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Wiktionary:Tea room/2014/December

spelling hepful/hepfull
I find the differences between American and English spelling confusing; looking up the word "helpful(l?"), I find that the spelling "helpfull" to be an archaic form. Does that mean it is no longer English English? How about all the countless other words ending in -ll or -l? Any answers appreciated to help clear up this matter for once and for all for me.
 * Helpfull has been much less common than helpful at least since 1700. The one-'L' spelling of words compounded from full seems to apply to all such words that are in common use, careful. See Category:English words suffixed with -ful. Unfortunately nobody has created a comparable category for English words ending in full, but looking at a few cases should confirm that double-'L' spellings are archaic and would be considered non-standard, though they would be understood. DCDuring TALK 16:27, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you're getting mixed up with verb forms like traveling (US) vs. travelling (UK). In the case of the -ful suffix, it's spelled the same in both regions. Equinox ◑ 21:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, travelling, traveller, cancelling, canceller etc. is used in New England as well. Encarta makes note of such too. If I could find anything aside from Encarta supporting what I already know about that, I would have it added to Wikitionary, but wellawoe, I cannot at the moment. Tharthan (talk) 12:06, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

higher than a kite
I was gonna make this as a comparative form of high as a kite. What do you reckon? Maybe an alternative form? --Type56op9 (talk) 13:38, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Alternative form indeed, comparisons do not grade (because what would be the superlative?). If this is attested, at least. — Keφr 14:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * the highest kite in the world? --Type56op9 (talk) 10:20, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

head covering
This entry needs a better definition. Does "head covering" refer to anything which covers the head, from a motorcyclist's helmet to a Jewish kippah, or is the meaning more limited? A Google search for pictures of "head covering" would seem to indicate that the term chiefly refers to some sort of scarf or other textile worn by women to cover their hair. Then, on the other hand, we define "hat" as "covering for the head, often in the approximate form of a cone or a cylinder closed at its top end" and "helmet" as "protective head covering". Why is headgear not mentioned as synonym? Confusing, to say the least. --Hekaheka (talk) 19:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If this is not merely an SoP term, then it must be defined better. I have heard it used as you say to refer to "scarf or other textile worn by women to cover their hair", usually in a place where custom requires that a woman not be bare-headed, such as places of worship in certain religions, where usually men are supposed to doff their hats. It seems to be explicitly intended to allow wide latitude in how one conforms to the stricture against female bare-headedness. DCDuring TALK 22:10, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For religious use, see . --194.100.213.249 14:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

tried to enter a new entry for shabka but marked as spam?
Hi,

I tried to create a new entry but it got marked as spam. Seems it was something to do with  although that seemed fine.

The entry was for shabka and is below - any help appreciated.

Sarasincom (talk) 05:47, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

 * There are several fatal problems here: first of all, the spelling shabka is only for the English word (note that I used lowercase)- the stuff about Arabic usage would go at the spelling in Arabic script. After searching Google Books a bit, it looks to me like only your second section applies to English. I went ahead and created an entry based on it. Secondly, we don't use references like Wikipedia does- all of your inline citations and links are unnecessary. Third, this is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia- you're supposed to define things, not explain them. If you take more than one or two lines per definition, you're doing something wrong. Another problem is that we don't have Wikipedia's  template- our version is for a completely different purpose.

 * To sum it up: you were trying to create a Wikipedia encyclopedia article instead of a Wiktionary dictionary entry, and you were trying to cover both Arabic and English in one place. If I had seen your version as a new entry, I probably would have deleted it as "No usable content given", since it would have taken more work to figure out which part of your lengthy dissertation could be converted to a definition of an English word than it would to just delete it and start over from scratch. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Noun
Shabka is the common and widely accepted English transliteration of an Arabic word شبكة that translates as net, web, network or ring. While the precise origins of the word Shabka are not easily pinpointed, indications are that it came from the area of Egypt/Sahara. Usage varies across the Middle East and North Africa, but all meanings stem from a common root: net, web, ring. It is used, for example, to denote netting embroidery in North Africa and the Gulf; communications networks, human and electronic; and engagement rings across the Middle East in general, the net association being related to traditional designs of these rings that included a section of netting.
 * steep ravines running in all directions which give it the typical aspect which the Saharans call shabka (net)
 * 1) *1938, E.J. Brill, E.J. Brill's First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913-1936, Luzac & Co Netherlands

These are the most common uses of shabka
 * 1 In the Sahara and North Africa it is used to describe a complex network of overground and underground ravines and waterways.
 * 2 Across much of the Middle East at large it is used to describe the ‘intertwining/tying’ of a couple together through an engagement ring that was traditionally a ring with a golden net. This is a highly contentious issue in many places as this ‘engagement ring’ is prohibitively expensive for many people.
 * 3 In Sumero-Babylonian mythology it is attached to the Annunaki to mean a spatial web or net of everything past, present and future and multiple dimensions.
 * 4 In the Arabian Gulf it is used to describe a headdress that is literally a ‘net’ such as this at the British Museum and as described in the Oman and Zanzibar Virtual Museum.
 * 5 It is used by groups to describe networks of people and organisations such as shabka.org and Arab Network for NGO's.

 * 6 It is a new Arabic TLD domain name شبكة which was approved by ICANN in March 2013.

 * 7 It is used to describe the network mesh found in mosques such as Hassan Mosque in Morocco and Mosque at Qayrawan in Tunisia
 * 8 It is a family name used in Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon as well as a company name used by some businesses across the Middle East that are involved in either telecoms/electronics or networking.

host country
I'm not satisfied with the senses I've described here. Any suggestions? ---> Tooironic (talk) 09:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete it, IMO. DCDuring TALK 01:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

 * You forgot "country that harbors parasites". But in all seriousness, I think the definitions you added are all SOP. --WikiTiki89 01:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Feels SoP to me too. They are all countries that are hosting something; you could equally say "host nation" for any of them, so this isn't even a specific set phrase. Equinox ◑ 01:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm honestly not entirely sure that we have all the required senses covered at host.
 * Also, it may be that there are definitions of host nation in national or international law that are thereby idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 03:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I also feel that there is nothing idiomatic here. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

"Host" is ambiguous, and because not all of the definitions of "host" can be used with country. Pur ple back pack 89  03:56, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Blah, blah, it's "brown leaf" again, "leaf" can be a book page... like hitting my head against a brick wall though. Equinox ◑ 12:42, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

 * You do realize that you comparing things to brown leaf has brought me around to the position that having brown leaf isn't that bad of an idea, right? That's on you.  When I started here, I might have agreed with you that it was fine for brown leaf to be a redlink.  Now, your continual slippery-slope arguments (if we have this, we have to have brown leaf or whatever) have brought me around to the position that having brown leaf would do nobody any harm whatsoever.  I see no practical purpose for SOP.  It's not like GNG on Wikipedia, which makes sense: articles should be sourced.  It's just an arbitrary cut-off that seeks to arbitrarily limit the number of entries we have. Pur ple back pack 89   14:03, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."- Emerson... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:15, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * By the way: the "brown leaf" thing isn't a slippery-slope argument- it's reductio ad absurdem. It doesn't matter whether all of those entries are actually created: the point is that applying your reasoning to perfectly normal cases produces nonsense. Likewise, "four score and seven years ago" is a set phrase, it's of great political and cultural importance (in the US, anyway), people nowadays are likely to want to know what it means, and score is quite ambiguous (did I miss any of the usual arguments?), but it would be a complete waste of space as a dictionary entry. There's nothing in it that you can't find by looking up its component words and using a little common sense.
 * I think the central issue in all of these deletion debates is that, as a wikipedian, your instincts are based on notability: if the concept is significant or important, then the term for it deserves a dictionary entry. We don't have a notability requirement- we have SOP and the like. There's nothing wrong with wikipedian principles- they were arrived at by the Wikipedia community for the purposes of developing an encyclopedia, and are very good for that. Our CFI were arrived at by the Wiktionary community for the purposes of building a dictionary, and- in spite of need for adjustment here and there- are very good for that. I have no intention of going to Wikipedia and challenging the notability requirement- that would be dumb. Why are you coming here and challenging SOP? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:55, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Chuck, there are a lot of things that I disagree with in your previous comments, some of which are just plain wrong:
 * "Waste of space". We're not paper.  We've got space to waste!
 * "Why am I coming here and challenging SOP?" It's not like I went here and the very first thing I did was vote keep, and the second thing I did was have a BP or TR thread about abolishing SOP.  But the reason I'm challenging it is because I don't believe it makes intuitive sense the way GNG does.  GNG solves the problem Wikipedia had: that there were a lot of low-quality unsourced articles.  Wiktionary's problem, as I see it, is that it's lacking in entries other online dictionaries have, meaning that people who want those entries will never use Wiktionary.
 * "I have no intention of going to Wikipedia and challenging the notability requirement." OK. You could if you wanted to, though, that's the thing.  The way wikis work is that nothing is completely set in stone, and if you don't like a policy, it's OK to express displeasure with it.  There are many Wikipedia editors who consistently vote against GNG, and yet have a 0% of being blocked or having their editing privileges taken away.  Why?  Because voting isn't disruptive.  Disruption would be creating or re-creating loads of junk entries.  But I haven't done that.
 * Just because I disapprove of SOP (and, to this day, that is your primary complaint about me) is not a reason to block me, sanction me, or agonize me in hopes I leave. Pur ple back pack 89  15:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you want to have a policy discussion, take it to WT:BP. See w:WP:VOTE for what others in Wikimedia community think about votes and discussion, policies, guidelines, and practice. The principal purpose of policy for this page is to eliminate such fact- and argument-free, repetitious, boring blather as yours on whatever inclusion/exclusion decisions tickle your fancy. DCDuring TALK 19:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You do realize that there's a vote going on right now about whether or not to allow what you call "blather" in RfD discussions, and right now, the people who want to eliminate blather are losing, right? But don't worry, DC, your Christmas present will be a VOTE on demoting CFI to guideline in lieu of coal. Pur ple back pack 89   20:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * What is this "demoting to guideline" that you speak of constantly? — Keφr 20:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've explained this to you once, but if you missed it, here it is again: policies and guidelines are two different things. Policies generally cover all or almost all the project, guidelines need not.  Policies have to be followed 100% of the time; guidelines can be disregarded for a specific case.   Wiktionary doesn't seem to make a differentiation between policies and guidelines, but it should.  While the intent of the original crafters of CFI may have been for it to be a guideline, it's been held of late that CFI is policy. Pur ple back pack 89   21:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Let me see. In 2005, User:Jun-Dai added WT:CFI to Category:Policy - Wiktionary Semi-Official. In 2006, User:Richardb changed it to a tag, which back then looked like this. In 2007, User:Connel MacKenzie redirected  to, which looked like this back then. I see no record of anyone objecting to these changes. I think the intent of early drafters (and not-so-early drafters) is clear: even though they acknowledged that WT:CFI might be an incomplete rough draft, they wanted it to eventually become a binding document. But of course why bother researching facts… — Keφr 21:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note I said "may". It's becoming increasingly clear that many editors, perhaps a majority, disagree with CFI at least in part.  We seem to be having a vote right now on the bindingness of CFI.  If that fails, some people believe that CFI will essentially be reduced to a guideline.  Why not make it official? Pur ple back pack 89   21:33, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There is a huge difference between disagreeing with the content CFI and disagreeing with the concept of CFI. I think you are the only one who disagrees with the concept. --WikiTiki89 21:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Only if "dropping SOP and demoting it to a guideline" can be defined as "the concept". Pur ple back pack 89  00:58, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * After e/c...  It is worth noting (and I hope you do note) that your actions here are causing a tremendous amount of disruption.  From where I sit, it looks a lot like you're trying to overturn any and all barriers to term inclusion.  Most editors here (who participate in forum discussions, anyway) appear to disagree with your actions, myself as well to some extent.
 * This disruption, and your failure so far to present cogent and convincing arguments in favor of your positions, has earned you much displeasure from the rest of the Wiktionary community. I think it's important for your ongoing participation here that you be aware of this.
 * As you note, some other editors might take similar actions to your own, yet are not censured. I hope your question of "why" is rhetorical, and that you actually do understand that you make something of a spectacle yourself.  One cannot be a lightning rod for controversy and then be justified in wondering at all the attention.
 * My own suggestion to you is to be clear and explicit in stating your case, and ground your argument in objective facts, not just your opinion about how things should be. As exemplified over at WT:Requests for deletion, or indeed in this very thread, you sometimes fail to state your case in a way that others can understand very well.  An argument that isn't understood by the other party is little more than squabbling.  And it is difficult to respect someone else's argument, even if one doesn't agree with it, when that argument can't be understood.  For my part, I would have an easier time respecting your views as an editor if you could explain them better.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Voting in RfDs isn't disruptive. If people don't like the way I vote, dammit, that's just too bad! I'm entitled to my opinions, and I'm entitled to express them from time to time.  Half of the disruption is caused by people trying to shout me down anyways.  If they just let me have my vote and not act like it's the end of the world that something's kept, there wouldn't be any disruption.  By the way, the "other people" I'm referring to are on Wikipedia, not on Wiktionary.  In the last 48 hours, I've laid out to you (all of you) my fundamental theorem of how I think Wiktionary should work (to review, it's the general idea that Wiktionary will fail as a project used by readers if it is not more expansionist and easier to edit).  Once you understand that, it should be clear. Pur ple back pack 89   20:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * "I've laid out to you (all of you) my fundamental theorem ..." — well, where is it? Would you mind showing me a proof in, say, ZFC? I am also fine with assuming V=L. — Keφr 20:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I will ping it to in a thread, or tag you in a thread on Eirikr's page. Pur ple back pack 89  21:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I have looked at it. This is not a theorem, nor even a sketch of a proof of one. It does not bother to lay out the axioms, nor even establish the most rudimentary formalism. Just a bunch of subjective assertions not backed by anything connected to the real world. It would not stand five seconds of peer review. In fact, I doubt arXiv would accept this, never mind a serious journal. — Keφr 21:36, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

社会 and 社會
Calling Japanese editors: you may wish to make it clear in these entries what the difference is between these two. In Chinese they are just simplified and traditional forms, but in Japanese they may signify different things. Either way, it should be explained. ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I've stubbified the 社會 entry. There's no real difference in meaning between the two, one is just the pre-reform spelling of the other.
 * The 社会 entry needs expansion (missing etym, pronunciation, etc), but it looks fine for now as a basic JA entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I'm surprised you didn't know about kyūjitai (旧字体) and shinjitai (新字体). The entries say so. Unlike Chinese, it's more common to use Japanese terminology in reference to Japanese. thanks for the change but I think the template itself should make it clearer that kyūjitai is not a lemma anymore. There are too many pre-reform entries. I also suggest linking to kyūjitai and shinjitai in the header. User:Wyang suggests stubbifying simplified Chinese entries, see Beer_parlour/2014/December, perhaps Japanese kyūjitai should also be stubbified (although the suggested lemma is the opposite of Japanese)? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I absolutely support linking the terms through and clarifying that kyūjitai spellings are not the lemmata anymore. I'm not sure of the best changes to the infrastructure to make this work, and I don't have the time right now to really dive in.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:22, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You agree in principle, so that's OK. Not asking you to make changes immediately. Another thing, I think kyūjitai should be categorised to make it easier to address them, not sure about shinjitai. I sometimes hesitate making kyūjitai entries (even I think they are necessary) because I'm not happy with the current format either. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

lucunculus
The English Wikipedia article Pancake has this as its Latin counterpart. Is this a real word used in by the Romans or is it a modern neologism? More to the point, is it includable? —CodeCat 23:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a Classical Latin word, though it isn't clear to what extent it corresponds to the modern pancake. Apparently a glossary equates it with Ancient Greek , which is translated "pancake" because it's derived from , a variant of . —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Lewis and Short define it as "a kind of pastry" and give it as a diminutive of (same definition). SemperBlotto (talk) 12:04, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many
I was going to create entries for the latter three terms based on the definitions given at the first one, but then I realized that those definitions suck. I'm not good at writing these kinds of definitions, so can someone fix them and possibly create the other terms? --WikiTiki89 01:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sincerely flatter some dictionary that has a definition. DCDuring TALK 03:40, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Such flattery can cause copyright problems. --WikiTiki89 03:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)--WikiTiki89 03:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Compare a few definitions. We stand on the shoulders of giants. DCDuring TALK 10:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OED explains one-to-many as being a synonym of one-many. The quotations in both entries (one-to-many and one-many) relate to relations or correspondences rather than to the more specialised multivalued functions. There are more quotations for one-many than for one-to-many. JoergenB (talk) 14:37, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe when those OED entries were written, one-many was more common, but look at this Ngram. --WikiTiki89 15:51, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See . DCDuring TALK 20:01, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * . Please take a look at one-to-many. It is not a copyvio. Looking at other definitions I thought I couldn't do too much worse on my own. Please improve it, especially by shortening it. Also, what is the relationship to surjection/injection? DCDuring TALK 23:52, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not bad, IMO. ("The second set" actually may or may not coincide with "the first set"; whence formally "the second elements" or "the right elements" (as contrasted to the "first" or "left" elements) might be better than "the elements in the second set"; but in this case probably such formalism would make the concept "one-to-many relation" harder to understand. I also doubt it could be made much shorter without making it harder to understand; and I like Wikitiki89's illustration.
 * However, I suspect that the increase in usage of one-to-many that Wikitiki89 documented is more related to one-to-many functions; and these may be defined by means of the concept "multivalued function". If I am right, the relation definition you two wrote and illustrated might be shifted to many-one. I'll write a suggestion for a function definition in the present item, but not move the other stuff without hearing your opinions.
 * Nota bene: Some (but not all) mathematicians prefer to define functions as special cases of relations. Even so, "one-to-many relations" should encompass more than "one-to-many functions", since for the function, each "first element" is demanded to relate to at least one "second element". I do not think that most authors would demand this of an arbitrary "one-many relation".
 * As for injectivity and surjectivity: Injective functions are often called one-one or one-to-one. This can be slightly confusing; some authors distingguish injections from bijections by calling the latter "one-one correspondences". On the other hand, if you like to define functions as a kind of relations, you may wish to note that these special relations are many-one or many-to-one. JoergenB (talk) 10:46, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I intentionally focused on the discrete-set case because I could see my way clear to definitions that might be both valid and intelligible. I could not see the point of explicitly including the case of the two sets being the same, though such cases are often encountered (the set of people; relations such as sibling-of, parent-of, legally-married-to). We could add a clause to make that possibility explicit, though every additional clause makes the definition harder for 'normal' users of the entry to grasp. I could imagine doing definitions for projective geometry cases (except for many-to-many). More general definitions are beyond my pay grade. I also doubt they will be missed.
 * We can have more than one mathematical/logical/database definition at the same entry. If the "to"-less synonyms are significantly more commonly used than the "to" versions with one definition rather than another, we could split the definitions between the entries.
 * I wonder whether the definitions are any clearer than the term itself. We need some usage examples and links to any WP articles (or sections thereof). Feel free to make new entries, new definitions, and whatever changes to existing content you think are appropriate, bearing in mind that some of the definitions should be comprehensible by normal users and all definitions should be in accord with WT:ATTEST. DCDuring TALK 16:23, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

allotroph vz. allotrope
Both in en-wp and here, there has been some confusion about these (potential) two words. At the bottom lies a confusion of words with -troph- (ultimaterly referring to nourishment) and -trop- (ultimately referring to turning, and hence to (alternative) forms); probably due to a confusion of -ph- representing the Greek letter φ. and -p- representing π. I'll write a comment on this in talk:allotroph; but there may be more confusion of "the φ words" and "the π words" going around. JoergenB (talk) 14:48, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

that usage note
Can someone rewrite the usage note for that to make it easier to comprehend. Right now the second bullet reads:

 * Historically, "that" usually followed a comma: "He told me, that it is a good read." As for example, Joseph Robertson, among most Middle Modern English grammarians, in On Punctuation, recommended comma usage with a conjunction. However, if the subordinate, conjunctional ellipse, null complementization, or syntactic pleonasm of "that" is punctuated with a comma, then, in the English grammar, stylistically speaking, it is a comma splice, especially in formal writing. Instead, a semicolon ought to be used to avoid ungrammaticality: He told me; it is a good read.

What the hell is "null complementization"? Also, is there such a thing as "Middle Modern English"? Cheers! bd2412 T 02:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I think "null complementization" is something like "I wish ∅ he would leave". We could have "that" where ∅ appears, but if there's nothing there, it's null. Equinox ◑ 03:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There must be a way to write this thing up so that it is easier to understand. The sentences are also excessively clause-y. bd2412 T 03:20, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Even after a perfect rewrite, how important is the historical point? Just bury it and the third usage note under . DCDuring TALK 03:38, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

pathos
Did Aristotle Make Pathos, or was it there before him?

 * Aristotle didn't make up words. --WikiTiki89 05:33, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Aristotle definitely didn't coin any words? Renard Migrant (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

 * "rft" removed as this seems dead.  — Saltmarsh συζήτηση-talk 15:35, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

medical cannabis and medical marijuana
There is a Wikipedia article on this; would it be considered idiomatic to warrant an entry on Wiktionary? ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:55, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I doubt it. is quite straightforward. I have not considered making it a translation target, however. — Keφr 08:12, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * But surely "medical" in medical cannabis/marijuana means something more like "having a therapeutic effect"? ---> Tooironic (talk) 15:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * More like medicinal, then. I can see "medical alcohol" in Google Books but it's much less common than "medicinal alcohol". Equinox ◑ 16:01, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK. Well, I've added the extra sense now anyway. ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Our entry lists no reflexive meanings, is an orangelink, while conjugation table lists the auxilary verb as. However, other dictionaries seem to contain a separate definition for, for which the auxilary is apparently. Could anyone look at this? — Keφr 08:29, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The auxiliary verb in the perfect sense is always for reflexive verbs, whether the object is direct or indirect. So je me suis frappé (I have hit myself) and je me suis donné (I have given to myself). The reason is that reflexive forms get listed under the non-reflexive page names. So the correct page name is  but the context label should say . Renard Migrant (talk) 17:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * But of course Guernsiais doesn't have to follow the rules for French. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:32, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Siver Grey, an entry of Wiktionary
Why nothing is mentionned regarding the Siver Greys, a fraction of the US Whig party, aroiund 1850 ?
 * Do you mean silver-grey? Not even Wikipedia has an article on the group called Silver Grays (with an "a" since they were American), though they're mentioned briefly at United States Senate election in New York, 1851 and Francis Granger. It sounds like the sort of thing better discussed in an encyclopedia than a dictionary anyway. If you have sources about the Silver Grays from U.S. history, you can go to Wikipedia, register an account, and start an article about them. Alternatively, if you don't want to register an account, you can go to w:Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social sciences/History, and ask someone there to start the article for you (be sure to list your sources, though). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:47, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And check your spelling (faction, not "fraction") as well as your typing and grammar ("Why is nothing mentioned... Silver...around). --Thnidu (talk) 00:23, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Technically, any faction of a political party will represent some fraction of that party. Obviously not what the poster intended, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. bd2412 T
 * Indeed, the German word for faction is, which threw me off the first time I encountered it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

disenchant
"To nullify a spell or magic enchantment." I fail to see the distinction between this and "To free someone from illusion, false belief or enchantment; to undeceive or disillusion.", unless the distinction is transitive/intransitive, e.g. "I am disenchanting" (I am nullifying a spell). Renard Migrant (talk) 17:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Usage as in “Artifacts can be disenchanted, just like any other item” match the second definition, but not the first. — Ungoliant (falai) 17:31, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The first definition appears to be talking about enchantment in the physical sense, not the magical sense. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I have edited the definitions to make clear the type of object, reworded them as for transitive verbs, and added a sense "To disappoint", which sometimes seems closer to the way the term is used. Is the sense is question used that way outside of fantasy, gaming, and magic, eg, in children's stories? DCDuring TALK 03:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

sustainable development
Anyone else think the definition given here could use some cleaning up? Especially the second sentence, which seems quite informal. ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:04, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

positive sense
Doesn't look like an adjective. --Type56op9 (talk) 11:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It is an adjective (as in "positive-sense RNA"/"the RNA was positive-sense"), but it's more normally written with a hyphen. Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

zetetics
I added a second meaning to zetetics, "A branch of algebra which relates to the direct search for unknown quantities", and put the source in the edit note:

 * Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co., pub.dom.

I also added a cross-reference from zetetic to zetetics. --Thnidu (talk) 00:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

bedboard
Surprised we don't have an entry for this. In Chinese it is known as 床板 or 铺板. Or could it be that "bedboard" is Chinglish / not idiomatic English? ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:39, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've never encountered the word. Are we talking about a board underneath the mattress, or a vertical board at one of the ends? The latter would be either the headboard or the footboard. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've never encountered it either. Here it seems to be a board underneath the mattress, while here it appears to be the headboard. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm being bold and creating both definitions Angr found. Pur ple back pack 89  19:17, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Styx
"the Styx" seems to be an alternative to "the sticks" (see e.g. ). What should we have this as? Alternative spelling? Misspelling? Separate entry? Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:44, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We could consider this covered by homophone entries under Pronunciation. DCDuring TALK 09:59, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's an eggcorn. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:38, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Should we include attested eggcorns? The one-word ones should be homophones, at least in some dialects. Multi-word mondegreens seem different to me as there typically no lexical entry for the collocation that is misinterpreted. They are less likely to be attestable, I think, but may be more entry-worthy when they are. DCDuring TALK 16:55, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

know someone in the biblical sense
Is the entire phrase necessary here? I see results for "lay with" someone "in the biblical sense" "meet" someone "in the biblical sense", etc. I also see phrases using "a biblical sense" rather than "the biblical sense". I think "biblical sense", as an adverb basically meaning "sexually", is the productive portion of the phrase. bd2412 T 16:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This was all discussed at its RFD a while ago (see Talk:know someone in the biblical sense). "know someone in the biblical sense" is the original phrase, from which in the biblical sense/biblically was derived - it's the origin of the phrase in the WT:JIFFY sense. It's also unique in that "know" actually does mean something different in the Bible, whereas "meet" doesn't (AFAIK), and "meet in the biblical sense" just highlights the innuendo in a nudge nudge wink wink/as the actress said to the bishop way. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:43, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I had forgotten the earlier discussion! I guess the issue stuck in my head. bd2412 T 18:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

works vs. the works
I was editing an entry and discovered that the works was a redlink. works, however, has two definitions (4 & 5) that always take the form "the works". At present, I've redirected "the works" to works, but is this the solution we want long-term? Do we eventually want to move definitions 4 & 5 of "works" to "the works"? Do we want definitions 4 & 5 at both "works" and "the works"? Pur ple back pack 89  06:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't have any consistency about things like this. I can't currently think of any examples, but I've seen it both ways. Theoretically, would be the correct place for it, but people seeing this are likely to just look up  or even . A comparable issue is how we handle reflexives in French: compare  (which has its own page) and  (which is a redirect). --WikiTiki89 06:56, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We certainly want the definition to appear at works, possibly also at work with a definition line link to works. IMO hard redirects from the term with the should be applied in virtually all such cases. They could even direct the user to first of the specific senses involved using.
 * I think that covers the needs of normal users better than alternative that split the definitions among the three entries, whatever the possible theoretical deficiencies. If we wanted to have a style guide, I'd think we could agree on documenting that approach, though perhaps not. DCDuring TALK 12:49, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I actually with you that we should avoid splitting definitions among multiple entries, but (I guess to play devil's advocate a bit) what about ? --WikiTiki89 14:19, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. It's worth testing the adequacy of such a presentation.
 * First, our determining whether every sense at [[the man]] is in fact more than the + man is made harder by splitting the senses. (Are the second and third definitions in fact anything other than the + man?) If there are multiple definitions "(with the)", that common beginning-of-the-line label should help users compare the possibilities, even if they are not listed consecutively. Second, a hard redirect using would address the problem of searching for the sense at [[man]] for the normal user who types in "the man" in the search box. Third, however a normal user gets to [[man]], the ability to scan and compare the various senses on one page is advantageous. (The option of comparing senses that do not appear on the same screen because of the length of the entry is available by opening another window to the same page.) DCDuring TALK  15:13, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the third definition is inadequately defined, since it is frequently just used as a complement ("You're the man!" = "You're awesome!"). But my question is really that even if there are senses of that are not simply, why should we (or shouldn't we) split the definition onto a separate page from ? --WikiTiki89 16:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That is my belief as well. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
 * Another interesting case is that of new/news. I have added to [[new]] a new definition line that simply refers user to [[news]]. DCDuring TALK 18:59, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

sown
I'm currently reading The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction by James A. Millward and I came across the following sentence: "...the line between steppe and sown was not as firmly drawn as Gibbon, Sima Qian or Ammianus imply, but was in fact politically and culturally fluid." Is this usage of "sown" common? It seems like it means something like "farmland" (in contrast to the grasslands/the steppe). ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It is an example of what CGEL (2002) would call a fused-head construction. It is as if the noun were understood, in this case by reference to steppe, perhaps lands. In many contexts the omitted, "understood" noun is obvious from an anaphora: "We have both hot and cold dishes today. The hot [ones/dishes] include " Very many adjectives can be used this way. DCDuring TALK 23:00, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

quell
In the Hunger Games, they talk about "Quarter Quells". I was surprised to see that quell isn't a noun (apart from one meaning a spring - BTW, is that attestable?). Could it be used outside the Hunger Games universe? --Type56op9 (talk) 18:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

food for the soul
Is food for the soul, used to mean things like fine arts, music, and philosophy, sufficiently transparent that we don't need an entry for it? I thought of making one, but landed squarely on the fence. bd2412 T 22:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * that's gotta hurt. draws a blank. I think we have the figurative sense of food ("Anything that nourishes or sustains"). I added "food for the soul" in a usex. DCDuring TALK  22:50, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

almuerzo, almoço
Is anybody else doubtful that the ‐l‐ is from Arabic? Is it reasonably possible that the consonant mutation was native? --Romanophile (talk) 09:05, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I don’t understand what you are saying. almuerzo began as ( + ). Arabic speakers in Spain, finding the word useful and convenient, adopted it, and, since Arabic does not have prefixes such as ad-, con-, pro-, pre-, dis-, and so on, but does have prefixes that are definite articles, conjunctions, and prepositions, the Arabic-speakers arabicized the word by changing  to al- (Arabic definite article), and "al-morsus" was created. Since most people were bilingual in Arabic and Old Spanish, the arabicized word re-entered Spanish as almorso. So the Latin prefix  became al- under influence from the Arabic definite article . —Stephen (Talk) 11:08, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I just remembered something today: A Spaniard made an interesting case against Arabic influence here. I think that it’s worth taking into consideration. --Romanophile (talk) 13:18, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

 * After reading that thread, I have to ask, is there any chance that the Asturian phonetic shift towards "L" was at all influenced by Arabic? I'm not familiar enough with Arabic to tell if there are other potential influences that would prompt shifts towards "L" beyond just the definite article.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Asturias was the the region with the least contact with Arabic speakers, but Asturian many more cases of ad- → al- than Spanish or Portuguese. — Ungoliant (falai) 20:35, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I’m also doubtful, but that’s what the sources say. — Ungoliant (falai) 11:19, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

cōtempt
There is an entry for "cōtempt" but all it says is It implies that it was used in Modern English. There are no citations and I know it was common for scribes to indicate an "n" with a bar over the immediately preceding vowel. Is this merely a scribal variant or did people pronounce the word as indicated here with a long "o"? In the category page "English terms spelled with Ō" all the other words I recognise seem to come from Oriental languages. "cōtempt" looks like a misunderstanding to me. Danielklein (talk) 11:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Given the See also to cõtempt, it looks like someone was adding scribal variations. I'm almost surprised they missed ꝯtempt and ↄtempt. --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 11:35, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Sounds like it should be deleted then. Danielklein (talk) 12:01, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As much as I dislike wasting time on such variations, I suppose that this is a term that should be included because "it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means". (See WT:CFI.) Nowadays one can readily find scanned manuscripts on-line that might having scribal variations. Whether having all these that are attested will really be of much help to readers of such manuscripts is unlikely. But do we have an appendix on the Middle English and Modern English "scribal notations" (or common ways of reducing the ink required to write a diary or an entry in a book of accounts) that make up these variations? DCDuring TALK 13:56, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

'Woah' not misspelling.
'Woah' should be listed as an alternative spelling of 'whoa', not a misspelling. It's commoner than 'chamaeleons' and 'moochin'--- two valid words---so it isn't unused.
 * I agree, it's not a misspelling. Changed the entry. This, that and the other (talk) 10:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No objections but see Talk:woah for prior discussion. Renard Migrant (talk) 21:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whoa, guys! Something doesn't cease being a misspelling just because it's more common than some other arbitrary valid words that you care to conjure up. There are lots of common misspellings. My feeling is that "woah" is, indeed, just a misspelling, and the entry should be put back to how it was. 109.157.10.232 01:49, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Woah is a misspelling of whoa. People that don't realise that whoa is /ʍoʊ/ misspell it as "woah". Case closed. Tharthan (talk) 13:49, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is it /ʍoʊ/? I don't have the whine/wine merger; for me, /ʍ/ is a fully functional morpheme, but I still pronounce whoa as a homophone of woe. I've always viewed it as an exception where wh represents /w/, much as who and whole are exceptions where wh represents /h/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:44, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, for instance, whole and that vulgar word that begins with wh (not that I use the latter because I don't use vulgarities) are examples of words where wh is not /ʍ/, but I'm pretty sure that whoa is /ʍoʊ/. Most other people that I have heard that lack the wine-whine merger also pronounce it /ʍoʊ/. Now it's possible that, due to it being an interjection, whoa might often be pronounced as /woʊ/ in dialects that lack the wine-whine merger, but I can't vouch for that. Tharthan (talk) 17:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see no case made for "woah" being a misspelling. As for relative frequencies, see ; that suggests alternative spelling rather than a misspelling to me, but is a borderline case (recall that Google Ngram Viewer shows spellings from copyedited works). Above, anon 109.157.10.232 only tells us his "feeling", making no case. Among OneLook dicts, Collins considers "woah" to be a "variant spelling". --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Its appearance in copyedited works is probably due to the same reason "wile away" appears for "while away" in some works: the wine-whine merger. Tharthan (talk) 16:00, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * suggests "wile away" to be rather common indeed; but it also seems to find many uses of wile-verb-sense2 "Archaic form of while, to pass the time". These do not seem to be misspellings. One particular phrase is . This sense of "wile" is not only in Wiktionary but also in Merriam-Webster. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that "while" is the intended verb, yet due to its uncommon verbal use outside of "while away", speakers are basing their spellings on ear. Can you find any other citations outside of Merriam-Webster, by the way? Tharthan (talk) 16:26, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As for other dictionary entries (not attesting quotations) having this sense of "wile", you can check . By checking that dictionary search, I further find Webster 1913, AHD, and oxforddictionaries.com. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:38, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, then (for "wile" anyways). Nevertheless, it's still defined in that 1913 Webster's with "while away", indicated that it's merely an alternate spelling and pronunciation. Tharthan (talk) 16:41, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It is very easy via Google search to find numerous people who agree that "woah" is a misspelling. The "most official" I found is this. At minimum, the entry should say "considered a spelling error by some", or some similar caution. 109.152.146.134 02:36, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with 109.152.146.134. Tharthan (talk) 02:49, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Gloss as "sometimes proscribed"? Equinox ◑ 08:44, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, something like that. Tharthan (talk) 15:13, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/whoa-or-woah linked to above is from that sort of site from which you expect a prescriptivist advice (Wiktionary is descriptivist). Their article on which vs. that (http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-versus-that-0) does not mention any facts of usage, merely the usual prescriptivist simplification; check, by contrast, Which vs that? I have numbers! by Geoffrey K. Pullum, from Language Log. Nonetheless, "sometimes proscribed" seems accurate to me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:00, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Tharthan (talk) 16:07, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Irrespective of the merits of this particular case, a purely descriptivist dictionary is a misguided concept, and not one that, in my opinion, anyone truly believes in. 109.157.12.16 00:47, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It is somewhat misguided, but the problem with prescriptivism is that there is never any agreement as to what should be prescribed and what should be proscribed. See, for instance, I am an Anglo-Saxon linguistic purist (though I don't really write in such a way outside of poetry and the like) and, as such, I might prefer certain things that jibe with that and not like certain things that don't. In addition, I have my own personal pet peeves separate from my linguistic purism. For instance, I don't recognise "y'all", "vacay", "he**a", "Murica", and some others, as legitimate terms to ever be used in the English language. Other people feel similarly about some other words. But the point is, no one really ever agrees on those kinds of things.
 * So, yes, descriptivism doesn't work, and prescriptivism doesn't work either. So what does one do? Well, one sticks with descriptivism because there are less issues doing that than the opposite. Such is life. Tharthan (talk) 22:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary presently isn't purely descriptivist though, and neither should it be. There are numerous labels and usage notes that express an opinion about correct versus incorrect usage. The fact that these may be couched in weasly words like "many commentators consider", or "sometimes proscribed", or whatever it might be, does not fundamentally alter this. A purely descriptivist dictionary would list common blatant misuses and misspellings on equal footing with correct usage. I do not believe that anyone wants that. Sure there are grey areas, but so there are with virtually every aspect of human endeavour. It doesn't mean that a sensible course cannot be taken in most actual cases. 109.157.10.246 21:08, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Latin 3rd declension
In Appendix:Latin third declension it was stated that nox, noctis, f. belongs to the Latin 3rd declension with i-stem, and in entries like nox such things are still said (via declension template, template:la-decl-3rd-I in contrary to template:la-decl-3rd-N-I-pure).

Pons dictionary lists 3 types of the 3rd declension (consonantic, i and mixed), each with a distinction between genders (m./f. and n.). Examples are: [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_declension#Third_declension_.28i.29] labels the i-declensions as "pure" or "mixed".
 * consonantic, m./f.: honor, honoris, m.; regio, -onis, f.; vox, vocis, f.
 * consonantic, n.: nomen, -minis, n.; tempus, -poris, n.
 * i, f.: turris, turris, f.
 * i, n.: mare, maris, n.
 * mixed, m./f.: civis, civis, m.; urbs, urbis, f. -- that's how nox is declined.
 * mixed, n.: os, ossis, n.

So it should be "i-stem declension & mixed declension" (the mixed one between consonantic and i-stem, thus not part of the i-stem declension), or "pure & mixed i-stem declension". Something like simply "Third declension i-stem." as in nox shoudn't be used (as it's irritating/confusing as "pure" i-stem declension is by the name part of i-stem declension too, so questions arise). So: -IP, 23:18, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Should it be changed?
 * To what should it be changed?
 * How should it be changed technically? (Bot replacing templates?)

well-established
Would this be considered an includible word for Wiktionary? ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:50, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't have a well-established rule yet, but you could probably guess why I don't think it is as my tendency is well-known. DCDuring TALK 06:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In my opinion no, it is two word, not one. A hyphen often functions like a space, so well established is not a word it is two words, and well-established the same thing. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

crowd disease or crowd disease?
The sentence I just read: "That millions of people in the Americas with no prior immunities died from exposure to old-world crowd diseases is just one of the profound effects of the Columbian Exchange." Is "crowd disease" here crowd disease or crowd disease? I can't work out what sense of "crowd" is being evoked here. ---> Tooironic (talk) 07:07, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd never heard that combination before, but that would be diseases spread by contagion within crowds of people, usually with human hosts, contrasting with diseases that have animal hosts and those endemic in the New World. DCDuring TALK 09:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I find it transparent enough. A disease that effects crowds. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:43, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

epsilontics
Could someone look at this entry? I am not sure I interpreted these citations very well. — Keφr 19:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I would have considered this "informal" but I suppose this is hard to pick up from the citations, aside from the use of scare quotes in a couple of them. I certainly wouldn't ever expect to find this in formal mathematical textbooks or papers. This, that and the other (talk) 01:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well… in one book I found a mention, which makes it invalid for the purposes of attestation, but it shows there might be some truth in your gut feeling:
 * 2013, Michael Beaney, The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199238842, page 331
 * This has generated the argot 'epsilontics' for rigour in this style (sometimes used perjoratively for a perceived excess of rigour obscuring central ideas).
 * However my main concern is with grammar. Some authors use the word as plural, some as singular — how should I label it? I am not sure if it actually warrants two senses for the "calculus done the Weierstrass way" sense, or if it needs an additional metonymous sense of "overly rigorous presentation of mathematics" (which arguably is already cited). Also, why is it not "epsilonic" and "epsilonics" instead? The "-tic" suffix suggests a derivation from, say, French (compare, ), but for some reason I doubt it even though I can find citations of from 1954 and 1937 (which is earlier than most citations I can find in English). I would rather believe a direct derivation from Greek. — Keφr 11:09, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I had always assumed it was a fanciful, pseudo-mathematical portmanteau of "epsilon" with "antics" or "pedantics" or something like that. That's just another gut feeling, though... This, that and the other (talk) 00:10, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

teyna
This is weird - a "Zazaki misspelling", but all the entries indicate that it is a misspelling of itself. Huh? bd2412 T 14:24, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a mess, the head word in bold says tenya each time (n first then y) but the page name is teyna (y first then n). Could an admin speedily delete this as no usable content? I have no objection to such an entry with correct content, just this is not it. Inform creator to see if we can fix it. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Marmase is known for sloppy copypasting. I have deleted the entry. --Vahag (talk) 14:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

agnotocracy
Rule by ignorance.

 * Does not appear to meet WT:CFI. Equinox ◑ 18:51, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Kindle
I think we should have an entry for Kindle (the Amazon device). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:08, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If it can be cited per WT:BRAND, then it's fine. bd2412 T 14:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For example:

 * 1) *2012, A. C. Stratford, When You're Cold, page 121:
 * As the train pulled into the station in DC, he put his Kindle away and grabbed his bag of clothes for the week.
 * 1) *2014, CB McKenzie, Bad Country: A Novel, page 101:
 * An old Hispanic man was reading the Bible on his Kindle, cursing in Spanish as he tried to manipulate electronic pages that, he complained loudly, kept flipping inexplicably from Genesis right to Revelations, from creation to destruction.
 * Find another cite spanning an additional year and you're golden. bd2412 T 14:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

polynucleosis
I noticed that this word doesn't seem to have been used much since the early 20th century. Does anyone know if there is a more modern term? DTLHS (talk) 23:25, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Some dictionaries have multinucleosis. DCDuring TALK 15:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

English has a mahoosive 1,025,109 words
In case you had not read the OED believes the English language has 1,025,109 known words. I notice that Wiktionary has 3,880,149 entries. Can someone explain the significant variance between the two numbers 2,855,040 (3,880,149 - 1,025,109). Thank you WritersCramp (talk) 10:22, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Because Wiktionary is not just English, and even if it were, not all entries are lemmas English Lemmas: 375,718
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 10:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Hi, thanks for the response. Does anyone feel we should have another statistical list for English words, so we can track our progress against other dictionaries, i.e. comparing apples with apples.  In addition, so we know how many actual English words are in Wiktionary?  I think this would be a positive thing for Wiktionary.  thank you WritersCramp (talk) 10:54, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I always feel that word counts need to be accompanied by an explanation of how words are counted. 86.152.161.61 18:44, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

 * The first column in WT:STATS is useful. --Vahag (talk) 19:28, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is the number in the first column at WT:STATS only for definitions in lemmas (within its approximate accuracy)?
 * Number of English entries (A) > Number of English lemma PoS sections of distinct etymology (B) > Number of English lemma etymology sections (C) > Number of English lemma entries (D).
 * I would think that we would want B as our main concept for 'words' so that we counted separately any lemmas written the same that were etymologically distinct or distinguishable and/or of different PoS. Any effort to do this also requires that entries be consistently formatted with only well-known and documented variation. Do we have that assurance with our existing suite of maintenance bots?
 * I don't think that such counts can be done in real time or near real time, even asymptotically, as our categorization system, even if faithfully implemented, is naturally page oriented. I suspect that a lot of effort would be required to develop and maintain supplemental categories for pages that had multiple lemmas on a page.
 * I also suspect that it would be tedious to debug and verify a program that did this correctly on the XML dump. But once done and verified, it could be rerun against each dump. DCDuring TALK 21:00, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Each definition is analysed individually in order to be classified as lemma or non-lemma. My first attempt tried to identify HWL templates, but that proved impracticable. — Ungoliant (falai) 21:11, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So it would seem like a good base to work from.
 * At WT:STATS, it says "This information is inexact." What is the source of the inexactitude?
 * How hard would it be to work from the count at WT:STATS to a count of lemma-etymology-PoSes (B above)? DCDuring TALK 22:38, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The source of uncertainty are the non-lemma forms with manual formatting instead of templates. The program does try to identify them, but it’s impossible to make the identification foolproof. This is why Italian has been “losing” gloss definitions lately; it’s the language with most manually-formatted inflections and people have been fixing them faster than new definitions are added. — Ungoliant (falai) 23:22, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

 * The first column at WT:STATS, "Gloss definitions", is said to be "the number of senses the words in that language have", which I understand to mean the total of all separately numbered definitions over all words. However, "entries", which I understand to be the number of separate pages that include at least one definition in the relevant language, i.e. the number of headwords, is a larger number. Does that mean that there are more headwords than definitions? Is that really correct? Is it because there are many contentless redirects or something? 86.152.161.61 12:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not exactly contentless, but of lesser content. dogs is an entry. "plural of dog" is, in a sense, a definition. dogs is NOT a lemma. The lemma entry dog has multiple definitions, which are what Ungoliant intends for that count to definitions to include and be limited to, excluding "definitions" like "plural of dog". DCDuring TALK 15:11, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm still confused. The entry dogs has five numbered English definitions. The entry dog has 18 numbered English definitions. What amounts do "dog" and "dogs", respectively, contribute to the figures in the two columns at WT:STATS that I mentioned? 86.152.161.61 18:55, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I should have picked a simpler example or actually looked at the entry for dogs before selecting it, as dogs is a lemma entry. But the example actually illustrates an issue. The entry for dogs probably (I didn't write the code.) contributes three to the count, the plural of dog and the third-person present indicative of dog being excluded. The entry for dog contributes 17 or 18, depending on whether the code counts what could be considered a duplicate: "(slang, almost always in the plural) feet", which is the same as "(slang, US) Feet, from rhyming slang dog's meat. [from early 20th c.]".
 * The count of definitions is perhaps more arbitrary than the count of lemma-etymology-PoSes, as one can split definitions to a greater or lesser degree. What counts as a distinct etymology can also be a bit arbitrary, eg, homographs coming into English from Latin via French for one set of meanings and directly from Latin for another. Even the number of PoSes is arbitrary. For example, some English prepositional phrases are presented as both adjective and adverb (counting as two PoSes), whereas others are presented as only as prepositional phrases (counting as one). Some entries for nouns include a separate section for use of the word as an interjection, some do not. DCDuring TALK 20:03, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * BTW, it is certainly arguable that the definition of dogs as "Feet" ought to appear as a separate etymology ("From rhyming slang dog's meat"), at least if the etymology is authentic. Thus, we have another example of arbitrariness in the count, this time at the etymology level. DCDuring TALK 20:29, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. In an ideal world, I think WT:STATS needs proper explanations of what the statistics mean. At the moment, to be honest, the numbers are virtually useless given the lack of clear information on that page about how they are obtained. 86.152.161.61 20:11, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you find a clear and complete explanation for any count of 'definitions' or 'words' provided by any actual dictionary, please let us know, so we have an example to emulate. This problem of determining what numbers mean bedevils almost any effort to count real-world phenomena of any but the simplest kind. DCDuring TALK 20:28, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That is a different issue from the one of explaining what the numbers that we have at present at WT:STATS actually mean. The WT:STATS numbers are (presumably) created by a predictable automated process, and their derivation can therefore (presumably) be precisely explained. 86.152.161.61 00:51, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Etymology of aril
I've started a discussion about this if anyone's interested. --Person12 (talk) 01:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

inside
The example sentence I added for the adjective sense - They wanted to know the inside story behind the celebrity's fall from grace. - does not seem to be supported by the definition given - Originating from or arranged by someone inside an organisation. - but I'm not sure how to refine it, any ideas? ---> Tooironic (talk) 02:05, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For that usex I think we need we need a different definition, something like "behind the scenes/behind-the-scenes".
 * Or maybe just "of, relating to, or coming from, or being on the inside" and let inside do some of the work. DCDuring TALK 04:05, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

get on to / get onto
I just created get on to as it was a red link in the list of derived terms at get. I added the "contact someone about something" meaning, but now I have noticed that the same meaning is already at get onto. Now I feel a bit uncertain. When you "get on to the company to complain", for example, is that "get onto" or "get on to"? I thought it was "get on to". 86.152.161.61 04:26, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We should have get on to "(UK) make contact with (about something)". An Oxford dictionary has it with that spelling. DCDuring TALK 14:51, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you sure the second definition you gave is both in actual use and idiomatic, rather than being get on + to? DCDuring TALK 14:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The second sense, which is now the third, illustrated by "I'll get on to it tomorrow" is in natural everyday use where I come from (England). Perhaps my definition can be improved though. Although these things can be a fine judgement, my feeling is that it is idiomatic in this meaning. It does not feel right to me as "get on + to" for any natural separate usage of "get on". On the other matter, do you think that definition #2 at get onto, "To contact a person or organisation about a particular matter", is also correct? Are you saying that you think both "get onto" and "get on to" are correct in this sense? It seemed kind of illogical to me that both could be correct, but having looked at it several times now, I no longer feel able to form any sensible judgement about it. 86.152.161.61 21:22, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * When I say it is not idiomatic, I mean that, in the now-third sense, it may not 'really' be a single term, ie, it may be get on + prepositional phrase headed by to or get + on + PP headed by to. I'd bet that get on to is much more common that get onto. The Oxford dictionary I looked at had get on to. The way we would determine whether get onto was a good entry was by finding usage. (See WT:ATTEST.) Determining which is the more common form might be done by consensus of those who might have seen it in print or by looking at relative frequency at BNC. DCDuring TALK 21:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I understand what you meant by "not idiomatic". My belief is that the questioned sense is separately idiomatic and is not naturally explainable as "get on + to" or "get" + "on" + "to". 86.152.161.61 00:46, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * An initial look at BNC shows me that the "contact" sense is spelled both ways with the get on to form being more common. So we would have get onto as an alternative form of get on to unless there is more to it than what I saw. DCDuring TALK 21:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * However, comparing with, more dictionaries have get onto than have get on to. DCDuring TALK  22:02, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

gloves come off
Did I do this phrase soft-direct correctly? ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:20, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't use "See" very much, but I think it is necessary in many cases and should be used more. The case at hand seems like a good use to me. DCDuring TALK 14:53, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In this case I prefer "Alternative form of ...". I think it is more precise. 86.152.161.61 00:58, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It may be more precise, but it is not an accurate characterization of the connection between the two terms. Is come an alternative form of be? DCDuring TALK 01:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * "Alternative form" is the characterisation given at gloves are off, which is where I took it from. Perhaps "Variant form" would be better. 86.152.161.61 12:20, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * has its uses too. Renard Migrant (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Etymology of Bad Citation
Chuck Entz (talk) 21:47, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

frentero, frentera
What is the lemma of this adjective? Is "frentera" the masculine form as well, or is there a frentero? —CodeCat 21:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There’s frentero. Moved. — Ungoliant (falai) 22:36, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

'campaignee' the word
'Campaignee' is an entity for whom a campaign is undertaken. Did we get that wrong? A Campaigner undertakes a Campaign for a Campaignee. Right? We undertake or carry out promotional campaigns for our promotees or campaignees via Social Media. One of them is at (SPAM LINK REMOVED BY User:Equinox). We would like to call our clients (for whom we undertake a campaign) as campaignee/s apart from simply 'client'. We are the campaigner/s. 'Campaignee' has not been found in many dictionaries. So we seek light! Thank you.
 * Does it exist? Where? Wouldn't it hypothetically mean one who is campaigned upon? Renard Migrant (talk) 17:24, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

electric multiple unit, elektryczny zespół trakcyjny
I created these two when I found red links at multiple unit, but now I think they are completely SoP. The main added value in the entries are the abbreviations EMU and EZT, and possibly images, but this looks like a better fit for Wikipedia. What is your opinion? --Tweenk (talk) 05:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

think outside the box
What is the opposite of this? As in, if one were to mentally shut off certain facets of the mind so as to force oneself to think in a specific manner.

Is there such a term?

If not, what would be the best way to describe such a thing?

The only thing that comes to mind for me is "selective thinking". Tharthan (talk) 16:27, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Think inside the box. Not common but it exists. — Ungoliant (falai) 16:33, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

 * "Selective thinking" does seem to be a set phrase, and there's also "". "" is related to some extent. Also, Wikipedia has an article on "s", although it's worded as if only other people (not you yourself) can put you into a filter bubble. - -sche (discuss) 21:16, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a strong relationship between this phrase and connect the dots but I can't think of it yet. How do you ping someone you think would be useful to a discussion... like Pur ple '''? --Riverstogo (talk) 21:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That worked.  works. FWIW, I believe "think inside the box" to be verifiable, because of this. Pur ple back pack 89   21:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks @Pur ple , if I can call you that? But I need to verify if "it is better to think ... inside the box?" --Riverstogo (talk) 22:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * IMHO, it's probably better to think selectively/think inside of the box if one has recently dealt with something traumatic. Otherwise, allowing oneself to think outside of the box is the better option. Tharthan (talk) 22:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Conventionally the box was the metaphorical perimeter formed by the outermost dots of the puzzle. You were not instructed to stay inside this box, the convention of connecting the dots one at a time with straight lines meant that you simply could not see any reason to do so, given that there were no dots visible to you outside of this conventional boundry. The act of drawing your pen through this imaginary limitation was wrong in the strong sense many children learn to understand, similar to knowing when colouring in to st ay within the lines, or having recently dealt with something traumatic not to read between the lines.

 * Likewise you expect a paragraph to follow on from the previous one, this is just another arbitrary rule. If a child dares often enough to complete puzzles bypassing the restriction of convention they may eventually no longer see in the same way, as it is unreasonable to simulateously choose to think freely and think to choose unfreely. Either you liberate yourself; pinging the truth to see the point of a picture as you try and test a solution which conforms to a constantly evolving story or you just puzzle at the dots... which conventionally completes the tried and tested rubbish […] --Riverstogo (talk) 20:57, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whoops, shoulda no-wiki-ed that:  generates  (FWIW, the purple font coloring isn't necessary in this case).  Anywho, since think outside the box redirects to outside the box, I have created inside the box and redirected think inside the box to it. Pur ple back pack 89   22:52, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It was my reply to   which I have not yet saved to the tea room that I dealt with something traumatic... the truth is a synecdoche! More is revealed with every ping [...] --Riverstogo (talk) 05:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Think inside the box... I use this quite often for situations where a tried-and-tested solution seems like the best one. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

lexical peacemaking
I'm not sure if this shouldn't be discussed in the beer parlour, I guess I'm not good at being bold, sorry. I need to know how to avoid escalating a lexical war of quotations? We are already up to two exclaimation marks!! I am not sure if I should bother adding a special case as Equinox seems to imply in the history, or if and how I can convey that this type warfare is moving online rapidly, concisely? I don't even know where to begin with a citation that isn't suitable...?Riverstogo (talk) 03:26, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You mean quotations that contradict each other? Add 'em all! Terms often have more than one meaning which is why one definition won't fit all the attestations. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

aboriculturist, aboricultural
At first I thought they were misspellings of arboriculturist and arboricultural, but there are in serious-looking books. Does anyone know if these are valid spellings? — Ungoliant (falai) 16:47, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No, they aren't valid spellings. The morpheme "arbor" has a rather unusual shape for English, so it's easy to lose the repeated letter "r" in longer combinations. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:18, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I’ve converted them to misspelling-of entries. I think they are common enough to warrant inclusion, but if anyone doesn’t, feel free to RFD them. — Ungoliant (falai) 17:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Latin flexio = inflection (grammar)?
Does Latin flexio also mean inflection (inflexion, flection, flexion) in grammar, i.e. the changing of a word (noun, verb)? Thus: Latin flexio -- related to German Flexion and Spanish flexión -- should indeed mean inflection.
 * [books.google.de/books?id=efqnfeKd4QgC&pg=PT502] & [books.google.de/books?id=E29cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA28] & [books.google.de/books?id=6W0GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA466] include "Flexio"/"flexio" in a grammatical context.
 * [books.google.de/books?id=gWn9680oH8QC&pg=RA1-PA314]: "flexio, -onis f. script. flectio: [...] 3 translate: a gramm. i. q. [greek word], declinatio - Flexion, Deklination [= flexion (inflection), declination (declension)]: Erchanb. gramm. p. 17,13 casus est -o (-ctio var. l.) vocis per varias qualitates nominandi corporis sive rei.". That sounds like flexio (per book title: in Medieval Latin) (also) meant inflection.
 * [books.google.de/books?id=fNEdn7WM7jsC&pg=PA339]: "Flectio, onis. f. The declining of a word ap. Gramm. [...] Flexio, onis. f. A bowing, or bending"
 * [books.google.de/books?id=d5IPLLh3-wAC&pg=PA19] "Flexio Nominis dicitur Declinatio [...]". That should mean "The flection (inflection) of a noun is called declination (declension) [...]" and should proof that Latin flexio (also written Flexio) means inflection.
 * [books.google.de/books?id=e6xFAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA124]: "Declinatio s. Flexio Nominum.". That should mean "Declension or inflection of nouns.", where s. stands for seu or sive (or).
 * [books.google.de/books?id=Bdbu0EE_iU0C&pg=PA181]: "Flexio Verborum Arabicorum." That should mean "Inflection of Arab verbs [or: words]."
 * [books.google.de/books?id=rGs0AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA59]: "Abwandeln, v. a. [= verbum activum] bei neuern Sprachlehrern statt conjugiren, flectere verbum, Varr. L. L., auch declinare, Quint. Abwandeln, das, -ung, die, eines Wortes, flexio verbi, auch mit Verbis." That seems to mix grammatical terms, but should verify that flexio was used in grammatical context and had to do with the changing of words or verbs.
 * [books.google.de/books?id=0dM7AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA209]: "Wir sagen Biegung, Flexio, Declinatio, Umendung, Krümmung des Geraden; [...]". "We say inflection, Flexio (inflection), Declinatio (declension), declension, bending of the straight; [...]". "bending of the straight/upright" could refer to casus rectus. Anyway, "Flexio" should be Latin like "Declinatio" is Latin and it should mean "Biegung" (German) or "[in]flection".

Can anyone verify that? Or: Can it be added to wiktionary entries or is there any objection? -93.196.224.129 21:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Chinese sashimi
Regarding the entry over at sashimi, does anyone know what the relation between 刺身, 生魚片 and 魚生 is in modern Chinese? Chinese Wikipedia keeps separate articles for 刺身 and 生魚片. The latter appears to defined as a general term for various forms of "raw slices of fish or meat"-type dishes. The English definition for "sashimi", however, refers only to the Japanese dish, which makes me skeptical to keeping 生魚片 and 魚生 as Chinese translations alternatives at sashimi. Especially since 生魚片 is also defined as the similar ancient Chinese dish called 膾/鱠 (kuài).

So is 生魚片 a term for several specific dishes, or is it a general term for "raw slices of meat or fish"-type dishes? My thought here is that it's more akin to "omelette" which an refer to numerous different specific omlette-type dishes like Italian frittata or Japanese tamagoyaki?

Peter Isotalo 10:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Latin translation of English attribute?
1. In attribute it is "Latin: attributum". Is it really masculine and not neuter?

2. Is there a Latin translation of the grammatical term attribute? So, is attributum a Latin translation of attribute in grammar? -80.133.121.179 11:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=ReAtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA329&dq=attributum] & [//books.google.de/books?id=qpg2AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA92] & [//books.google.de/books?id=ueBGAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA129] & [//books.google.de/books?id=StZDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA163]. That shows: attributum was used in grammatical contexts.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=Ty5CAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA129]: attributum in grammatical context, but with a general and not with a grammatical meaning.
 * German dictionaries:
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=beVoBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA86]
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=MvgsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA468]+469: "attributus (adt.), a, um, Pa. eigentl. was einem Gegenstande beigegeben ist, daher substantivisch attributum, i, n. 1) (nach no. 1) das aus dem Staatsschatze angewiesene Geld, Varro L. L. 5, 36, 49 -- 2) in der grammatischen Sprache: das Prädicat, Attribut, Cic. Invent. 1, 24 u. 26; Gell. 4, 1 fin." & "attributio (adt.), onis, f. 1) [...] 2) in der Grammatik: das Prädicat, Attribut = attributum, Cic. Invent. 1, 26.". The second quote means: "in grammar: predicate, attribute = attributum". "adt." could mean that attributio comes from "ad + t~ [word starting with t]" becoming "att~", or that it was also written adtributum sometimes.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=QKbpcWhMwCEC&pg=RA2-PA10]: "attributum, i, Eigenschaft"
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=w4kSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA291]: "Prädicat [= predicate], attributum, i, n."
 * predicate is praedicatum in Latin, at least in grammar. Thus the translation "Prädicat (, Attribut) = attributum" seems strange. Possibilities: a) Maybe it's not refering to attribute in generel or to grammar, but to philosophy. b) Maybe the terms were once used differently (like declinatio meant something different in ancient times than it does nowadays) or were sometimes used incorrectly.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=xYdEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA375]: "Praedicatum das Praedicat in der Logik und Grammatik neulateinisch für attributum (Cic. Inv. [Cicero: De Inventione] I, 24, 34) oder attributio (Ebend. I, 26, 38).". That is: "Praedicatum, praedicate in logics and grammar, New Latin for attributum ([..]) or attributio ([..]).". But as far as I understand Cicero's text, he isn't refering to preadicate/attribute as it's used nowadays in grammar.
 * Spanish:
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=IykCkd9Vc2wC&pg=PA69]: attributum = atributo (Spanish), but seems like it's refering to something other than grammar.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=c4yqejqnWTkC&pg=PA80]: attributum = atributo. No context is mentioned, so might include but also might exclude grammar.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=0PXHgsvKqkkC&pg=PA107]: attributum = atributo in grammar. Also "atributivo: attributivus, a, um.", which should be "attributive". But: The book refers to modern Latin -- very likely to very modern Latin from 20th & 21th century, which is something different than older Latin prior to the 20th century.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=uBy1agDtviAC&pg=PA175] (french): "ATTRIBUT n. m. [...] latin attributum [...] 2 Emblème caractéristique qui accompagne une figure mythologique, un personnage, une chose personnifiée. Le caducée est l'attribut de Mercure, le sceptre celui de la royauté. |> emblème, symbole. Il était revêtu de tous les attributs de sa fonction. |> signe. * 3 LOG. Ce qui s'affirme ou se nie du sujet d'une proposition. |> prédicat. * 4 GRAMM. Terme décrivant la qualité, la nature ou l'état qu'on rapporte au sujet ou au complément d'object par l'intermédiaire d'un verbe (être, sembler, paraître, devenir, rester, demeurer). Attribut du sujet, du complément. -- APPOS. Adjectif, nom attribut.". Accourding to en.wiktionary: sujet = subject, du = of the. So it should refer to attribute. But "latin attributum" should simply mean that french attribut comes from the Latin word attributum and not that the Latin word necessarily has the same meanings.
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=2oQUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA17]: "An attribute, attributum, 2." (2 could stand for the declension).
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=gfQsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA108]: "ATTRIBUTIO, onis, f [attribuo] 1) An asignment of money. 2) Attributum.    ATTRIBUTUM, i, n. [attribuo]. Tech. t., in gram., a predicate, an attribute."
 * [//books.google.de/books?id=wFBdAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT309]: "Adiectivum, quod substantivo subiungitur proxime adpositum, ut in [Arab] vir doctus, attributum sive epithetum vocari solet. Quod vero, verbo interposito, ad substantvum refertur, ut in [Arab] vir ille erat doctus, praedicatum nuncupatur." Here attributum and praedicatum should be what attribute and predicate are.

hacés
This says that it's a form of. Is this a mistake? —CodeCat 17:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Wonderfolly. It’s been fixed. — Ungoliant (falai) 18:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Read between the Liens
While reading about the film "The Tigger Movie" I noticed a sublinked text called "read between the liens" which was obviously a spelling error, and the correct word should have been "lines" instead of "liens." I just wanted to alert somebody to do the editing. The link also led to a Wiktionary page upon clicking.

 * We can't fix it unless you give us the Web address of the page containing the error. Equinox ◑ 02:37, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ : Plot para. 3. DCDuring TALK 00:54, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

va banque
Is also a noun meaning "all in", a hand in a poker game and, by extension, a risky business with high stakes? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:53, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The noun I know of is . I have a book in French about poker, though it is translated from an English one. Renard Migrant (talk) 00:57, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

mezzocielo
I can't figure out the English translation for this Italian word from astronomy. Its definition (translated from Italian sources) is "the point of intersection, in the celestial sphere, of the meridian of a place with the celestial equator". Any ideas? SemperBlotto (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

 * I'm not sure there is a simple translation. It is transparently "middle-sky" or "middle-heaven", but from the supplied definition is not the zenith (being that point directly overhead), but the point on the celestial equator (which is not necessarily directly overhead the geographic equator), corresponding to the defined latitude. See . Is it an astronomical or astrological term? That will teach me to read all the details.
 * Or, the mezzocielo is the celestial point at the given latitude and declination 0.
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 23:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

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title: Wiktionary:Tea room/2014/December