text:
Talk:Zener diode

Voltage Terminology
Why is the letter "U" used here for the abbreviation of Voltage? According to every book I have on the subject, and the way we were all taught electronics in school in the US, the standard abbreviation is "E" or "V". Why confuse the readers by stepping away from common terminology used in electronics? --Craxd (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ahh, because this is Wikipedia and 250 years ago some German professor called it "U" short for "Unterwissenschaftgespannungsarbeit", so in true Wikimania we must forever follow the European tradition. And if you don't, a horde of British schoolboys taking first form electricity will make it their life's work to keep reverting it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * By what evidence is U the most common symbol used for Voltage in the English speaking world? Why shouldn't the most common symbol be used here? Labradore (talk) 14:10, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * That would mean editing the diagrams. Is this at all significant? The symbols mean what we define them to mean after all. Those who know electronics, know V is U, and for those who don't, any old letter will do. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, the Germans do use 'U' as the symbol for voltage, but all the English speaking countries that I know of use 'V' (and apparently, America does as well). 109.145.22.224 (talk) 14:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Why the cut in voltage is called knee voltage somewhere ? Please answer me. And here it's said, it is zener breakdown the zenner knee voltage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hemantshripal (talk • contribs) 03:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * At least in Denmark, U is also used, rather than the weird use of E or (more understandable) V. I believe U is common in most European cultures. The weird E seems to be an American artifact. I have never seen it before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.239.195.102 (talk) 18:31, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Meaningless Statement
"A reverse-biased Zener diode will exhibit a controlled breakdown and allow the current to keep the voltage across the Zener diode at the Zener voltage. For example, a diode with a Zener breakdown voltage of 3.2 V will exhibit a voltage drop of 3.2 V if reverse bias voltage applied across it is more than its Zener voltage."

Uh ? Surely this can be re-worded so as to make sense.

Actually, this is the best explanation I have seen, and that includes the one found in Horowitz & Hill. The current flow increases as the voltage across the diode increases past the diode's Zener voltage, and works to keep the voltage that appears across the diode at a constant. (The Zener voltage is something designed into the diode and is a fixed value for a given diode.) So if you put a voltmeter across the Zener diode and turn up the voltage (in the reverse-bias sense) the voltage shown on the voltmeter will rise to the Zener voltage and then stay there, even as the applied voltage continues to rise.

Charles Antonelli Nov 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.211.4.71 (talk) 16:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Re the destruction of a conventional diode, surely the point is the POWER developed in the device. The mode of destruction is overheating. In the case of a broken-down diode the voltage is likely to be quite large, and therefore a relatively small current will develop sufficient power to overheat the device. --Andrew Smith May 2009

How about something like ... "As the reverse voltage across a Zener diode is increased, it will exhibit a controlled breakdown at its Zener voltage. This will allow the current through it to keep that constant voltage across the diode. For example, a diode with a Zener breakdown voltage of 3.2 V will exhibit a constant voltage drop of 3.2 V across it, if the reverse bias voltage applied across it increases beyond 3.2V." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.216.41.170 (talk) 05:21, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Schematic Symbol
Isn't the schematic symbol in the top right photo for a Schottky diode? I always thought the Zener symbol had the tips at a 45 degree angle.

Hyperlight 00:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

A Schottky diode has extra bits on the tips. See Diode for a list of symbols. I have seen zener's shown with angled tips (eg in Bill Orr's "Radio Handbook") but more of the references I have (eg ARRL Handbook, Silicon Chip) use the image shown here. images.google.com also shows a variant with only one side of the cathode bar having a bent tip. I know there are standards but I don't have references to them. --PeterJeremy 09:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

In Australia, at any rate, the symbol for a Zener diode is the same as that shown except that the top does not have the right angle tip. Source is Standards Associoation of Australia 1986, SAA Hb3 - Electrical and Electronic Drawing Practice for Students. I believe this is also the standard symbol in the UK. Perhaps there should be a picture of the two (or three) standard forms of drawing the Zener diode symbol along with the region to which they apply. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.171.252.31 (talk) 07:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The Schottky should have a "hat" that looks more like a fancy "S" (for Shottky). The Zener should have a hat that looks like a "Z". The "Z" not only stands for Zener, but it looks like the i-v curve. So, the symbol on the page as is now should be flipped (so it looks like a Z). --TedPavlic | talk 00:09, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I just want to ping this comment again. The Zener symbol shown above should have a "Z" hat to match conventions (and general common sense). The "backward Z" is counter intuitive and makes the symbol seem arbitrary. Symbols, like words on a page, mean things. —TedPavlic | (talk) 15:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * My quick search for evidence to back up that point of view comes up with just as many counter-examples, I think. See for example, where the Zener is drawn both ways on one page, and the Schottky is backwards from what you suggest.  I never heard of any handedness convention on these before; it's OK to change it if you can find a source that says there's such a convention. Dicklyon (talk) 16:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Hm. I suspect that originally the Zener was a "Z", because that corresponded well to the name "Zener" as well as to the i-v characteristic (which looks like a Z). Then Schottky came along. When comparing the Schottky i-v characteristic to the Zener's (or even a normal diode), it makes sense that the Schottky should look like a squished (or somehow modified) Z. However, to match the name-to-symbol convention, it makes sense to flip the Z to make it look like an S. So my guess is that Zener started out like a Z, and then Schottky started out like an S, and ever since people have been flipping the handedness.

 * I've always used (and seen in H&H, for example) Z and S, but until your response, I hadn't ever thought about how using "S" is backwards if you want the hats to resemble the i-v curves. So I can see an argument for using the S backwards... And if we're using the S backwards... I guess we can use the Z backwards... So I guess it's best leaving it as ambiguous as possible. —TedPavlic | (talk) 17:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The "Zener Diode" page has the symbol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zener_diode_symbol-2.svg

which is quite different to the Zener symbol on the "Diode" page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zener_diode_symbol.svg

Please would knowledgeable someone add a correction or note to indicate why there is a difference ? Darkman101 (talk) 09:52, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

 * Suggest that both schematic symbols for Zener diodes should be included in this article: the present symbol with two bent ends on the cathode and the other symbol with a single bent end on the cathode. CPES (talk) 13:23, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Diode destruction
IIs the reason that a normal diode "destroys itself" due to avalanche breakdown? If so, then we should say this explicitly. Also, a diode doesn't ever really destroy itself, unless it is connected to a very low resistance path. In this case, a diode can destroy itself in reverse bias as well as forward bias, can it not? So, we should remove this vagueness I think, and be a bit more clear. I can make the changes, I just want to check with the other authors first. I guess I could also check a textbook, but I don't have one with me right at this moment. --User:Dgrant

 * Sort of. Avalanche breakdown in itself doesn't damage the device; in fact the effect is used a lot for small current amplification in devices like p-i-n avalanche photodiodes.  What really destroys the device is the excessive current flow.  If that current flow is limited by external circuitry, the diode could remain operational in its avalanche breakdown region.  So yes, as you said, the diode can just as easily be destroyed at high forward bias because of excessive current. -- uberpenguin

What is not clear to me is what happens when a zener is destroyed. Does it go open circuit or closed circuit? One can imagine that it would go open circuit at catasrophic destruction but what about otherwise? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.180.162 (talk) 13:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I just did the experiment several times with a 15V 500mW Zener, connected directly to a variable voltage PSU. At 14V, no current flows (a DVM shows 0.00 uA, so this is pretty good). As the voltage rises to about 15.8V, the current increases (though the diode gets hotter, which reduces current slightly), then the diode's internals melt. At meltdown, all 6 specimens went short-circuit, rather than open-circuit. This fail-short rather than fail-open is good for protecting the regulated circuit, so it's clearly desirable; is it also a designed behaviour, or was this experiment simply lucky? RichardNeill (talk) 15:32, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you could find a citation for this, it would be useful to the article. Perhaps the people who design intrinsic-safety barriers have written on this topic. If you had a high-energy supply available, you'd probably blow up the diode rather than melting it; I've seen the top of an IC case blown off by a fairly small portable computer power supply, for example. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

 * Like most semiconductor devices, whether they fail open of short circuit depends on many factors. As noted above, an example that fails short circuit in a particular scenario, when the device is replaced can fail open circuit second time around.  What is well known is that semiconductor devices make better fuses than fuses do, which makes protecting semiconductors in power circuits problematic. 109.145.22.224 (talk) 14:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Zener breakdown
We should also have a diagram to show how Zener breakdown occurs. Without a diagram showing the mechanism and/or the I-V relationship, this article is sadly, fairly useless. I will draw one homemade using Xfig, unless someone beats me to it. --User:Dgrant

we should also have a graph showing the break down voltage and the knee voltage in the V-I relationship [user:shandhir]

pronunciation
There seems to be disagreement on whether Zener is pronounced like "zeener" or "zenner," possibly a British/American distinction. Authoritative comments on this would be helpful. --teejaydub

 * The Chambers Dictionary (British) says "zeener", which is annoying, because I have always pronounced it "zenner". Perhaps "zenner" is more natural for Brits because of the "zed"/"zee" thing. --Heron 20:22, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

In all my years, I have only ever heard it pronounced to rhyme with "Warrior Princess"  Darkman101 (talk) 06:22, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I suggest those who knew Clarence at Carnegie Mellon, or his family members, give a definitive answer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.213.76.24 (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

This obituary says ZEE-ner. The wording suggests this is the family pronunciation. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/06/obituaries/clarence-m-zener-87-physicist-and-professor-at-carnegie-mellon.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.98.69.99 (talk) 01:29, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Probably no very useful to resurrect a ten-year old debate, especially as the article currently says nothing about this, but for what it's worth, the OED gives the pronunciation as /ˈziːnə(r)/, that is, ZEEner. SpinningSpark 08:40, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

unneccessary statement
"Zener diodes are widely used in electronic circuits." - when else are diodes used? I'm totally deleting that one. Fresheneesz 21:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

 * This is unreasonable and detracts from the Wikipedia page, especially as the article has so many serious problems which need to be sorted. On your basis half of Wikipedia could be deleted. The point is that Zener diodes are widely used in electronic circuits as opposed to to one or two specialist applications. I really cant see your point of view or your logic. CPES (talk) 13:30, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Transwiki note
Most or all of this article was transwikied to wikibooks 18:37, 16 August 2006. Anyone know why? The user (IP only) did not copy the edit history or talk... I'll be happy to do that if there's a reason it was sent over. -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Zener Breakdown
More information on the Zener Diode Breakdown would be great!!

 * A very thin energy barrier due to large reverse bias and allowed energy states on both sides of the barrier gives rise to a high probability of quantum tunneling, a.k.a. Zener breakdown. -- mattb

Behaviour at low current
"If insufficient current flows through D, then UOUT will be unregulated, and could rise as high as UIN." - could someone provide a reference for this claim. A zener diode can be modelled as a perfect zener diode with a resistor in series and a resistor in parallel. Whilst the output is unregulated at low currents (heavily dependent on the current flow through the diode), the output voltage will always be less than the nominal zener voltage. --PeterJeremy 00:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

In view of the lack of comments, I have corrected the statement, adding a reference to the behaviour of Voltage regulator tubes - which do behave as was previously written. --PeterJeremy 09:01, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that UOUT can in fact rise to as high as UIN. Assume as stated above that a zener diode may be modelled as an ideal zener with a resistor in series (Rs) and another in parallel (Rp). Below the zener voltage this model reduces to a resistor with value Rs+Rp. The voltage UOUT across this resistor will be UIN x (Rs+Rp)/(Rs+Rp+R) where R is the resistor in series with the zener shown in the schematic. This can be as high as UIN for (Rs+Rp) very large relative to R (the usual case).

If there are no comments I will make this change. May 6 2007

In the "usual case", the current through the diode will be in the flattish area above the knee current. To reduce the current through the diode, you need to increase R so (Rs+Rp) will never be very large relative to R. A study of the I/V curve for a zener diode will more clearly show the behaviour but I haven't been able to locate  a datasheet with an I/V curve in it. Rummaging around with Google finds and  - both of which include typical curves. --PeterJeremy 09:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Rs ≪ R ≪ Rp if you haven't abused your diode. —Ryan 09:23, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Is this the same as a "thyrector"?
I once saw a thing called a "thyrector" in an old 60's era schematic. I remember it being drawn as ->|<- so I imagine it as being two Zener diodes connected in opposite directions, which would provide A/C voltage regulation. Is this correct? This would make it different from, say, a "diac" which would avalanche above the break voltage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.159.105 (talk) 00:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As you mentioned, it is common to use two Zener diodes connected in series opposition (i.e., in series with opposite bias) to make a cheap voltage regulator (with nominal output of close to $$V_Z + 0.7\,\text{V}$$ at room temperature). This combination is also used for gate oxide protection because oxides can usually withstand voltages of the same order of magnitude as most commercial Zener breakdown voltages (however, when standard inputs should never stray from each other by more than a small amount (e.g., operational amplifier inputs under negative feedback), standard diodes connected in "parallel opposition" are used). Because this combination is so popular and (in the regulator case) depends on nearly symmetric operation, "double anode Zener diodes" (DAZD) can be purchased that combine two matched Zener diodes in "series opposition" on one part. The name "thyrector" is a synonym for DAZD. Personally, I prefer "DAZD" (which I pronounce "daz-dee"); however, because DAZD fabrication may allow for shortcuts that are unlike what you would see in Zener fabrication, having a non-Zener name might be more truthful. I also notice that DAZD's are usually drawn as two Zener's, whereas thyrectors are usually drawn sharing a "hat" (which may or may not look like a Zener hat). —TedPavlic (talk) 18:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I am also not sure how it works? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.182.89.34 (talk) 20:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Can you be more specific? If you understand Zener breakdown, then consider two Zener's in series with opposite bias. The one with sufficiently large reverse bias will act like a voltage source at $$V_Z$$ (e.g., 4.3 V). The one in forward bias will act like a voltage source at (around) 0.7 V. Together, they'll act like a 5.0 V voltage source (with a little series resistance to dissipate any disagreement with the surrounding source). The same goes in reverse, but the voltage source is -5.0 V. —TedPavlic (talk) 18:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

References?
Other than specifications for a particular zener diode, are there any references that have been used? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.64.2.77 (talk) 16:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Circuit symbol?
The article says "Note that because it is almost always the reverse breakdown property of the Zener diode which is useful, in circuit schematics the Zener diodes typically point in the opposite direction of traditional diodes – the arrows point in the opposite direction to the current." 1) I cannot find any examples of this 2) The article shows the normal diagram. So either the diagram is wrong, or this statement is wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.218.13.96 (talk) 01:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * In the diagram under "Uses", the current flow is downward, counter to the direction of the arrow. As the article says, a Zener is seldom used with a forward current, but always with a reverse current; the arrow points from the p-type region to the n-type region, as in other diodes.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:07, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * I misread the statement. I took it to be saying that the symbol for a Zener diode would show anode and cathode differently from other diodes.  Thanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.218.13.96 (talk) 02:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

 * I've modified the statement for clarity. Does it help? I've also moved an image from the lead part of the article into the usage section. Now the circuit sits next to a figure showing how positive current flow relates to the circuit symbol (and also shows how the circuit symbol relates to common diode packages). —TedPavlic | (talk) 15:38, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

common voltages
although there are many customised versions (with as little as 0.03V difference, as seen on Digikey), here are the more common voltages (for quick reference): [2.4V, 2.7V, 3.0V,] 3.3V, 3.9V, 4.3V, 4.7V, 5.1V, 5.6V, 6.2V, 6.8V, 7.5V, 8.2V, 9.1V, 10V, 11V, 12V, 13V, 15V, 16V, 18V, 20V, 24V, 27V, 30V, 33V, 36V, 39V, 47V, 51V, 56V, 62V, 68V, 75V, 82V, 91V, 100V, 110V, 150V, 160V, 180V and 200V. Charlieb000 (talk) 00:13, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

A bit more clarity is needed
I recently read this page to find out what a zener diode is and how it works but found this page to be unclear on what is considered a zener diode and what is not, as well as on how a zener diode works and how this differs from other diodes that are not considered zeners. Allow me to explain what confused me:

 * The page seems to intermingle the words "mechanism", "effect", "type", "breakdown", "zener" and "avalanche" without clearly explaining what is what.
 * The first paragraph indicates there are two "mechanisms" or "types":
 * Many diodes described as "zener" diodes rely instead on avalanche breakdown as the mechanism. Both types are used.
 * However, there is no clear mention of two "types" or "mechanisms" in that paragraph. It does mentions the "breakdown voltage" aka "avalanche point" and "avalanche breakdown", but it is not clear what these are and whether they are the "mechanisms" in question.

 * Later on the page, there is mention of the "zener effect" and the "avalanche effect", which may also be the two "mechanisms" or "types" referred to, in which case this should be explained immediately and not that far down the page.
 * The first paragraph says that both "types" are referred to as "zener diodes", but later on there is mention of avalanche diodes as if these are a different thing based on the "other" mechanism. It should be made more clear if these are a sub-type of zeners, or a different thing entirely.

A little reordering of information and consistency in wording might solve a lot of this. The first paragraph should then explain what a zener diode is and, if appropriate, what similar types of diode are not considered zeners and the difference between the two. It should explain what mechanisms are involved and the various terms used to refer to them. Where there are multiple terms for the same thing, this should be explained once and only one of the terms should be used on the rest of the page.

Unfortunately, I was reading this page to find out about zeners, so I am unable to rewrite the page to explain them myself. If somebody can clarify, I might be able to rewrite the page to make it more clear to the uninitialized. — SkyLined (talk) 13:31, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, the avalanche diode uses the same current vs voltage graph as the zener diode even thought the former explains that "Avalanche diodes are optimized for avalanche effect so they exhibit small but significant voltage drop under breakdown conditions, unlike Zener diodes that always maintain a voltage higher than breakdown." - so it seems that the two graphs could not be the same. This only adds to my confusion :( — SkyLined (talk) 13:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Request for Discussion of in electronic articles
Please see the corresponding discussion thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronics. Thanks! • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 23:34, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation
I have gone through the article and made the capitalisation of Zener consistently capitalised. I saw that about a year ago the article was made lower case, but this was not done thoroughly and the article remained inconsistent. It is arguable whether the word has yet entered the lexicon as a common noun—books sources seem fairly divided on this. I found a MoS, Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style which categorically says "Zener" should be capitalised. In the absence of any better authority, I think we should go with that.  Spinning Spark  15:48, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Vacuum Tube voltage references
Neon and Argon bulbs were used as voltage references long before the Zener Diode was invented. It might be useful to add something on these classical parts in the history. --Mccainre (talk) 20:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Electric field strength in Zener diode
The article says about very thin (<1 µm) depletion region and field of value 500kV/m at 5V reverse voltage. Obviously it is wrong: 5V/1µm=5MV/m, 10 times more. And an article [Zener effect] referenced here says about 30 MV/m (Zener breakdown voltage is found to occur at electric field intensity of about 3×10^7 V/m), another 6 times more.

It should also be noted that electric field is not uniform in entire depletion region thickness: only PIN diode can have uniform field in the non-doped 'I' region, and the depletion region must contain the non-doped one plus some margins, which holds electric charges necessary to create the field. Along a line of electric field in a PN junction the field is strongest just on a boundary between P and N regions (assuming flat junction geometry and uniform permittivity); for uniform P and N region doping, the field decreases linearly from PN boundary to boundary between depletion region and each of mobile charge regions. This creates a possibility that the field in the PN boundary is strong enough to create electron-hole pairs due to Zener effect, and these electron and/or holes create more carriers due to avalanche effect, rather than creating carriers due to Zener effect in entire volume of the depletion region.

JerzyTarasiuk (talk) 19:36, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Plagiarism or Copyright Violation
A significant portion of this Wikipedia article and substantially all of this page at | Engineers Edge are verbatim copies of each other, including some illustrations. Wikipedia is not citing the latter, and the latter is claiming copyright, all rights reserved, without attribution to Wikipedia. Who is the rightful copyright holder? 24.76.182.33 (talk) 17:55, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

 * Seems like the website you link to is the ripoff, given that the three images it shares with wikipedia are described as self-made by wikipedia users, dating back to 2006-2008: 1 2 3. (one of the creators) can probably confirm. --Nanite (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

 * and to clarify, three drawings created by three different wikipedia authors. • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 00:28, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

 * The intro of the current Engineers Edge article is very close to text from Wikipedia in 2010 to 2012 era. The wikipedia intro text evolved over many edits to a point where it almost matches the Engineers Edge article. Also, doing a rough comparison of the two current articles results in many groups of identical or similar text too. The EE article smells very fishy! • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 02:17, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

 * EE20180702 - intro for current Engineers Edge article

A zener diode is a unique diode that allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "zener knee voltage" or "zener voltage"

 * WIKI20180702 - intro for current Wikipedia article

A Zener diode is a particular type of diode that, unlike a normal one, allows current to flow not only from its anode to its cathode, but also in the reverse direction, when the Zener voltage is reached.

 * WIKI20100823

 * COMMENT - point where new text was added - breakdown voltage and "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage"

 * WIKI20110707

A Zener diode is a special kind of diode which allows current to flow in the forward direction same as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage."

 * COMPARE EE20180702 vs WIKI20110707, the following text is identical (except * and #):

A Zener diode is a ******* **** ** diode ***** allows current to flow in the forward direction ## ### same ###### as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage."

 * COMMENT - point where ideal diode and other new text was added and text following ideal diode solidifies

 * WIKI20120120

A Zener diode is a special kind of diode which allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage."

 * COMPARE EE20180702 vs WIKI20120120, the following text is identical (except *):

A Zener diode is a ******* **** ** diode ***** allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "Zener knee voltage" or "Zener voltage."

 * WIKI20121204

A Zener diode is a diode which allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "zener knee voltage" or "zener voltage".

 * COMPARE EE20180702 vs WIKI20121204, the following text is identical (except * and #):

A Zener diode is a ###### diode **** allows current to flow in the forward direction in the same manner as an ideal diode, but will also permit it to flow in the reverse direction when the voltage is above a certain value known as the breakdown voltage, "zener knee voltage" or "zener voltage".

History
Who invented it? Someone called Zener? When? --Hugh7 (talk) 05:22, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

 * This information was already in the intro area, but I moved it into a new section. •  Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 05:48, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

diodes are made differently
This sentence is wrong I believe. "The two types of diode are in fact constructed the same way and both effects are present in diodes of this type". The avalanche effect is dominant in lightly doped PN diodes which has fatter depletion regions so there is space for the electrons to really pick up speed. While zener effect occurs in heavily doped PN diodes where the electric field is made stronger in that thin region. reference - harvard — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aditya8795 (talk • contribs) 19:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Inconsistent scale in diagram
The voltage (horizontal) scale of this characteristic curve is inconsistent. On the right side, at a particular image size, +0.65V measures 80px from the vertical axis along the horizontal axis. However, on the left side, -17.1V measures 120px. If the scale were consistent, +0.65V would be only about 5px from the vertical axis on the right side (or -17.1 would be, impractically, 2100px). It's been a few decades since I worked with this stuff, so maybe this is common, but I think it looks deceptive to a general audience. A log scale could be used (and shown with markings on the axis). Better, use a lower zener voltage – say, 3.1V; at 0.025 V/px, +0.65V is 26px on the right, and -3.1V is 124px on the left. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlanM1 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree it's not ideal, and sadly there is no such thing as a two-sided log scale plot. :-) A lower zener voltage and plain linear plot would indeed be ideal. Perhaps we can just plot these formulas: https://www.onsemi.cn/pub/Collateral/AND8250-D.PDF --Nanite (talk) 21:26, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

 * (ec) ✅ I modified the diagram, uploaded as a new file, and will update the article. —[ Alan M 1 (talk) ]— 21:29, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * FWIW, the caption addressed the difference in scale, which I didn't see (or I probably would have just left it alone). Doh! —[  Alan M 1 (talk) ]— 21:34, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Zener diode


text:
Lesley Gore

Lesley Sue Goldstein (May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015), better known with her maternal surname (adopted by her family after her birth) as Lesley Gore, was an American singer and songwriter. At the age of 16, she recorded her first hit song "It's My Party", a US number one in 1963. She followed it up with ten further US Billboard top 40 hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me". Gore said she considered "You Don't Own Me" her signature song.

Gore later worked as an actress and television personality. She composed songs with her brother Michael Gore for the 1980 film Fame, and received an Academy Award nomination for "Out Here On My Own". She hosted several editions of the LGBT-oriented public television show In the Life on American TV in the 2000s.

Early life and education
Gore was born Lesley Sue Goldstein in Brooklyn, New York City, into a middle-class Jewish family. The daughter of Leo Goldstein and Ronny Gore, her family changed their surname to "Gore" soon after her birth. Her father was the owner of Peter Pan, a children's swimwear and underwear manufacturer, and later became a leading brand licensing agent in the apparel industry. She was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey, and attended the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood. She also attended Sarah Lawrence College, graduating with a degree in American literature.

1963–1979: Commercial success
Gore was discovered after her uncle gave Joe Glaser a tape of her singing that he forwarded to Irving Green, president of Mercury Records. Green gave the tape to Quincy Jones for evaluation and Jones, recognizing her talent, became her producer. She was 16 years old. When she recorded her version of "It's My Party" in 1963, she was a junior in high school. It became a number-one, nationwide hit. Gore's version was certified as a Gold record. It also marked the beginning of a time when fans would show up on her front lawn.

"It's My Party" was followed by many other hits for Gore, including the sequel, "Judy's Turn to Cry" (US number five); "She's a Fool" (US number five); the feminist-themed million-selling "You Don't Own Me", which held at number two for three weeks behind the Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand"; "That's the Way Boys Are" (US No. 12); "Maybe I Know" (US No. 14/UK No. 20); "Look of Love" (US No. 27); and "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" (US number 13), which she sang during a bus scene from the 1965 movie, Ski Party. In 1965, she also appeared in the beach party film The Girls on the Beach in which she performed three songs: "Leave Me Alone", "It's Gotta Be You", and "I Don't Want to Be a Loser".

Gore was given first shot at recording "A Groovy Kind of Love" by songwriters Carole Bayer and Toni Wine with a melody borrowed from a sonatina by Muzio Clementi, but Shelby Singleton, a producer for Mercury subsidiary Smash Records, refused to let Gore record a song with the word "groovy" in its lyrics. The Mindbenders went on to record it, and it reached number two on the Billboard charts.

Gore recorded composer Marvin Hamlisch's first hit composition, "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows", on May 21, 1963, while "It's My Party" was climbing the charts. Her record producer from 1963 to 1965 was Quincy Jones. Jones's dentist was Marvin Hamlisch's uncle, and Hamlisch asked his uncle to convey several songs to Jones. "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" was released on the LP Lesley Gore Sings of Mixed-Up Hearts, but did not surface as a single until June 1965. Hamlisch composed three other Gore associated songs: "California Nights", "That's the Way the Ball Bounces" and "One by One". "That's the Way the Ball Bounces" was recorded September 21, 1963, at A&R Studios in New York; it was released as the B-side of "That's the Way Boys Are" and appeared on the LP Boys Boys Boys. "One by One" was an unreleased track recorded on July 31, 1969, in New York and produced by Paul Leka; it first appeared on the Bear Family five-CD anthology of Gore's Mercury work entitled It's My Party (1994).

Gore was one of the featured performers in the T.A.M.I. Show concert film, which was recorded and released in 1964 by American International Pictures, and placed in the National Film Registry in 2006. Gore had one of the longest sets in the film, performing six songs, including "It's My Party", "You Don't Own Me", and "Judy's Turn to Cry".

Gore performed on two consecutive episodes of the Batman television series (January 19 and 25, 1967), in which she guest-starred as Pussycat, one of Catwoman's minions. In the January 19 episode "That Darn Catwoman", she lip-synched to the Bob Crewe-produced "California Nights", and in the January 25 episode "Scat! Darn Catwoman", she lip-synched to "Maybe Now". "California Nights", which Gore recorded for her 1967 album of the same name, returned her to the top twenty of the Hot 100. The single peaked at number 16 in March 1967 (14 weeks on the chart). It was her first top-40 hit since "My Town, My Guy and Me" in late 1965 and her first top-20 since "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows". Gore also performed "It's My Party" and "We Know We're in Love" ten months earlier on the final episode of The Donna Reed Show, which aired on March 19, 1966.

After high school, while continuing to make appearances as a singer, Gore attended Sarah Lawrence College, studying English and American literature. At college, folk music was popularly lauded as "chic", whereas pop music was often derided as "uncool". "Had I been tall with blonde hair, had I been Mary Travers, I would have gotten along fine." She graduated in 1968.

Gore signed a contract with Mercury Records with a five-year term that carried her obligations to the company through the spring of 1968. Her last big hit had been 12 months prior to this time, but Mercury still saw promise in her as an artist and believed that one of her singles would make it, as they had in the past. They offered a one-year extension on the initial contract, and Gore was formally contracted to Mercury for a sixth year. During this time, "He Gives Me Love (La La La)", a single release based on a Eurovision Song Contest winner, rose to number 96 on the Music Business charts, while bubbling under the Hot 100 in Billboard. Mercury took out a full-page ad in the trades to support the single, but its airplay was spotty, becoming a hit in only a few major markets. She was then paired with the successful soul producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell for two singles that took her into the "soul" genre: "I'll Be Standing By" and "Take Good Care (Of My Heart)". These songs did not fit the image Mercury had crafted for her, and the singles were not played. Her contract with Mercury ended after the release of "98.6/Lazy Day" and "Wedding Bell Blues" failed to make headway on the charts.

In 1970, she signed with Crewe Records and was reunited with producer Bob Crewe, who had produced her album California Nights. Her first release under the label, "Why Doesn't Love Make Me Happy", was a moderate hit on the Adult Contemporary chart, but none of her other singles would prove to be successful. She left Crewe Records in 1971 when the label went bankrupt.

In 1972, Gore signed with MoWest Records, a subsidiary of Motown, and in July of that year released her first studio album in five years, Someplace Else Now. All of the songs were either written or co-written by Gore, with collaborators Ellen Weston and her brother Michael. Due to the failure of the album's sole single, "She Said That", along with poor promotion, Someplace Else Now died on the shelf.

1980–2014: As composer
Gore composed songs for the soundtrack of the 1980 film Fame, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for "Out Here on My Own", written with her brother Michael. Michael won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the theme song of the same film. Gore played concerts and appeared on television throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Gore co-wrote a song, "My Secret Love", for the 1996 film Grace of My Heart. The film includes a subplot about a young singer named Kelly Porter, who is based in part on Gore and is played by Bridget Fonda. The character, who is a closeted lesbian, performs "My Secret Love" in the film.

In 2005, Gore recorded Ever Since (her first album of new material since Love Me By Name in 1976), with producer/songwriter Blake Morgan, with the label Engine Company Records. The album received favorable reviews from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and other national press. The album also included a revised version of "You Don't Own Me", about which the New York Daily News wrote: "In Lesley Gore's new version of 'You Don't Own Me'—cut more than 40 years after its initial recording—she lends a pop classic new life." Gore commented: "Without the loud backing track, I could wring more meaning from the lyric". And: "It's a song that takes on new meaning every time you sing it."

Personal life
Beginning in 2003, Gore hosted several editions of the PBS television series In the Life, which focused on LGBTQ+ issues. In a 2005 interview with AfterEllen, she stated she was a lesbian and had been in a relationship with luxury jewelry designer Lois Sasson since 1982. She had known about her attraction to women from the time she was 20 and stated that although the music business was "totally homophobic", she never felt she had to pretend she was straight. "I just kind of lived my life naturally and did what I wanted to do," she said. "I didn't avoid anything, I didn't put it in anybody's face."

Gore had been working on a memoir and a Broadway show based on her life when she died of lung cancer on February 16, 2015, at the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, New York City, at the age of 68. At the time of her death, Gore and Sasson had been together for 33 years.

Her New York Times obituary stated, "with songs like 'It's My Party,' 'Judy's Turn to Cry', and the indelibly defiant 1964 single 'You Don't Own Me' — all recorded before she was 18 — Gore made herself the voice of teenaged girls aggrieved by fickle boyfriends, moving quickly from tearful self-pity to fierce self-assertion."

Awards and recognition
In 1964, "It's My Party" was nominated for a Grammy Award for rock-and-roll recording.

National Public Radio named Lesley Gore Sings of Mixed-Up Hearts, Gore's second album, as forebearer of one of the top 150 albums recorded by women. The album missed the official list (1964–present) because it was released in 1963. "She is a forebearer for her assertion of feminine power in pop, and her validation of a female perspective."

Lesley Gore's papers were donated to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and became accessible to the public in 2022. Catalogued by the library and her partner Lois Sasson, it includes family photos, scrapbook pages, annotated music and lyrics, business files, an unfinished memoir, and sound and video recordings.

Discography

 * I'll Cry If I Want To (1963)
 * Lesley Gore Sings of Mixed-Up Hearts (1963)
 * Boys, Boys, Boys (1964)
 * Girl Talk (1964)
 * My Town, My Guy & Me (1965)
 * Lesley Gore Sings All About Love (1966)
 * Off and Running (1967, canceled)
 * California Nights (1967)
 * Magic Colors (1967, canceled)
 * Someplace Else Now (1972)
 * Love Me By Name (1976)
 * The Canvas Can Do Miracles (1982)
 * Ever Since (2005)
 * Magic Colors: The Lost Album (2011) ''

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

title: Lesley Gore


text:
Aristotle's theory of universals

Aristotle's Theory of Universals is Aristotle's classical solution to the Problem of Universals, sometimes known as the hylomorphic theory of immanent realism. Universals are the characteristics or qualities that ordinary objects or things have in common. They can be identified in the types, properties, or relations observed in the world. For example, imagine there is a bowl of red apples resting on a table. Each apple in that bowl will have many similar qualities, such as their red coloring or "redness". They will share some degree of the quality of "ripeness" depending on their age. They may also be at varying degrees of age, which will affect their color, but they will all share a universal "appleness". These qualities are the universals that the apples hold in common.

The Problem of Universals asks three questions. Do universals exist? If they exist, where do they exist? Also, if they exist, how do we obtain knowledge of them? In Aristotle's view, universals are incorporeal and universal, but only exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things. Aristotle said that a universal is identical in each of its instances. All red things are similar in that there is the same universal, redness, in each thing. There is no Platonic Form of redness, standing apart from all red things; instead, each red thing has a copy of the same property, redness. For the Aristotelian, knowledge of the universals is not obtained from a supernatural source. It is obtained from experience by means of active intellect.

Overview
In Aristotle's view, universals can be instantiated multiple times. He states that one and the same universal, such as applehood, appears in every real apple. A common sense challenge would be to inquire what remains exactly the same in all these different things, since the theory is claiming that something remains the same. Stating that different beautiful things, such as the Pacific Ocean, The Eiffel Tower, or the nighttime sky is beautiful is just to say that each thing is the same (qualitatively) in terms of beauty. Aristotle is talking about a category of being here that is not a thing but a quality. A common defense of Aristotle's realism is therefore that we should not expect universals to behave like ordinary physical objects. To say the same universal, beautiful, occurs simultaneously in all these things is no more strange than saying that each thing is beautiful.

A second issue is whether Aristotelian universals are abstract: if they are, then the theory must deal with how to abstract the concept of redness from one or more red things. Aristotle argued that people form concepts and make generalizations in the manner of a young child, who is just on the verge of grasping a generic concept such as human being. In his view, the child is gathering his or her memories of various encounters with individual humans, searching for the essential similarity that stands out, on reflection, in every instance. Today, it might be said that one mentally extracts from each thing the quality that they all have in common. When the child grasps the concept of a human being, he or she has learnt to ignore the accidental details of each person's past experiences and individual differences, and has paid attention to the relevant quality that they all have in common, namely, humanity. In Aristotle's view, the universal humanity is a natural kind defined by the essential properties that all humans have in common.

title: Aristotle's theory of universals


text:
Panel show

A panel show or panel game is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participate. Celebrity panelists may compete with each other, such as on The News Quiz; facilitate play by non-celebrity contestants, such as on Match Game and Blankety Blank; or do both, such as on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. The genre can be traced to 1938, when Information Please debuted on U.S. radio. The earliest known television panel show is Play the Game, a charades show in 1946. The modern trend of comedy panel shows can find early roots with Stop Me If You've Heard This One in 1939 and Can You Top This? in 1940. While panel shows were more popular in the past in the U.S., they are still very common in the United Kingdom.

Format

While many early panel shows stuck to the traditional quiz show format in which celebrities tried to get the right answers and win, the primary goal of modern panel shows is to entertain the audience with comedy, with the game or quiz structure providing subjects for the comedians to joke about. Panel shows also feature comedic banter, friendly ribbing and camaraderie among the panelists. Scoring is often deemphasised in panel shows. The American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? acknowledged this with the introduction, "Welcome to Whose Line Is It Anyway, the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter." QI's opaque scoring system is purportedly a mystery even to its creator, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue dispenses with points altogether, and many other shows mention points only occasionally or at the end, instead of continuously displaying scores in front of players.

Panel shows can have any number of themes. Many are topical and satirical, such as Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Have I Got News for You, The News Quiz and Mock the Week. 8 Out of 10 Cats is based on opinion polling; What's My Line? is about occupations; Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Face the Music center on music; A League of Their Own, A Question of Sport and They Think It's All Over are sports-themed; Was It Something I Said?, Quote... Unquote and Who Said That? feature quotations; My Word! involves wordplay; I've Got a Secret is about secrets; To Tell the Truth and Would I Lie to You? deal with lies; and It Pays to Be Ignorant and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue are parodies.

Some panel shows are variations of classic parlor games. Twenty Questions is based on the parlor game of the same name, Give Us a Clue is modelled after charades, and Call My Bluff and Balderdash are based on fictionary.

Frequently, a panel show features recurring panelists or permanent team captains, and some panelists appear on multiple panel shows. Most shows are recorded before a studio audience.

United States
The first known example of a panel show in the world is the radio program Information Please, which debuted on 17 May 1938 on the NBC Blue Network. An evolution of the quiz show format, Information Please added the key element of a panel of celebrities, largely writers and intellectuals, but also actors and politicians. Listeners would mail in questions, winning prizes for stumping the panel.

U.S. panel shows transferred to television early in the medium's history, with the first known example being Play the Game, a charades show that aired on DuMont and ABC beginning in 1946. The celebrity charades concept has been replicated numerous times since then. The most popular adaptation was Pantomime Quiz, airing from 1947 to 1959, and having runs on each of the four television networks operating at the time. Other charades shows have included Stump the Stars; Movietown, RSVP; Celebrity Charades; Showoffs and Body Language.

TV panel shows saw their peak of popularity in the 1950s and '60s, when CBS ran the three longest-running panel shows in prime time: What's My Line?, I've Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth. At times, they were among the top ten shows on U.S. television, and they continue to experience occasional revivals. All three Goodson-Todman primetime shows were cancelled by CBS in 1967 amid ratings declines and trouble attracting younger viewers, although the programs were consistently profitable by being among the cheapest television shows to produce. Their cancellations came as attention to demographics and a focus on younger viewers gained currency among advertisers. The departures of these three New York–based shows were also part of a mass migration of television production to Los Angeles, leaving only one primetime show produced on the East Coast.

Later years saw several successes in the format, with Match Game; The Hollywood Squares;   Win, Lose or Draw; Celebrity Sweepstakes; Password and Pyramid primarily running in the daytime and airing in their greatest numbers during the '70s and '80s. These panel shows marked a shift in the format: whereas CBS' primetime shows had panelists guessing secrets about the guests, these new shows largely featured civilian contestants playing games with celebrity partners, or competing to predict or evaluate the panelists' responses to a prompt or question. Later, Nickelodeon premiered the youth-oriented panel game Figure it Out in 1997, the U.S. version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? had a primetime run from 1998 to 2004 on ABC and a revival in 2013 by The CW, while Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! has become a popular weekend show on NPR since 1998.

In 2015, ABC announced primetime revivals for Match Game, which ran from 2016 until 2021, and To Tell the Truth, which ran from 2016 to 2022. From 2013 to 2017, Comedy Central aired @midnight, an internet culture and social media-themed panel game which used a more quiz show-styled presentation—with the celebrity guests buzzing in to earn points for punchlines and responses in various segments. In 2024, a reboot of the show, now titled After Midnight and hosted by Taylor Tomlinson, premiered on CBS.

The streaming service Dropout has received attention for many of its shows' similarities to panel shows, notably Game Changer.

United Kingdom
Panel shows are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they have found continued success since the BBC adapted its first radio panel shows from classic parlor games. Perhaps the earliest UK panel show is the BBC radio adaptation of Twenty Questions, which debuted on 28 February 1947. Panel shows can have decades-long runs in the UK: Twenty Questions lasted until 1976, while Just a Minute has remained on the air, and had Nicholas Parsons as host from 1967 until 2019. Other long-running games on radio include I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue since 1972, The News Quiz since 1977, My Word! from 1956 to 1988, and My Music from 1967 to 1994.

The British version of What's My Line? may have been the first television panel show in the UK, with an original run from 1951 to 1963 and several remakes in later years. The word game Call My Bluff aired from 1965 to 2005, the charades show Give Us a Clue ran from 1979 to 1992, and the improv game Whose Line Is It Anyway? aired from 1988 to 1998. Current British panel shows have become showcases for the nation's top stand-up and improv comedians, as well as career-making opportunities for new comedians. Regular comics on panel shows often go on to star in sitcoms and other TV shows.

The modern British panel show format of TV comedy quizzes started with Have I Got News for You, a loose adaptation of BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz. HIGNFY, as the show is sometimes known, began airing in 1990, and has been the most-viewed show of the night, regularly attracting as much as a 20% audience share. The show's success grew after its transfer from BBC Two to the flagship BBC One in 2000.

After HIGNFY's success, panel shows proliferated on British TV. Notable example include QI on various BBC channels since 2003, Mock the Week on BBC Two from 2005 to 2022, 8 Out of 10 Cats on Channel 4 since 2005, Would I Lie to You? on BBC One since 2007, and the annual special, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year on Channel 4 since 2004.

On the radio, The News Quiz, Just a Minute, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and The Unbelievable Truth are among the most popular and long-running panel shows, all of which air on BBC Radio 4.

British comedy panel shows feature mainly male guests. A 2016 study that analysed 4,700 episodes from 1967 to 2016 found that 1,488 of them had an all-male lineup, and only one an all-female cast. The proportion of women rose from 3% in 1989 to 31% in 2016.

Australia
Australian panel shows include advertising-focused The Gruen Transfer and its various spinoffs on ABC1 since 2008, the music quiz Spicks and Specks on ABC1 from 2005 to 2011 and again since 2014, news quiz Have You Been Paying Attention? on Network Ten since 2013, and tabloid quiz Dirty Laundry Live on ABC1 and ABC2 since 2013. News quiz Good News Week aired on ABC1 from 1996 to 1998 and on Network Ten from 1999-2000 and again from 2008 to 2012, sports quiz A League of Their Own aired on Network Ten in 2013, and pop culture quiz Tractor Monkeys aired on ABC1 in 2013.

New Zealand
Currently running New Zealand panel shows include the news quiz 7 Days since 2009, Have You Been Paying Attention? New Zealand since 2019, Taskmaster New Zealand since 2020, and Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee since 2023.

Canada
CBC Radio One currently broadcasts two long-running radio panel shows: The Debaters, which debuted in 2006, and Because News, which debuted in 2015.

In 2022, Noovo began broadcasting Le maître du jeu, a local French language adaptation of Taskmaster.

Former shows
In 2014, Super Channel ordered 36 episodes of a panel show called Too Much Information. A revival of Match Game aired on The Comedy Network from 2012 to 2014, the news quiz Front Page Challenge aired on CBC Television from 1957 to 1995, and the charades show Party Game aired in syndication from 1970 to 1981.

France
French panel shows include Vendredi tout est permis ("Friday, Everything Goes"), an improv game on TF1 since 2011. Earlier panel shows include Le Francophonissime, a linguistic game on ORTF and TF1 from 1969 to 1981; L'Académie des neuf ("The Academy of Nine"), based on Hollywood Squares on Antenne 2 from 1982 to 1987; Cluedo, based on the board game Cluedo/Clue on France 3 from 1994 to 1995; Burger Quiz on Canal + from 2001 to 2002; Incroyables Expériences ("Incredible Experiences"), about scientific experiments on France 2 and France 3 from 2008 to 2012; and Canapé quiz ("Sofa Quiz"), an adaptation of Hollywood Game Night on TMC in 2014.

Germany
German panel shows include 7 Tage, 7 Köpfe ("7 Days, 7 Heads"), Genial daneben ("Idiot Savant"), Kopfball ("Headball"), Die Montagsmaler ("Pictionary"), Noch Besserwissen ("Even Better Knowledge"), Pssst … (similar to I've Got A Secret), Die Pyramide (the German version of Pyramid), Quizfire, Sag die Wahrheit ("Tell the Truth", the German version of To Tell the Truth), Typisch Frau – Typisch Mann ("Typical Woman – Typical Man"), Was bin ich? ("What am I?", the German version of What's My Line?) and Was denkt Deutschland? ("What Does Germany Think?").

Japan
Early Japanese panel shows include 話の泉 ("Source of the Story"), based on Information Please on NHK Radio 1 from 1946 to 1964; 二十の扉 ("Twenty Doors"), based on Twenty Questions on NHK Radio 1 from 1947 to 1960; ジェスチャー ("Gestures"), a charades show on NHK General TV from 1953 to 1968; and 私の秘密 ("My Secret"), based on I've Got a Secret on NHK General TV from 1956 to 1967.

Currently, a wide variety of Japanese variety shows are popular, and many of them feature owarai comedians, Japanese idols, and other celebrities playing games.

Some games involve bizarre physical stunts. Brain Wall, adapted in English-speaking countries as Hole in the Wall, has comedians attempt to jump through oddly shaped holes in moving walls without falling into water, DERO and its successor TORE have celebrities solve mental and physical challenges to escape traps and hazards or presumably die trying, VS Arashi has a team of celebrities compete against J-pop group Arashi and their Plus One guest(s) in physical games, Nep League has various celebrity teams competing in various quizzes that test their combined brainpower in the fields of Japanese, English, General Knowledge, Etc., and AKBingo! similarly features members of pop group AKB48 and others competing in physical challenges and quizzes.

Other shows include 日本語探Qバラエティ クイズ!それマジ!?ニッポン ("Is it really!?"), a celebrity word game; くりぃむクイズ ミラクル9 ("Miracle 9"), a show somewhat similar to Hollywood Squares; Numer0n, a celebrity numbers game; and オールスター感謝祭 ("All Star Thanksgiving"), a semi-annual celebrity quiz. There are many other games featuring celebrities within Japan's variety genre.

Prime Minister Ōta is a show featuring many comedians and politicians debating fictional proposals in a sort of game show version of a legislative chamber.

Examples

 * Front Page Challenge
 * Good News Week
 * Hollywood Game Night
 * Hollywood Squares
 * It's News to Me
 * I've Got a Secret
 * Match Game
 * Password
 * Says You!
 * Spicks and Specks
 * The Debaters
 * The Marriage Ref
 * To Tell the Truth
 * Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!
 * What's My Line?

title: Panel show


text:
Developer

Developer may refer to:

Computers

 * Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications
 * Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games
 * Web developer, a programmer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications

Other uses

 * Developer (album), the fifth album by indie rock band Silkworm
 * Photographic developer, chemicals that convert the latent image to a visible image
 * In real estate development, one who builds on land or alters the use of an existing building for some new purpose

title: Developer


text:
Talk:Municipalities of Belgium

[Untitled]
Is there a difference between municipalities and cities in this context? If so, the difference should be explained. If not, it should be moved to List of cities in Belgium, which is the standard. Tokerboy

 * It is different. A municipality is a subdivision of a province, while a city, I think, is a large built-up area. - Patrick 00:49 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure I understand, but ok... I'll leave it here under the assumption that a completely different list (including Brussels and whatnot) will eventually be placed at List of cities in Belgium. (not saying you should do it, Patrick, just that it wouldn't be a non sequitur to have both articles in existence) Tokerboy

 * To be more precise, a municipality is the smallest administrative unit in Belgium. It is generally made up of a city and a few towns, or solely of a number of towns. A large built-up area is mostly, but not necessarily, a city. For example: the municipality of Brussels is made up of the city of Brussels and the towns of Haren, Laken and Neder-over-Heembeek. D.D. 09:15 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * 1. A city, at least in the Lower Countries, is a town that once obtained city rights, it is a rather historical concept but it would still be considered offensive if a city would be called a town. Some cities are very small (e.g. Damme) and today of little importance (besides attracting tourists to gastronomical restaurants), some towns are quite large agglomerations which theoretically can be very important - though a sense of tradition might have influenced decisions about official institutions to remain or novel institutions to become connected to a city - or even to give modern city rights to the large town, such as Genk in... 2000. A municipality is indeed an administrative unit, it does not need to contain any city, or even - as far as one may consider a town as larger than a village - any town.
 * 2. The example of the municipality of Brussels versus the city of Brussels may be rather unfortunately chosen: The City of Brussels is now regularly used as identical to the municipality (an expansion of a once municipal city to include some minor towns should not cause the City Hall to loose its title) ; moreover, the Belgian Constitution mentions the city of Brussels as its capital, one understands this as referring to the whole Brussels Capital Region - 19 municipalies - based on the small character c in city, a capitalized C would than have indicated the name of the single municipality... (see also City of Brussels) User:213.224.87.185 2006-05-23

Legally speaking there is no distinction in Belgium between a commune, a town, a municipallity, a city or whatever you may want to call it. As stated before: 'City' is an honorary title. There is one criterium though: If 'a place' can prove, with historic documents, that it is at least a thousand (1000) years old then it is granted the 'title' of city. Much debate, however, has gone into the question wheter or not it has to be continually habited during that 1000 year period. Many places fell into desolation during the dark ages or the late middle-ages (Plague). Example: Tongeren (Tongrorum in Latin sources) was an important centre during Roman times, but did it exist a.d. 1000?81.246.156.148

Another example: In 1964 Ostend was granted the title of 'City' (It is the ministry of the interior, like the 'Home-office' in G.B., who grants those titles). Historical documents showed that in a.d. 964 the place had been sacked (A late exploit of the Vikings). But then: No written documents about Ostend anymore - for more than a century long; so? 81.246.156.148 00:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Merger issues
On one of the other belgium articles, (Breendonk), an editor wants to mention that the mergers of 19778-83 were not without significant opposition; however there does not seem to be a cite available other than this editor's WP:OR and own experience. Can anyone who is working on this article provide any input to this question, perhaps adddress it on the appropriate section in this article?Bridesmill 02:09, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Please be sure to make the difference between the general feeling in Belgium about the mergers, and anyting specific for Breendonk. I know (OR) that many of the mergers were disputed, but that doesn't mean that that was the case in all villages, and even less that it was a general feeling (it could e.g. have been a vocal minority protesting and thus getting media attention). (For the record: I'm involved in the Breendonk dispute, as the main editor that wants to remove the mention) Fram 19:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Standardization of the lists of municipalities
There is a discussion about an eventual standardization of all the lists of municipalities. Please join here and express your opinions.--Húsönd 19:46, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Move
Shouldn't this page be moved to Municipalities of provinces of regions of Belgium ?--83.182.197.215 16:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Is this my first sign of clearvoyance? It does not happen very often that I give an answer ('No') hours before a question is put. See my comment of 15 Oct2006 12:46-14:57 (UTC) in a section of a talk page on provinces. (Copy of my reply on your identical question on that talk page). — SomeHuman 15 Oct2006 17:24 (UTC)

Cities and ... municipalities?
In Belgium, we don't have municipalities, it is french-republican-oriented. We do have communes, like Luxemburg.

For the city, it is simple : it is just a honorific status given to some communes. This page I wrote should be a little explanation : City status in Belgium.

Cheers, David Descamps 09:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the term commune also comes from the French: the concept has been defined during the French occupation of Belgium (1792-1815), when also the provinces were defined as departments. In Belgium, the term municipality has no official meaning either in French of Dutch. All municipalities are communes (called commune in French, gemeente in Dutch), with some having the title of city. I suppose the word municipality in this article is used as translation for commune. Otherwise, this word could be used as well. LHOON 09:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Municipalité is typically republican, it has also in France another meaning than commune (the legislative power of the commune). We do not have municipalities in Belgium. The appropriate name is Commune. The name is from the Middle-Ages, for example the Charter of Tournai given to the city by the French king Philippe-Auguste said : «Si quelqu'un occit un homme de la commune de Tournay, à l'intérieur ouen dehors de la cité, s'il est pris, qu'il perde le chef...» Indeed the actual concept of the commune, as a subdivision of the territory, is from the french occupation but the name itself is not republican. David Descamps 13:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Neither confound languages, nor their very different connotations of (loan)words. This is the English-language Wikipedia, not the one in the French language; your described connotations are actually of 'municipalité' and exist purely in French, and I would support your changing to the normal French term 'commune' if such would be(come) needed on the French Wikipedia, but such changes absolutely need reverting on the English Wikipedia as this language has the very neutral and precise 'municipality' versus a highly ambiguous and certainly not more neutral 'commune'. We cannot and mustnot fight the language. David please, undo your changes. Understand, as a Belgian citizen, I really hate the English usage of the term 'Dutch' for the language, as if native speakers would be Dutch, which means belonging to the Dutch people - but I cannot start changing it towards 'Netherlandic'. (In Dutch, this language is Nederlands which term originates from de Nederlanden, the historic Netherlands of which my home city once was the capital, whereas the people of current Nederland are Nederlanders.) Countries or regions where the French language is natively spoken and as such use commune, should between parenthesis mention that French term and not municipalité as French in the relevant articles. — SomeHuman 1 Jan2007 16:23 (UTC)

 * Sure, I will revert my changes. I don't want to be in confrontation, it is just I thought the term commune was recognized enough in the English language. I found it in the "Oxford American Dictionaries" as the "smallest territorial division for administrative purposes". David Descamps 16:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks David. Before reading your reply, I had just prepared this as well, perhaps it's still also useful for other readers :
 * The other articles you named on my talk page as examples — Communes of France, Communes of Luxembourg, Comune (in Italy), Medieval commune — can be either correct like possibly in Medieval commune and Communes of France as far as the term 'commune' is stated to actually have a clearly distinctive meaning [for simplicity, I will here neither deny, nor confirm a sufficiently essential distinction from the English definition of municipality; nor judge whether that distinction is properly brought forward in the articles], or else blurred by the same connotations as many of its editors natively speak a romance language just like you do. Certainly the definition of 'municipality' matches the French & Dutch terms 'commune' & 'gemeente' in all three regions of Belgium. For this administrative subdivision, I say commune while speaking French but in English I say municipality and in Thai tambon or sometimes amphoe because the latter, rather a district (not like a sub-municipal entity of Antwerp but much as a Belgian electoral and administrative arrondissement though the lowest Thai judicial level is found in the provicial capital or changwat) as well as its capital, has tasks that we consider municipal (more so until a few years ago), but also a tambon has locally elected officials and council with certain municipal tasks — all regardless whether it is located in Belgium, in France, in Scotland, or in Thailand. Nevertheless, articles mentioning the Thai subdivisions should refer to 'amphoe' and 'tambon' precisely because there is an essential distinction from the English concept of a 'municipality'.
 * You're quite right about the term 'commune' being recognized in English, and commonly used as well; it's just not encyclopaedically precise & unambiguous. You can certainly speak about communes, this will be the more obvious as only the pronunciation varies from your own language - and in practical usage most often precise enough. But in everyday English, most people do not often use terms like 'administrative subdivisions' of which one level should best be called the 'municipality'.
 * You might be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Belgium as well.
 * Best regards and best wishes for this new year. — SomeHuman 1 Jan2007 17:48-23:20 (UTC)

Geography
004 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.112.117.176 (talk) 08:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Municipalities of Belgium


text:
Talk:Function word

.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:800F:4CAB:7E04:5D42:E5BB:FDC8 (talk) 19:40, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

(Title casing)
How can the header be changed to "Function word"?Dieter Simon 00:35 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Done. :-) (see "how to move a page" in the FAQ) -- Tarquin 10:11 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Many thanks, Tarquin. Have perused and "digested" the article. --Dieter Simon 23:26 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

(Title suitability)
Why does Content word redirect here, Particularly considering the first paragraph, stating content word and function word to be opposites? Surely there is more to the definition of content words than simply "not a function word" PRB 11:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * I added a bit more detail; there's not much more to say. A separate "content word" page would be little more than a dictionary definition.  Maybe the page should be renamed "function word and content word" Joestynes 03:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Conjuctions & inflection)
Changed "Conjunction - uninflected" to "Conjunction - uninflected in English", as conjunctions are inflected in Classical Arabic.88.212.123.106 17:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Using nonsense syllables as examples for content words
Editor Tangthm has used an interesting method of showing the difference between function words and content words, using nonsense syllable words to show up the various parts that constitute a sentence. There is, however, one proviso I have to make, namely that of this being an encyclopaedia for readers who want to find out what function/content words are, but might find the method somewhat confusing without at least some introductory definition. You are not entering a discourse with a like-minded peer group of linguists but people who might not have heard of the various specialised terms used in this article, after all that is why they are consulting Wikipedia in first place. I have entered some clues as to what the intention of the examples were. Dieter Simon (talk) 00:25, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The nonsense words give a fantastic explanation of what function words are. The meaning is quite clear when comparing the two sentences and then reading the following paragraph.
 * The problem is that they may constitute original research. However, I want them to stay so badly that I'm not going to remove them. If someone can find a source that uses this type of explanation, that would be the best solution. TWCarlson (talk) 13:25, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem I have with the example is that sentence #1 is supposed to be more intelligible than sentence #2. For me, that's not even close to being true. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 06:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * They're not even sentences. Sentences are composed of (phrases, which are composed of) words. Collocations of nonsense syllables are not words, so while the given strings of characters may bear some resemblance to sentences, they are not sentences at all.--IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 23:18, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

 * Yep, it's a good explanation. Yep, it was first created by User:Tangthm with a simple, inline example on 18:20, 6 October 2010 and modified multiple times later that day until it reached nearly its current form.  Yep, it can hardly be clearer that this is original research.  So sadly, it has to go. (It should not have been allowed to remain for four years). If the example is that good, see if you can forward it to a linguist (try Linguistlist) or grammarian and get it published, then you can put it back in, and reference the published source.  If not, well, it's very clear what policies on original research are, and we have to uphold them. Mathglot (talk) 00:22, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Need to overhaul the whole article?
"Each function word ... may indicate the speaker's mental model as to what is being said." Gobbledygook to me, I'm afraid; could someone who understands the point please reword that sentence? The article's lack of adequate references is both chronic and concerning. Nothing gives ammunition to Wikipedia's critics as much as a dearth of verifiable sources, especially regarding academic material. The style is below par in parts, but rash overhauling of most or all of an article will lead to a spate of reverting by previous editors with a proprietorial bent unless the Talk discussion has adequately paved the way. Nevertheless, an authentic 'encyclopaedic style' imposed by a suitably competent editor, with quoted sources, will be necessary sooner or later if the cautionary flags at the top of the article are finally to go. Humboles (talk) 14:20, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Lexical words
Lexical words are the words that possess semantic meaning of the sentence in which they occur. Ex: mouse, traffic light,etc. 49.244.197.70 (talk) 17:00, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Function word


text:
Red Lady of Paviland

The Red "Lady" of Paviland ("Dynes" Goch Pafiland) is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton dyed in red ochre and buried in Wales 33,000 BP (approximately 31,000 BCE). The bones were discovered in 1823 by William Buckland in an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave (Paviland cave) which is a limestone cave between Port Eynon and Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea in south Wales. Buckland believed the skeleton was a Roman era female. Later, William Solace examined Goat's Cave Paviland in 1912. There, Solace found flint arrow heads and tools and correctly concluded that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer or warrior during the last Ice Age.

Goat's Hole was occupied throughout prehistory. Artefacts are predominantly Aurignacian, but also include examples from the earlier Mousterian, and later Gravettian and Creswellian periods. The site is the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe.

There have been calls to return the red skeleton of Paviland to Wales where it was discovered and also specifically to Swansea.

Discovery
In 1822 Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and found "bones of elephants" on 27 December 1822. William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at the location site, Goat's Hole. Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Remains or relics of the Flood), Buckland stated: "I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle [ ochre ] ... which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12 mm] around the surface of the bones ... Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods ... Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones"

Buckland's treatise misjudged both its age and sex. He believed that human remains could not be older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date to the Roman era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female largely because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth.

Later findings
William Solace made an expedition to Goat's Cave Paviland in 1912. There, Solace found flint arrow heads and tools and correctly concluded that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer or warrior during the last Ice Age. Over the last 100 years the date estimated by Solace has been shifted from the Mesolithic period (4-10,000 BCE) to the Palaeolithic era (35,000/10,000 BCE) of the last Ice Age. However, before radiocarbon dating was invented in the 1950s, there was no existing scientific method for the determination of the age of any prehistoric remains.

In the 1960s, Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination of 18,460 ± 340 BP. Results published in 1989 and 1995 suggest that the individual from the cave lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815), during the later periods of the Upper Paleolithic. A 2007 examination by Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggested a dating of 29,000 years ago. A recalibration of the results in 2009 suggest an age of 33,000 years.

Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 110 km (70 miles) inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago, it was thought the "Red Lady" lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period in the British Isles, called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present-day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, −20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived during a warmer period.

Bone protein analysis indicates that he lived on a diet of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomadic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial.

When the skeleton was discovered, Wales lacked a museum to house it, so it was moved to Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. The bones are currently on display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In December 2007, it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff. Subsequent excavations yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum and the National Museum in Cardiff.

Evidence of earliest modern humans
Analysis of the evidence from the two excavations at Long Hole Cave on the Gower Peninsula, including sediment and pollen as well as the lithic evidence, has identified Long Hole as an Aurignacian site contemporary with and related to the site at Paviland, evidence of the first modern humans in Britain.

Proposed return to Wales
The Red Lady of Paviland (which is actually a man) was discovered in 1823 by William Buckland a geology professor at Oxford University, and it was quickly transported to Oxford thereafter (some other artefacts were later repatriated). This prompted a two-century campaign for it to be repatriated.

In January 2023, the artefact was nicknamed the Welsh Elgin Marbles, after another artefact with calls for repatriation from the British Museum to Greece. The Red Lady is currently on display in the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History, and is described to be "well cared for". It has been stated by academics at Cardiff University, that if it were to return, it would enhance Wales's national collection and draw attention to its archaeology and caves.

General

 * Genetic history of the British Isles
 * Geology of the United Kingdom
 * List of human evolution fossils
 * List of prehistoric structures in Great Britain
 * Prehistoric Britain

title: Red Lady of Paviland


text:
Talk:Ford Model T

Price and production
Is there a reason why the yearly chart for this section has several years out of sequence? Just one example, 1915 comes after 1917. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 01:50, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

 * It's sorted correctly for me. If you look at the top of each column there is a set of up/down arrows to sort that column into ascending/descending order. I think you clicked on 'Current equivalent Cost' without realising it.  Stepho  talk 10:51, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Contradiction regarding brakes?
Between the sections about the wheels and axle and the transmission, one section states that there are no brakes in the wheels and the other states that there are parking brakes integrated into the wheel hubs. I'm confused. --TheStudent646 (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

 * It's worded badly but it is trying to say that there is a service brake (used during normal driving) on the back of the transmission and a much weaker parking brake (used only to stop the parked car rolling away) on the rear wheel hubs.  Stepho  talk 21:09, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Tin Lizzy
I know this was a nick-name for this car, but it's not supported by either of two citations here --

The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the "tin Lizzie," "leaping Lena," "jitney" or "flivver") is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927.[10][11]

 * I added two refs. for these. I don't think they're particularly high quality but they're better than what was there previously (nothing).  I couldn't source any reference to the Model T being called a "jitney" - where I am from jitney is synonymous with an illegal taxi. Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 06:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Portland Oregon assembly plant
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2018/12/13/the-houses-that-t-built-and-that-built-the-t-tracking-down-the-assembly-plants-of-fords-first-distributed-production-effort

I can add this, but should this section be alphabetized? Fotoguzzi (talk) 07:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Is this covered by List of Ford factories? Might be good as a reference there.  Stepho  talk 09:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Having a problem understanding your question. This link mentions four or five early remote assembly buildings, the one in Portland still stands.Fotoguzzi (talk) 14:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems that your reference is more to do with Ford factories rather than the Model T. So it might be better to use it at List of Ford factories, which also includes defunct factories.  Stepho  talk 21:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Ford Model T


text:
Cantor (surname)

Cantor is an English surname. One possible derivation is from the Middle English word gaunter, 'glover'. Alternatively, it may derive from cantere, 'one who sings', possibly related to the Latin base of cant or both sharing a Proto-Indo-European root with *kan-, both meaning 'song' or 'to sing'. It may also refer to the Anglo-Norman chantour or the Old French chantroir meaning 'enchanter' or 'magician' or cantor meaning 'leader of a choir', possibly also from the Latin precentor.

Notable people with the surname include:

 * Andrés Cantor (born 1962), Spanish-language soccer announcer
 * Arthur Cantor (1920–2001), American theatrical producer
 * Aviva Cantor (born 1940), American journalist, lecturer and author
 * B. Gerald Cantor (1916–1996), American businessman
 * Cantor Fitzgerald, financial services firm founded by him
 * Brett Cantor (1967–1993), American record executive and nightclub owner
 * Brian Cantor (born 1948), Vice-Chancellor of the University of York, UK
 * Charles Cantor (born 1942), American molecular geneticist
 * David Cantor (born 1954), American actor and singer
 * Eddie Cantor (1892–1964), American comedian, singer, actor, songwriter
 * Eric Cantor (born 1963), American politician
 * Geoffrey Cantor (born 1943), professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds
 * Georg Cantor (1845–1918), German mathematician, founder of set theory
 * Jacob A. Cantor (1854–1921), New York politician
 * James Cantor (born 1966), American-Canadian clinical psychologist specializing in sexology
 * Jay Cantor (born 1948), American novelist and essayist
 * Leo Cantor (1919–1995), American NFL football player
 * Liz Cantor (born 1982), Australian television presenter
 * Max Cantor (1959–1991), American journalist and actor
 * Mircea Cantor (born 1977), Romanian visual artist
 * Moritz Cantor (1829–1920), German historian of mathematics
 * Nancy Cantor (born 1952), Chancellor and President of Syracuse University
 * Noah Cantor (born 1971), Canadian football player
 * Norman Cantor (1929–2004), Canadian medievalist
 * Peter Cantor (died 1197), French Roman Catholic theologian
 * Paul Cantor (1945–2022), American literary critic
 * Paul Cantor (Canadian lawyer) (1942-2018), Canadian lawyer
 * Rob Cantor (born 1983), American singer-songwriter
 * Steven Cantor, American film/television director
 * Theodore Edward Cantor (1809–1860), Danish biologist
 * Tim Cantor (born 1969), American surrealism artist and writer
 * Wulfstan the Cantor (c.960 – early 11th century), Anglo-Saxon monk

title: Cantor (surname)