been debate about including a gloss in FL form-of entries to indicate how they should be translated. The problem is that it makes the sense lines look awful, especially if there are mutliple senses, and there is the problem of multiple trnaslations. What do you think about this solution? This seems the "obvious" answer, though it didn't occur to me properly until today. What do you think about uniformly recommending this method as the standard for "translating" form-of entries? --EncycloPetey 02:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I hadn't ventured opinions in this arena. Given my low level of ability in other languages, I am close to being a man in the street for this. Speaking for all men in the street, then, I like a few things about it:
 * It gives usage examples, which are wonderful for learners. Each one exposes a learner to word order, agreement, and some vocabulary.
 * The format (Latin) is superior to the format (Romanian) from a space-consumed/information density perspective
 * It takes away the ugly and minimally helpful micro-gloss.
 * Against this is mostly the work required, but short usage examples may not be too bad and perhaps many contributors can enter these as part of their own learning efforts. How can folks be recruited for this? Even if this is initially done for only one example of each type of conjugation or declension, it would be useful.
 * It would be good to think through whether it is more important to take a minimal-pair approach to the choice of usage examples/translations, highlighting the specific differences or to have a variety of vocabulary represented. DCDuring TALK 03:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I prefer a minimal approach to FL example sentences, leaving the complex and varied vocabulary to citations. I also assume that any user looking at the page could be a novice in the language who may not wish to deal with complex verb tenses or multiple clauses.  That is, unless the word requires it by virtue of its meaning as a weird verb tense itself or as a conjunction, for example.

 * I think to recruit people we would need to (1) ensure several leading community members support the idea, even if they choose not to contribute much to this, (2) create somewhere a guideline for format that explains with examples for the newest of contributors, (3) publicize in the Beer Parlour and Things to Do. --EncycloPetey 03:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I'd like to hear from others, of course, but it seems to offer a lot. I suppose this will have to be sold one language/language group at a time. Does it really need any formal approval beyond the language-specific pages? Latin is a particularly good place to start because it is highly visible, both etymologically and by sharing many entry pages with Romance languages. DCDuring TALK 03:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be a bad thing for some entries to do it one way (the way you propose, EP) and some another (brief glosses on the definition line)? The latter might be ideal for entries where a brief gloss is possible, and the former for entries where idiosyncrasies of collocation arise, or the like.   —msh210  ℠  04:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Realistically, something like this will only be done where contributors want to do it. If a small group of folks start doing it in a language and it looks good or that language gets a few more active contributors, then other languages might imitate. Even the ugly minimal gloss seems better than no gloss at all. It seems at best premature to do much other than "permit" various acceptable approaches and "model" ones that seem superior for some languages/language groups. AFAICT, there are some languages that are rather disorganized or neglected and others with inherent orthography, script, grammar, or culture-specific issues, so the idea of standardization across languages seems almost laughable anyway. DCDuring TALK 04:40, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

bale needle
Thanks. The thing I have is small and cheap-looking. It is made from a single ~3/32" rod. The shank is about 4" long, with just a 1/4" to 3/8" dull hook on the end. It might indeed be a "bale needle", but it seems implausible that a city boy like me should have come across one. Some tools seem to belong to occupations that are small (unlike woodworking) and worked by folks not likely to write (unlike electronics engineers), so that their names for things may be lost or, at least, hard to find. DCDuring TALK 16:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Maybe bale hook (two words) is the go after all. I'm a city boy myself and just guessing, but maybe you're missing the handle? I just found this, this, this and also this. Pingku 17:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

 * The handle is integral. The same rod that has the hook and shank forms the handle. It generally looks like the illustration, except the hook is smaller relative to the overall size of the tool. That's what has made me think that the hook would mostly have been used with twine, certainly not rope of more than 1/4" diameter. Given the low cost of the items pictured and that mine is made from a single thin rod, mine may not merit much Web mention. I could make one myself though it'd probably break where I'd bent it. Maybe I can find an old mail-/shipping-room supplies catalog. DCDuring TALK 18:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I'm betting on knotting hook, knot hook, or tying hook. Twining hook is a long shot. DCDuring TALK 19:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Collocations of prepositions
Please take a look at Talk:in. I collected the top 100 in+noun collocations from COCA and began sorting. So far it has led me to add 3 senses to "fact", "in fact" being the most common of the collocations by far. It is idiomatic inasmuch as it derives from older senses of fact. About 27 of the collocations are already entries, many rightly so. A few of the remainder should perhaps be entries in state or perhaps be embedded in larger idioms lie in state.

My view of the process:
 * 1) Collect a set of collocations for a preposition
 * 2) Match collocation by existing senses of the preposition (by own knowledge for first pass)
 * 3) Add any missing senses to nouns and repeat step 2 for them.
 * 4) Classify collocations that didn't match any existing sense of preposition.
 * 5) Develop missing sense, reviewing other dictionaries.
 * 6) Review existing entries for collocations for possible RfD
 * 7) Review redlink collocations for possible additional entries.

This looks like 100 hours of work. I don't see how it can be done more quickly. I don't see how it can be done by anon contributors or newbies. It doesn't look easy for non-native speakers (other than perhaps scholars of English). I don't see how we can get all the prepositions done at all. I haven't even looked at collocations of the forms "in the X", "in a X", "in an X", and "in N Xes", though they seem less likely to generate additional senses of "in" or additional idioms. DCDuring TALK 04:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I have more time for the next few weeks, and could take maybe one or two prepositions to work on. I've wanted to do some English prepositions for a while, but I have had a shortage of available time and would have had to do most of the work by hand.  If someone could collect a set of collocations for me, that would greatly simplify the process.  It sounds as though you have a method for gathering these for review, yes?  If so, I'd be willing to tackle of: and/or from:, provided there is a way to harvest and dump potential citations, or at least a way to train others to do so. --EncycloPetey 04:14, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * In some ways it is very straightforward to get the collocations: Use COCA (better than BNC because larger and has some transcripts of spoken English). BYU also hosts the Time database, BNC, and OED quotations. You should register at each! They kick you off every two hours or when you are inactive. The OED database has a bit less functionality, but they all share a common search language, which is pretty damn good for a free resource.

You type in "from [n*]", hit return, and bob's your uncle, the 100 most common collocations of "from" and a noun with no intervening word materialize on screen. If you click on the collocation the actual contexts of the collocations appear. You can even get more than the single line that initially shows up. The tedious bit is typing the 100 nouns. I also typed in the first 1-2 digits of the counts. It is possible to get it all by cut and paste, but I didn't do that this first time because I backed into doing as much as I did. It should be quite possible to use any software with adequate editing capability to format a table of wikitext more attractively formatted than what I did. If you could recruit someone who knows how to automate formatting into tables, we could grab a lot of good raw data. I like placing the data in the talk page for the preposition to attract some interest and ideas. Each dollop of such collocations is likely to take a while to fully exploit so we won't really be putting too much load on the BYU servers. DCDuring TALK 05:02, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Where would the "in light of" type of usage belong to? --Panda10 17:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The PoS for in light of would seem to be preposition. (Other like this: in front of, in case of, in view of ) From OneLook, AHD(idioms), RHU, MWOnline, and one other idiom dictionary list it, so it is arguably an idiom and therefore meets WT:CFI. The use of "light", though comprehensible, is figurative. Without "the" it seems more of an idiom than the similar in the light of, which some dictionaries (MWOnline, RHU, and Cambridge Idioms) also call an idiom. None of these dictionaries assign a PoS to idiomatic/phrasal prepositions. (I'm not sure that they do for any idioms.) DCDuring TALK 17:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

in order
"When the doctor told him he had six months to live, he decided to get his affairs in order." Defined as "complete, finished". I would've thought this was actually sense 2: "tidy, orderly". I don't really recognise sense 3. Equinox ◑ 16:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you are right about that. It sounds different when delivered in context, though. "put one's affairs in order" is a phrase used in euphemisms about the hearer's projected imminent demise. It means "prepare for one's death". Perhaps put one's affairs in order merits an idiomatic entry and should be a derived term at in order. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Hobson-Jobson
Would you mind having another look at RFV#Hobson-Jobson? — msh210  ℠  19:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

 * I've done things to the entry. DCDuring TALK 20:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. —  msh210  ℠  21:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:DCDuring/2009 QII


text:
Messerstecherei

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) stabbing, knife fight; knifing

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Messerstecherei


text: Messerstechereien

title: Messerstechereien


text:
User talk:DCDuring/2009 QIII

Cleanup
OK, thanks DCDuring. I have corrected all my entries, which were in the category (I have left the Chinese ones in the category - this is a mysterious language for me!) And the Autoformat autobot is almost like a sentient being. It can detect so many errors, very useful for the folks who haven't totally understood format. Are there any other things, which are incorrect with my entries? --Rising Sun 07:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

re:rain cats and dogs
Answered here. Ferike333 15:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to visit
Progress on Simple English Wikt is quite slow at the moment, and I was wondering if you and a few other thoughtful editors here would consider visiting for a few weeks. I know there's tons of stuff to do here, but it would be nice to have some interesting company at home for a spell.--Brett 01:46, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

interjections
Hi. I have a vague impression that you're working through our interjections. If you're editing them anyway, do you think you could also add where needed? I've noticed that many true interjections are defined with non-gloss definitions. — msh210  ℠  17:39, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

 * It is on my mind. I have been populating proverbs from idioms and phrases because it is a little more straightforward and gives me a chance to scan the categories. When I understand all four categories a bit better, I will move some "interjections" to those other categories/headers. I'm not at all happy with names and concepts behind these categories. They remind me of a discussion by Borges in one of his stories about categorization. Not entirely dissimilar from the abbreviation L3 headers. The confounding of types of categories into headers (after L2, any way) is maddening.
 * When I work on conversational-directive-type idioms and interjections, I almost always (?) insert so that such things can be appropriately tracked and formatted when the time comes for some kind of action on them. I take it that you use that template. Who else?
 * Thanks. Much of what goes on here at Wiktionary reminds me of Borge, too.  In response to your last question: Beats me; Rodasmith wrote it, so I'd guess uses it.  —  msh210  ℠  18:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, you made me laugh. DCDuring TALK 19:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Hohohohohohohahahahaha
I guess this user is also User:Fghjnfoefn who did the same thing yesterday (example). I think longer blocks might be in order. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

 * And User:Bfbggonnnn. Equinox ◑ 17:55, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

 * This is a job for a checkuser or experienced patroler. The question is how many different IP addresses this character is using. Also perhaps whether he is doing the same thing on other projects (yielding more data). DCDuring TALK 18:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I should coco
I don't understand why you deleted this. It's an alternative spelling of a current entry, not an inflection of a deleted one. Equinox ◑ 17:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Because it is built on the sense of coco as an alternative spelling of cocoa that was recently deleted. The inflection of choice was just the closest, quite analogous to the situation at hand. Feel free to restore it so we could put it through RfV. DCDuring TALK 18:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Search-box special characters.
Hi DCDuring,

I saw Hippietrail's BP comment, suggesting that one of my changes to MediaWiki:Edittools might have been what caused your search-box special-character problem. I have to admit, I hadn't realize that MediaWiki:Edittools was used anywhere besides where the software used it (i.e. below the edit-box), so I didn't know there was other stuff to test.

If you don't mind, could you do the following for me? :

 * Revert MediaWiki:Edittools to this version from 1 June, right before I started making those changes.
 * Clear your cache/hard-refresh/whatnot. (I don't know if this step is actually necessary, because I don't know how that PREF works, but I figure you might as well, just to be sure.)
 * See if it works again.
 * If not, revert back to the current version of MediaWiki:Edittools. (Heck, even if so, it might be better to revert back to the current version, if you can put up with waiting for the issue to be fixed properly.)
 * Let me know the results.

If it was one of my changes, then I guess I'll have to delve into the guts of the PREF and figure out how to fix it. :-)

—Ruakh TALK 00:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Never mind, yes, it was definitely my changes. That PREF is controlled by User:Connel MacKenzie/keypad.js, and is very much out of date … this could take a while to fix. :-/  —Ruakh TALK 00:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Am I the only one who has/d the problem? Does no one use search for special characters? What is weird about my set up or my use of wikt? I hope my troubles are not completely sui generis. I'd like to think that at least I'm the miners' canary. DCDuring TALK 00:46, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * That PREF is totally nonfunctional at the moment. My changes totally broke it. (Sorry!) Whether you're the only one using it, or merely the only one using it who's spoken up, I don't know. I'm pretty sure we don't track PREFS usage (though from a technical standpoint that would not be difficult to do). But it seems like a useful PREF; once I get it working again, I may use it myself. :-)  —Ruakh TALK 01:45, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm glad I brought it to your attention. Though it's very nice to have, it is not indispensable. There must be others who use it more. I'd have thought many, but perhaps not. I will patiently await the return of the capability. DCDuring TALK 02:01, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * O.K., I've figured out an easy hack that fixes it, at least on Firefox. To load the new, hacked version, visit http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AConnel_MacKenzie%2Fkeypad.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s and do a hard-refresh. And then it should work. (It'll be kind of fragile, though.) —Ruakh TALK 02:02, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool. Quick! Thanks. If there's a problem, you'll be the first to know. Would my exercising this be of any value for whatever the long-term solution, or is it *just* a hack? DCDuring TALK 02:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Nah, just use it normally, and let me know if you find problems. I made a hackish modification to kind of "trick" the existing code into doing what I want; but since I haven't read most of the existing code, I don't know what kind of consequences that might have. (For example, my hack leaves a floating </span>, instead of a floating </charinsert>. Could this cause problems? I have no idea. Normally I tend to think my code through very carefully before committing it, but in this case I figured anything vaguely functional would be a step up from the total breakage. Once I look through the code, and probably rewrite much of it, I'll hopefully find any issues.) Thanks for your patience, BTW. :-)  —Ruakh TALK 02:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

stiff
Do you think your new sense ("potent") is similar to the existing sense "harsh, severe"? They seem to be angling at the same thing. Equinox ◑ 00:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

 * The user who asked for the meaning of "stiff drink" may not have looked at the entry, but I didn't see a sense that I could have referred him to.
 * I take my cue from the OneLook dictionaries. MWOnline for example has 8 main senses with a grand total of 18 senses with a all subsenses. Clearly there must be a lot of relatedness and overlap among the senses, but the definitions are definitely not identical. If we had a clear strategy of how the end-product of our efforts would be different from our competitors (simpler, more modern, more learner oriented, more oriented toward non-English speakers, covering more time periods, etc.), it would be easier to make entry design decisions that accepted being less complete than competitors. If our entries used the available corpora to determine which senses were in fact the most common and which distinct senses encompassed the range of meaning a polysemic word had, it would also be easier to make limited editorial decisions.
 * If we could limit the number of silly multi-word entries, it would be a small price to pay to have more senses of the component words. I only wish we could present them more compactly and with better organization. Of course we are well on the way to having:
 * many silly multi-word entries,
 * many encyclopedic entries (both single- and multi-word),
 * a mix of some overlong entries for components words and many entries missing important modern senses,
 * a mix of protologisms and words with definitions unchanged since being copied from Websters 1913,
 * inferior layout,
 * not to mention extremely uneven quality.

 * Hmmmmm. You may have caught me at a bad time. DCDuring TALK 01:55, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

SoP=?
--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 17:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

 * See Glossary. —Ruakh TALK 17:34, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

duh[gues when context not obvious2me,imis'em..:/]-extremelyhandylist,herew/bookmarkd,txheaps!!--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 18:35, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Grammar appendices
I'm certainly willing to give this a shot, at least for the main functions, but I haven't spent all that much time around here; simple.wikt is my main gig. Obviously, you've spent a good deal thinking about this, so I'd appreciate your thoughts about what's needed. Is something like the Wikipedia entry for modifiers the kind of thing that would be good?--Brett 00:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

If WP has it, then we have to make it more useful for the needs of our Wiktionarian-citizen-lexicographers and users. I would focus on Wiktionarians first because the feedback is more immediate. The veteran Wiktionarians have opinions, some newer ones know they need guidance. Some contributors need specific feedback. Patrollers need to be able to point to specific articles that calm contributors down when their entries are deleted. Recurring classification issues arise with gerunds, and past participles, prepositional phrases, and attributive use of nouns. This is mostly settled for the latter two, but the limiting cases seem to involve a lot of thrashing. We also have persistent entry of adjective sections for nouns where the use is merely attributive. A standardized usage note and a linked section of an appendix on attributive use of nouns might prevent a great deal of wasted effort. Prepositional phrases often are both adverbial and adjectival modifiers with little or no change in the wording of the senses required. It would be useful to allow us to eliminate the duplication in at least some of the cases with a usage note and another section in an appendix.

Given the number of articles about Parts of Speech that have not yet been created, it might be useful to pick one or more of the parts of speech congenial to you (determiners, adjectives and adverbs?) and talk about how the modern grammatical functional categories map to that part of speech. Any discussion that led us to the most effective presentation generally consistent with existing headings would be good.

My authority on matters Wiktionary is limited to the fact that I have done a lot of edits without pissing people off too much, despite my lack of education in these things. I have participated in a lot of discussions and asked questions about policies, rules, criteria, knowledge about user behavior etc. Many of those answers have been negative in the sense that no one seemed to think there was valuable material around. There are very few non-entry content-type pages that seem to have much use. WT:CFI and WT:ELE and their linked are just about it. Other pages with shortcuts of the form ":WT:" must be ones someone has found useful. There have been many plans to do great things which bear no fruit. The current state of en.wikt seems to be the product of many ambitious but incomplete reforms and a few simple innovations that have survived. All on a software platform not designed for a dictionary.

We have a fairly weak set of appendices. I don't think many have even been categorized. I dread finding out how many are not much linked to. That may be something I amuse myself with. A likely set of appendices to look at for your purposes is the list beginning with "English" which I have sorted and put on User:DCDuring/Grammar pages. The BEST titles are below. I can't vouch for any of the articles. There might be others in Appendix space and Wiktionary space. (eg Wiktionary:phrasal verbs).

Appendices on the "parts of speech" headers
 * Appendix:English articles
 * Appendix:English idioms deprecated list, not-quite deprecated heading
 * Appendix:English nouns
 * Appendix:English prefixes
 * Appendix:English pronouns
 * Appendix:English proper nouns
 * Appendix:English proverbs
 * Appendix:English verbs
 * Appendix:English suffixes

Appendices on categories of parts of speech
 * Appendix:English regular verbs
 * Appendix:English uncountable nouns
 * Appendix:English catenative verbs
 * Appendix:English irregular adjectives
 * Appendix:English irregular plurals
 * Appendix:English irregular verbs
 * Appendix:English given names

PoS headings apparently without Appendices: Interjection; Adverb; Adjective; Preposition; Conjunction; Determiner; Particle; Numeral; Abbreviation, Initialism, Acronym; Phrase; Character; Symbol

 * Category:English language

 * Appendix:English determiners

patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels
This is a statement by Samuel Johnson from 1775. It is widely quoted, but is it a proverb? Would it be better as quotation in the entry patriotism? --Hekaheka 07:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Proverbs and idioms, cabbages and kings
Hello DC -- Re your removal of the template here, can't a proverb be idiomatic? Or are they all idiomatic anyway? -- WikiPedant 22:13, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

ME
I am interested in why you dislike Middle English sections. I sometimes add them, especially when there is paltry use of the spelling and sense in English and a different etymology section would be required in English and the only citations given are from Chaucer and Spencer (largely unintelligble to most normal users). Taking Middle English seriously wouldn't be much fun for an amateur because there seem to be so many alternative spellings. DCDuring TALK 15:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Yeah, the spellings are part of the problem. The other part is that there aren't actually that many words which were only used in Middle English without surviving into early Modern, and so generally I find it much more useful to see them in an English section where I can see any possible meanings which arose in later (modern) use.  But I'm kind of being facetious, I have accepted that Middle English entries are probably unavoidable and even useful, I just dread all the duplication of information that they will entail..  < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ</> 15:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. I wanted test my understanding of the situation. BTW, I have found free online access to the OED citations via BYU very useful to check on when use of a term waned. A further question, I often ignore 19th century usage spurts in the OED, ascribing them to Burnsian and other efforts to document or revive dialectal speech - not that there's anything wrong with that. I just don't have enough of a feel for UK dialectal speech to contribute all the context tags etc. DCDuring TALK 16:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

RFD archives
My message is here; you seemed to be the best person to ask, along with Equinox and Msh. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:30, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * MSH has done this well in the past. I would have to infer the protocol from the history or someone's explanation. DCDuring TALK 09:50, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Category:English allusions
I'm confused. How is the description on this category different from "idiomatic"? --EncycloPetey 18:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

 * 1) That's why I always hide categories to start.
 * 2) I see your point. I'll try to reword. Feel free to correct. I think the idea is that the entries are terse references to the title or memorable characters in a well-known story, intended to evoke aspects of the story. DCDuring TALK 18:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

 * If so, then the word literary: should probably appear in the description as a qualifier. --EncycloPetey 18:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't mention literary because I was thinking that religious, mythical, and proverbial material might also be included (if it didn't have or merit a more specific category), no matter what the authorship. Similarly famous events and figures from history.

 * Question: What about Classical myths/stories? Would you consider Pandora's box: or Achilles heel: to fit this category? --EncycloPetey 18:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, certainly. I'm focused on the way the alluding term evokes a fairly specific narrative that is shared fairly widely in a given culture/subculture. I have been noticing all the terse noun-phrase entries that evoke a proverb. That primed me for the category, though I'm not sure whether these terse allusions to one-sentence proverbs fit in the same category as the allusions to more elaborate narratives. DCDuring TALK 18:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

-Compound
Why remove the compound template? OED uses this exact notation in the etymologies Manitoba + maple, North American + Indian. —Michael Z. 2009-08-05 12:37 z

 * We consistently don't call headwords with spaces (or hyphens) "compounds", reserving that for terms spelled solid, withhout spaces. We usually rely on the wikilinks (inf=, sg=, pos=) in the inflection line to hook users up with the component words. The dozen or so entries of yours (I could tell they were yours from the subject matter) were almost the only ones like this. I know this because today Dan Polansky edited to make it put items in categories. I took a look at Category:English compound words and started cleaning up what I knew (or thought I knew). If you think that our normal practice (not a policy) is wrong, then it should be discussed. I'd be happy to enact the new practice, starting with cleaning up my changes to your contributions. DCDuring TALK 14:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I see the definition of compound word. I guess that, it we take this seriously, we might be able to have a bot insert Category:English compound words or Category:English hyphenated compound words and Category:English spaced compound words to conform to such a desired practice. DCDuring TALK 14:12, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't care how we define the word, I just thought that template was a standardized way to make word + word in an etymology. If it's only meant for certain kinds of words, then the docs should say so.  But it's probably not wise to create conventions typographically identically, yet different in substance from those of the OED's.

 * Headword links are fine, but etymological information shouldn't be removed from the etymology because they're there. —Michael Z. 2009-08-05 20:09 z

 * If we documented every practice, then eventually there would be be some studious newbie whom we couldn't be superior to. Or is it Darwinian anti-prescriptivism even as regards to our own conventions?
 * The logic of it isn't too bad, because users ought to get the convention that the inflection line blue links convey the information. But I could understand and accept another approach. One issue is consistency of practice so that categories have some use. I would go with any agreed upon practice, especially one that could be rapidly implemented with a bot. DCDuring TALK 20:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

 * “Portuguese water dog” doesn't include the information in “Portuguese + water dog.”  And even if you assume that no editor will ever link the headword components just because they saw it in another entry, and that all readers will wave their mouse over the components to see whether each space is a divider or not, and that they will automatically know that you removed information from the etymology and encoded it in the headword using the hidden whitespace method, then, still,  to the blind user of a screen reader, “Indian red” cannot convey the information in ''Indian + red”.

 * If you write some information, then it's there. If you don't, then it's really not. —Michael Z. 2009-08-06 00:23 z

 * I'd be in favor of enhancing the visibility of multi-word wikilinks. I try to make sure that inflection-line links are to any multi-word terms available, phrasal verbs, etc. So it should be and there probably should be an entry at water dog. (I'm a standard-poodle man myself, but I knew an agililty champion Portuguese water dog.) I don't disagree with your points, though I'm not sure I reach the same conclusion at this point. DCDuring TALK 00:33, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

 * There are many other problems with this. In hundreds or thousands of entries there are headword links which are certainly not etymological—especially borrowings: ball lightning, Father Frost, flea market, farmer's sausage, even point of view.  Readers should expect that the etymology is sometimes under “Etymology”, sometimes in the headword, sometimes split between both, and sometimes it only looks like its in the headword but isn't?  It's one thing to have convenience links there, but unacceptable to actively remove explicit information and make the reader guess whether it's somewhere else or maybe not.

 * The links look like hell anyway. The focal point of every main entry section becomes a rainbow of black, blue, and purple, as in St. Elmo's fire or cock of the walk.  The boundaries between links aren't even necessarily whitespace, as in trompe l'oeil.

 * This is shabby and inconsistent. I'll start a topic at the Beer Parlour shortly, to at least be consistent about what is what. —Michael Z. 2009-08-06 02:50 z

 * Some of the inconsistency is because some entries haven't been looked at very seriously lately. Some is because some experienced editors don't know or don't like a specific practices. Having a sense of what is currently desirable-achievable would be good. I hope that there can be consensus on something reasonable. DCDuring TALK 03:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Absolutely true, but in the meantime, I'll ask you please consider not removing anything from etymology sections on the basis that it is represented in the headword links. Sincerely, from one raised by (miniature) poodles. —Michael Z. 2009-08-06 03:37 z

 * It was only the compound template that concerned me - and I could be wrong about that. I don't usually add etymologies to multi-word entries. I have sometimes removed one's that had nothing but the component words. That seems like it should be part of the discussion. I'm sure that I picked up some confirmation for my personal prejudices (though I recall no specifics) but it may well be less than widely accepted. DCDuring TALK 03:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

under erasure
Hello DC -- Re this edit, I read 2 of the 5 usages in the quotations in the main entry as adverbial and the other 3 as adjectival. I think this is one of those annoying slippery phrases which swings both ways. In younger editing days, for these sorts of phrases I used to create sections for both POS's in the entry and split up the quotations. Now, I suspect that approach is too clever by half, but I don't have any firm suggestions for what to do instead. -- WikiPedant 04:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

 * That's what I always did too. But, in modern grammar they would just call it a modifier or something and not bother with the mostly empty distinction. It is hard to get excited about "It is under erasure" vs. "He wrote it under erasure." And what about verbs that might be considered copulas besides "be" and "seem". Sometimes I insert a usage note saying it could also be used as "Adjective". In this case, there are so many quotations (see Citations:under erasure.) that we may as well split them. But the usage note approach works OK IMHO for prepositional phrases.
 * I'm beginning to have more respect for some aspects of modern grammatical classes, but I don't see how we could justify replacing the traditional PoSs, although certain adverbs, interjections, some pronouns, as well as "idioms" and "phrases" could well stand replacement or supplementation. DCDuring TALK 05:00, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

blood in the water
Hi DCDuring. I changed the entry, as discussed on rfv (except that I got rid of the "Idiomatic" section). I also broke protocol by removing the rfv tag, because I'd deleted the definition it was attached to... Let me know if you have any comments: by return, on rfv or just edit the page. Cheers, Pingku 19:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

go to someone's head
Hey DC, before you delete all these entries it would be good to get some consensus for it, or if you really want to do it then at least leave the originals as redirects. go to one's head as a phrase has over 600 hits on google books compared to 58 for go to someone's head, and there is also good attestation for things like went to one's head (199) compared to went to someone's head (4 hits). < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ</> 20:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

 * The main issue is what is the lemma form. It is seriously misleading to have one's for a verb phrase because it implies that the subject is the "one". I estimate that 10-15% of the verbs with "one's" in the headword should have "someone's" in accordance with the practice of dictionaries that have good coverage of idioms. Once we have differentiated reflexive from nonreflexive, then it gets easier to do the rest. Bot-assisted redirects from the most common forms to the lemmas would be my objective. I'd be perfectly happy to devote some hours to proper redirects instead of just what happened to be left behind. Should the focus of redirects be on the variation of the verb forms, on pronoun variations, or both? I actually haven't seen much effort devoted to inserting pronominal redirects and little effort devoted to verb form variation. What evidence of preference that I've seem suggests that inflected forms of verb phrases (excepting phrasal verbs) are not popular among the senior contributors who voice an opinion.
 * The most frequent forms in COCA are (go/your: 22), (go/his: 18), (go/my: 13), (gone/his: 13), (go/her: 10), (went/my: 9), (went/his: 8), (gone/her: 5), (gone/my: 5), (gone/your: 4), (goes/your: 3), (goes/my: 2), (going/your: 2).  "My" is the only pronoun that has all four verb forms covered. No other forms, including "go/one's" and "go/someone's", appear more than once. It would be interesting to see how this compares with google books, google news, google scholar, and google groups, not to mention BNC and Time. I welcome your thoughts. DCDuring TALK 21:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I agree that go to someone's head is probably the better form for the main entry. But we must also allow for what users are liable to enter when they do look-ups, so I have reinstated go to one's head as a redirect. (PS: Whenever I create an entry with "someone" in its title, I also create a companion redirect with "somebody" in its title.)  -- WikiPedant 01:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Fine. You don't have to worry about my nose getting lastingly out of joint. After that first burst of defensiveness, I'm usually OK unless strongly reprovoked. Of course only a real dictionary-using veteran will form a lemma using either "one's" or "someone's", which is why we need to have more redirects to lemmas to let the wording of the lemma convey some information instead of bearing the load of the search. The headword wording is reinforced by the definition, usage examples, and citations. Eventually repeat users would pick up any consistent pattern we provide. DCDuring TALK 02:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

1992
I have tried to explain further why I think 1992 is different from other years (even ones where major events took place). I include two additional references.

John Cross 20:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

run for one's money
Hello DC -- I just created this entry. You may or may not feel disposed to change it to run for someone's money. After thinking it over, I decided to go with this form, since the usual context for this expression is in a larger expression of the form "give someone a run for his/her/their money." The "his/her/their" refers not to the subject of the verb "give" but to the indirect object of that verb ("someone"). An interesting and more complicated situation than usual. For me, "one's" works best here (but I did create a number of redirects to play it safe). -- WikiPedant 04:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * PS-- I am starting to think I should have titled the entry a run for one's money. Do you think the "a" should be in the title? -- WikiPedant 04:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "Run for one's money" is certainly consistent with how we name idioms that are not verb phrases. I don't think that "run for someone's money" is an improvement, all things considered. The inconsistency in using "one's" in one way for verb phrases and in another way for all other phrases seems not likely to confuse users who can manage to find the lemma entry to begin with.
 * As to the "a", we try to exclude both "the" and "a" except in unusual circumstances. There are lots of noun phrases that seem to take "a" or "the" mostly to the exclusion of the other. I can't put a name to the why of it. It may just be that the semantics are such that one or the other is rarely appropriate. It may be that we should have an article at the start of a phrase that begins with a noun that can also be a verb or other PoS so that it appears distinctly on lists. If the phrase were a "set phrase" rather than a more flexible idiom, perhaps including "a" would be appropriate. But adjectives can intervene between "a" and "run for one's money", eg, "real", "good". Perhaps we need the redirect from a run for one's money, but "a" and "the" are ignored stopwords for many searches.
 * run for the money is 22/148 of the COCA hits. It also needs a redirect.
 * One entry, many issues. Thanks for asking. I hope that this can generalize a bit, but the perfect "a" answer still isn't clear to me. DCDuring TALK 11:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, DC. It was precisely the fact that "run" can be both a verb and a noun (causing a double-take on "run for one's money") that was nagging at me. But, after reading your thoughts, I'm quite content to leave it as I initially added it. Thanks for noodling through this one with me a bit. -- WikiPedant 15:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

WT:RFD
I see what you're saying about Google hits, but creating 'null entries' to get more hits seems like a bad idea. I tend to think Wikipedia's biggest problem (of many) is the low quality of articles, I (personally) wouldn't want us to lower or CFI just to get more readers. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:59, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Regular inflected forms are hardly a matter of quality one way or the other. And what is quality supposed to mean? Average number of characters per entry? Findability? Least numbers of clicks to get what user really wants? Repeat users? Users who become contributors? High or low readability scores? Total number of lemmas? total number of senses? total number of senses at lemmas? total number of Parts of Speech for lemmas? We obviously don't take any measurement seriously because we measure and track virtually nothing, certainly nothing about users. I wonder: is that because doing so might limit our unbridled freedom to play with the free resources we've discovered? DCDuring TALK 20:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Landau 2
I was referring to Sidney I. Landau 2001, Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed. I've read about 2/3 of it in dribs and drabs (found it in my local public library). I haven't read too much else on the subject, just compared parts of a few of the other practical lexicography books while searching in Google Books.

Landau is very readable and interesting for its own sake, up-to-date in terms of computer technology (esp. the use of corpora). He often mentions the recent class of dictionaries for foreign learners which have introduced a number of innovations. I recommend it for anyone working on Wiktionary. (Although I haven't seen Zgusta 1971, Manual of Lexicography, which everyone refers to a lot). —Michael Z. 2009-08-17 17:23 z

 * Thanks for the response. I do prefer something that deals with the implications of corpora. I am also interested in what can and cannot be treated lexically. And how dictionaries accommodate newer grammatical theory. I just visited two local libraries, one of which had the English Grammar of Quirk et al and the other of which had Huddleston and Pullum. I was impressed by the greater confidence and consistency of H&P. I imagine it must seem so much more modern to professionals than Quirk, maybe even more than the 18-year difference in publication dates. But there seems an element of unwarranted stridency to the tone in some questions of categorization. I'll have to see about getting Landau. No library in my immediate area here has it, but it is not expensive 2nd-hand from Amazon. DCDuring TALK 18:28, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Verb?
Hi DcDuring, Did you mean Verbo? He is a "returned" user, (previously Matricularius or Arcarius) who had been blocked before after he had given most Dutch pages example sentences that were all related to sexual kink. Mostly spanking and such. We spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the mess Jcwf 16:07, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the typo. Thanks for the rapid response.
 * Well, I haven't seen any of that. But I haven't checked closely. He just doesn't seem to be responding to other users legitimate requests that his efforts use templates, etc. DCDuring TALK 16:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

-gram
Numerous elements of this entry were and are not in conformity with our formatting standards. Please feel free to make them conform to WT:ELE. Most especially the headings are non-standard. We also no not have glosses for terms under the various semantic relationship headings. DCDuring TALK 09:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Who's 'we' kimasabe? Do you have a pointer to a fascistic rule that specifies that you must not include glosses that may help the user? If so, I'm going to change it.Wolfkeeper 15:02, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Feel free to propose any changes that you would like. The customary approach, if you can abide custom, is to start a discussion at WT:BP. DCDuring TALK 15:23, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: section editing
What exactly do you mean? Usually I do edit sections only. The computer I work on is so slow that for a long page like WT:TR or WT:RFC it takes 2-5 minutes just to load it, so I don't dare click the edit tab at the top (I did once & my browser quit on me...) But for individual entries I usually edit the whole page at once as the stuff I clean up is spread throughout the entry. I'm sorry if what I'm doing is inconveniencing other editors. L☺g☺maniac chat? 18:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . I didn't know that. Yeah, I guess I do delete the /* stuff . . . I thought that was just an automatic edit summary that i could replace with my own.  So that's why. . . OK, I won't do that anymore.  And yes, I have fiddled with the gadgets in PREFS.  (I tend not to use popups because they can get annoying if I'm reading something and my cursor just happens to rest on one of the words, and then it gets in the way...)  Thanks for telling me. And happy editing to you too... L☺g☺maniac chat? 20:03, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

banker's acceptance
I have just moved "banker's acceptance" to "bankers' acceptance" but have a bad feeling about it. Please revert my move if you think it was unjustified.

Only after I have moved the entry have I noticed that you have entered "banker's acceptance" as singular but "bankers' acceptances" as plural. That makes sense: one particular acceptance is from one banker (one bank), whereas the plurality of all the acceptances on the market naturally comes from a plurality of bankers.

Some Google searches: --Dan Polansky 08:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I have undone my move myself. --Dan Polansky 08:24, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't think that I checked too carefully. I good search engine does not need every form. I think I did (or accepted) that plural just to enhance the chances of the main entry being found without all the redirect entries. It does have the logic you suggest. BTW, I think precise checks on google would need to have search lines like "banker's acceptance" -"bankers acceptance" -"bankers' acceptance" (possibly even with all the plurals subtracted out). It gets to be tedious. Sometimes there is a time-saving advantage to just following a rule, even if the rule has not been empirically demonstrated. Also, I don't get too excited by reversions of my edits. There are often substantive deficiencies. I'm trying to improve articles, not necessarily "perfect" them. I err when tired and due to lack of knowledge coupled with occasional failure to know when I am out of my depth. DCDuring TALK 15:41, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

rote
hey, your adj section is attributive noun use. -- Thisis0 17:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I checked before adding the section: used with "very", for example. I didn't add the cites out of laziness economy of effort. DCDuring TALK 17:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

re: Westchester County
No, actually never heard of the place (had to go to WP to figure out where exaclty it was.). That's interesting, though. Has it been in the news lately? (We don't follow any news but the local paper, so are pretty out of touch with the world.) :) L☺g☺maniac chat? 21:24, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * In the local news here and, I suspect, in many other places in US as a backlog of such matters is being accelerated by the HUD appointees of the new administration. DCDuring TALK 21:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Arnold Schwartzenegger
Will you also be starting a page for Arnold Schwarzenegger? --EncycloPetey 00:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No need, apparently. DCDuring TALK 00:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was inspired to create the generic noun Schwarzenegger entry. --EncycloPetey 00:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Why should the anons have all the fun? DCDuring TALK 00:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Schwarzeneggeresque :) Equinox ◑ 00:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Some information on the name (etymology, etc.) might be nice too. Nadando 00:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently it's "black ploughman" (schwarze Negger), but I'll leave the proper research to somebody who remembers more than about 20 words of German. Equinox ◑ 00:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

therz Unteregger,'parent'ratheRAREsurname ,so explaind:under-egger/plower[source:from pesn w/that name,Saarland academic/entrepreneur/politician
 * http://www.babylon.com/definition/eggen/Chinese%20%28S%29 eggen--史凡 >voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 06:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've looked for etymological info several times before. My sources don't list that sepcific name, but from what I do find in Bahlow's Deutsches Namenlexikon, the surname could also originate either as "son of black Eggert" or as "person from black Egg(e)" (where Egg(e) is a place name).  I don't know which (if any) is "correct". --EncycloPetey 00:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I don't find Negger as a word in modern or 19th century German dictionaries. It doesn't appear as a surname with that meaning in medieval German either.  I do find Neger (from Latin niger, which suggests that Schwarzenegger may be the German equivalent of blackamoor. --EncycloPetey 00:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

 * He he. I'm still looking for two more quotes to support non-Jabba-esque. --EncycloPetey 00:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Gerund
Great that you have extended Appendix:English gerund. I just wonder: why are you calling the thing "gerund-participle" instead of "gerund"? In Google books, I have found many English grammar books that call it "gerund" and that call the longer construction that uses a gerund a "gerund phrase", so in "Writting letters is my favorite activity", "writing letters" is a gerund phrase. Anyway, not a big deal either way. --Dan Polansky 17:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry I jumped all over what you'd begun, but it is something I've been thinking about. I am afraid to give much currency to the the "gerund" terminology. I find myself convinced by the discussion of CGEL on this. Since there is no difference in form according to the functions that the -ing forms take, it would seem to "be" one thing that plays various roles (more than two!!!): subject, predicate, attributive adjective, complement, etc. Quirk et al. called it an -ing form, I believe. CGEL called it a gerund-participle. I don't know what Biber called it. Gerund does not have the widespread use of participle, let alone of the traditional PoSs, so I am not so sure that we need to honor it so much.
 * In your original version you had said that gerunds and participles shouldn't be confused. My question to you is why? I ask it sincerely. I don't see the point in the distinction between gerund and participle when neither word characterizes a grammatical role or subset of the roles played by -ing forms. DCDuring TALK 20:40, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

 * The only thing I would note to be cautious of is that we not link "gerund" and "participle" too closely. Yes, in English the gerund has a participle form and CGEL has a decent analysis (better than just about anywhere else in fact), but we need to keep in mind that this isn't necessarily the case in other languages.  So, an opening section or paragraph that clarifies this point would be a Good ThingTM.  Once that point is made, then I have less concern about the remainder of the article (for now).  People do make this kind of error in generalization with regard to Proper nouns.  Many seem to think that since English (typically) capitalizes proper nouns, that somehow nouns are only proper if they're capitalized, even though many languages do not capitalize names of languages and a variety of other proper nouns.  So, I'd want to see a cautionary note at the outset that although gerunds in English have the form of a present participle, that isn't always so.  --EncycloPetey 21:49, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Ideally we would have grammatical appendices about relevant concepts in each language. Do we have any yet? It would be great to have even one to refer a reader to for contrast. For all practical purposes I'm monolingual, so I'm not the one to do it. We can have a disclaimer as the second paragraph of the English one. I don't even like the word "gerund" because it is more limiting even than "present participle", being solely concerned with one "PoS" when at least three are involved. DCDuring TALK 23:36, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Not for gerunds, we don't. The one for Latin gerunds will not be easy to write since most textbooks give it only passing consideration. The Latin gerund is derived (sort-of) from the oblique substantive neuter forms of the future passive participle.  That right there will take a section to explain.  The closest document in the Appendix space we have (that I can recall) is the Appendix:Latin cardinal numerals page, which I have not yet completed, but which has quite a lot of grammatical coverage written.  I also started an appendix on English proper nouns some time ago, but became sidetracked and haven't yet had the inspiration to complete it during a suitably long block of free time.  It will take a large block of time for me to focus properly on the issues involved because some of them are rather abstract and weighty.  I've acquired a copy of a recent doctoral thesis on the topic which was recommended to me by a friend who new of my interst.  I'm considering a split and/or restructure of the contect I've already done, because it starts out covering the "philosophy" of what a proper noun actually is (in general) then goes on to cover the grammar of proper nouns in English.  I'm beginning to think those parts would be better trested as two separate articles, with one covering the situation in English and the other treating the general topic of proper nouns.  In any case, the draft is in my user space for now. --EncycloPetey 02:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Coming a bit late, to your question "In your original version you had said that gerunds and participles shouldn't be confused. My question to you is why?": From Wikipedia, from Wiktionary's present participle and from Google search, I have gathered the following hyponymy structure:
 * -ing-form
 * verb form
 * present participle – I was swimming; I have been swimming
 * gerund – Climbing is dangerous.
 * noun – building (a structure), meeting, being (a creature)
 * In this structure, present participle and gerund are mutually exclusive. I wanted to drive the reader's attention to this distinction.
 * But if you say that the term "gerund" is much less common, much less current than the term "present participle", possibly you have the following hyponymy structure in mind:
 * -ing-form
 * verb form
 * present participle – I was swimming; I have been swimming; Climbing is dangerous.
 * noun – building (a structure), meeting, being (a creature)
 * In this structure, present participle includes what is also called gerund.
 * When Wiktionary says "# Present participle of swim" in its entries, it should be clear to which of the possible senses of "present participle" Wiktionary is referring to, whether to the broader one that includes gerunds or to the narrower one that excludes gerunds.
 * To the question what the distinction in the first hyponymy structure is good for: what I call gerund gives me an impression of a noun; it is surprising for me to learn that it is considered a verb form and that it can be modified by an adverb. So for me, whose grammatical mind has been shaped by an early exposition to Czech, certain things trivial for natives look surprising; also, certain things look like different cases because I have to map them to different grammatical features in Czech.
 * A general remark: the sameness of form far from determines the lexical category of an occurrence of a term, let alone semantics: "I had to fire him, as he has caused a fire ." Thus, that all the various occurrences of an -ing form look the same is at best a condition necessary for their being the same thing, rather than condition sufficient. --Dan Polansky 07:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * When Quirk et al refer to -ing form and H&P to the gerund-participle they seem to include nominal, adjectival, and verbal uses of the form, but not the true nouns or adjectives that may be derived from them. That is what I personally follow. IOW, -ing form = gerund-participle = a verb form. There may also be true nouns and adjectives with the name spelling.
 * Nothing about this is trivial for a native's conscious understanding of grammar. I think it is a question of whether the vocabulary of gerund and participle adds anything. They don't seem to be universal lexical categories, present in every language. They are not a major component of English education in the US. They do not reflect the actual grammatical variety of uses of the form and can mislead those familiar with the term as used in other languages.
 * The identity of form between gerund and present participle is true not just for a few or some, but for all verbs. It is reminiscent of the situation with Proper nouns, which always have an associated common noun. "There many wannabe Grand Canyons in the world, but only one Grand Canyon." We don't show it because it is a universal feature of Proper nouns that they can do this.
 * I have the enthusiasm for this of a recent convert, but am willing to accept other arguments and even just a weight of judgment contrary to the view I've expressed. DCDuring TALK 10:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: Literalness
That's OK, I tend to apologize anyway. I haven't been functioning exactly right this week anyhow so it's no surprise that I misunderstood you. I remember thinking right after I pressed "Save" and wondering if I had gotten you wrong somehow and whether or not I was addressing the right issues. I hope you understand that it is completely OK with me if we delete faccedilade. I wanted to keep it before, obviously, but once I realized it wasn't properly attestable I changed my mind. :) L☺g☺maniac chat? 19:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I like to stick to what few rules we have, though I wouldn't mind some clarification and even some change. I really have an intense dislike for the introduction of typographical folderol into Wiktionary, which approximately two people seem to favor. It is a related matter, but it has enough peculiarities and special needs to warrant some kind of special treatment probably in another kind of wiki with folks who are able to deal with all the peculiarities of that world. It would be wonderful if there were a lot of copyright-free fonts, for which such a thing might be a home or access point.
 * I feel that Proper nouns for places especially, organizations, and people also belong in a special homes. I see the point of having a place for translations and transliterations of such things but that content would go well with a lot of other kinds of content like maps, satellite photographs, etc. all in such volume as to dwarf the text content we have. DCDuring TALK 20:25, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Appendix:English grammar
FYI: I've started the section on English nouns, since issues concerning nouns seem to be frequent topics of discussion here. I've added the information in a format approximating that already used on the page. --EncycloPetey 20:45, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I was just about to click on it. DCDuring TALK 20:47, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've now created and populated Category:English grammar appendices. --EncycloPetey 15:30, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

User:DCDuring/Problem entries
I've moved this page into the User: namespace, the redirect remains, but can be deleted if you want. Conrad.Irwin 14:55, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Sorry. Sigh. DCDuring TALK 15:00, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

WT:ELE
re: -ism. Try to learn format. If you would like to start your own wiki where you can make your own rules, you can do so. You might ask WMF if they would support it. DCDuring TALK 20:15, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

 * If you want to continue being obnoxious, please ask the WMF if they would give you a server for that.Wolfkeeper 02:20, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations
...for such a fascinating project --Ki no Senshi 22:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

steven
I don't understand. It is not a citation for the term. It is for an alternate spelling. I thought that, for English, we insisted that citations be for the exact spelling of the headword. It might be different for Old English, Middle English, and for other languages. Refer me to some place where I can learn otherwise.

Relatedly I noted that you had reverted the Middle English entry to which I had moved the Chaucer citation. Chaucer is clearly Middle English. There might also be English use of the the term, but a Chaucer citation doesn't support it.

I recall that you don't like Middle English and I understand that there is some arbitrariness as to where one would set boundaries with Old English and English, but we clearly have Middle English as an accepted language. DCDuring TALK 18:16, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Hi. Well, I don't think we do insist that citations reflect the same spelling as the headword; my understanding has always been that citations of alternative forms can support either the alternative form page, or the main lemma entry, which seems to make sense (otherwise consider that e.g. Shakespeare quotes would usually be inadmissable to support entries in the original Folio spellings, I think that would be crazy). As for the whole Middle English thing, I apologise about that: the word did of course exist as well in Middle English but I changed it out of laziness because I couldn't be bothered to research exactly how the word looked in ME at the time.  You have to note that the citation was actually in modern English (presumably you got it from a modern English translation of Chaucer?) so it's not a very good ME quote, indeed it's not one at all.  I will fix all that tonight or tomorrow - sorry.  My position on ME is that I totally accept it, but I only think we should also be allowed to use ME citations to support modern English words (so that that we properly illustrate a word's history).  < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ</> 18:34, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Webster 1913
thank you for your advice - perhaps the template itself or the category text is slightly unclear. I checked that the modern meanings I knew about were present rather than that the entry was substantially modernized which is a stronger condition.

John Cross 19:09, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

agape
Does this look like it's ever an adverb to you, or just a post-copula adjective? I've put in an rfv since it's scheduled to be WOTD on Oct 1st. --EncycloPetey 23:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Re:Quotes from Milton: Because of their frequent importance, I invested in a copy of his (complete?) poetical works edited to carefully match the original punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. If you ever use a Milton quote and don't have this information, just ask.  I also have a Shakespeare First Folio facsimile copy. --EncycloPetey 01:11, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:DCDuring/2009 QIII