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Wiktionary:Tea room/2013/October

Titonian
Hi,

On Wikipedia, we have Tithonian, with 'h'. Titonian it is an error or a variant?

Thanks by advance, Automatik (talk) 15:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

 * It looks to me that Tithonian is much more common (>20x), but that Titonian also appears in print (Google books). We should move the entry and show the 'h'-less spelling as an alternative form - which will happen in due course. Thanks. DCDuring TALK 20:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

 * ✅ DCDuring TALK 16:01, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Loves him his, love them their
Do we have anything on this phrase? It seems to come up when someone is being accused of hypocrisy, e.g. "He loves him his (whatever), but doesn't love (something inevitably tied to whatever)." (Sorry for being vague.) JulieKahan (talk) 18:02, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Where (country? region?) did you hear this? Were the speakers old or young? Rural or urban? I'm not familiar with it and it might not be easy to find examples.
 * Even if we do, an open-ended expression like this can be hard to put in a form that will make it possible for someone not very familiar with dictionaries to find it. DCDuring TALK 20:08, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

ne&
We presently have separate complete entries for ne'er-do-well and ne're-do-well. The former has two senses and no etymology, the latter has one sense (identical to the former's first) but an etymology. Should they're be merged and one marked as an alternative spelling of the other? If so which way should they be merged? Thryduulf (talk) 12:48, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

 * I would have thought into ne'er-do-well, as both the most common and making the most etymological sense. ("never" > "ne're"?) --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 13:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Me too. I'd just delete ne're-do-well as a rare misspelling. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:31, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * "ne're" is used by enough books that don't seem to use "ne'er" (see how few of the hits for also turn up in the search ) that I'm not comfortable just deleting it. I've made it into a, labelled "possibly nonstandard". Feel free to upgrade it to "nonstandard" or , or even to RFD it, if you think that's more appropriate. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

was delivered of
When this person was born, Buckingham Palace announced that "the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son". This usage of deliver is well-attested — see — but it doesn't seem to be covered by our entry. Our sense 3 could possibly be plugged into the sentence, with the result "the duchess was safely assisted in the birth of a son", but that doesn't seem quite right. Dictionary.com distinguishes "9. to assist (a female) in bringing forth young: The doctor delivered her of twins" from "10. to assist at the birth of: The doctor delivered the baby" ... but "assist in bringing forth young" seems like a poor, non-substitutable definition. If I put it into the usex dictionary.com supplies, I get "the doctor assisted her in bringing forth young of twins", which is clearly off. So how should the sense be defined? (Is the lemma actually [[deliver of]]?) I don't see anything in Merriam-Webster that looks any more applicable than any of our or Dictionary.com's senses, but I do notice another sense they have that we don't seem to: "to cause (oneself) to produce as if by giving birth: has delivered himself of half an autobiography — H. C. Schonberg". - -sche (discuss) 06:22, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * How about "To cause (oneself) to produce (young or something else) by giving birth or as if by giving birth". Or one can cleave this into two definitions. I haven't yet looked to see whether the entry has another reflexive definition. DCDuring TALK 11:34, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * There is the "unburden" sense, but this can't be the right thought for this situation in the Queen's English.
 * Several dictionaries have "deliver oneself of" in reference to a speech or a thought. One has "to free someone from some burden or problem; to liberate someone from some confinement." I don't think this is really the solution. DCDuring TALK 11:48, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I suppose there is a normal-user problem sometimes in seeing the reflexive use as the "same" as the transitive use, especially in the passive. It may feel different. But I don't think that anyone misunderstood the intended meaning of the sentence. DCDuring TALK 11:48, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I invented a few words a long time ago and I would like to edit them to include more information about how/why they were invented and alternate meanings or versions.
Would this be ok, and if so, how would I go about making it look proper? The words Im referring to are, Weak-sauce, Redonkulous, and a few more. You know the "backbone" of the English language, hehe. I just wanted to add information, explanation of origin, etc. but I wanted to be tactful and Im new to wiki other than for occasional research.

NOW before I get 20 replies about how Im an fool, or I didnt make it up, or so and so's uncle said that when they were a toddler, etc. Please just for 10 seconds imagine that there has to be some human who made the words up, and I just might be him, politely asking how to go about doing this without ruffling too many feathers. I literally wont gain a thing by doing this, but I think some people would find it interesting how exactly certain things came about. Its always been so darn surreal to say something silly and not only hear your buddies saying it but people on tv, movies, websites, etc. Looking forward to hearing from someone. Thanks!
 * Please read WT:CFI. Wiktionary does not accept words its users made up unless those words have seen actual use by multiple published authors over a period of least a year. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:12, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Im a little confused, but Im not a fool. The word is already in wiki as far as I know, as stated above. Ive seen the word used so frequently its almost scary. There are websites, license plate covers, t-shirts etc. Im not sure if a published author used it yet but its surely in public television and on wiki. My question wasnt "can I add a make believe word thats not there" I was wanting to know how I could edit the words meanings/origins properly or add information to words I happen to have invented, but are already on wiki. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 * Can you provide any evidence these words were coined by you? — Ungoliant (Falai) 17:27, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have an unopened certified letter sent to myself the day I invented every single word. <--Sarcasm. NO, not only do I not have proof, but I could care less if Im mentioned. Again, please, is there anyone on here that can stay on topic? Let me simplify things so people can stop with the "prove its" and start with the helping. My god Ill never understand why most humans prefer to distract or deny rather than converse.

 * Statement: There are words, that are already on here. I have first hand knowledge about the words creation or meaning that nobody else could because I may or may not be the creator of the words.
 * Question: Would it be unfathomable or incorrect for me to edit them to include more information, and is there an awesome person who can help me with how, and what should be added?  Again thanks in advance.

 * So no. Yes, it would be incorrect. — Ungoliant (Falai) 18:06, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok so just to clarify, you are saying that if I have information about a word I should not contribute? Am I to be under the assumption that all wiki articles are fact and every one of them is fully provable? This sounds absurd to me. Can I get another persons opinion?

 * Here's another internet staple which might be of interest: "pics or it didn't happen."
 * Even, for the sake of argument, if you are the single person who invented these terms and set them free into the world, how can we possibly tell you apart from some random guy claiming the same? Especially given your anonymity. If you want to have your claims included here, write an letter to your local newspaper describing what really happened. Preferably, something verifiable. We include data based on evidence, and I'm afraid "I invented the word "twerking" in 1974, honest, and there's a really funny story behind it which you have to include in your dictionary" is not reliable evidence. As presented, we can't tell you apart from any of the other guys claiming "I'm Spartacus!"
 * If you absolutely must include your origin story in a dictionary, Urban Dictionary seems tailor made for this exact purpose.
 * --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 21:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The goal is to have all Wiktionary pages correct and the information in them true and verified. It may not possible to reach that goal in the foreseeable future, but that's no reason to head in the other direction by allowing anyone deluded or shameless enough to make unprovable claims of having invented things the endorsement of our dictionary. Terms that can be traced back to invention by a private person are extremely rare, but claims of having invented such terms are a dime a dozen (talk has always been cheap, but on the internet, it's free), and often contradict each other or are easily verified as fraudulent. We don't need any more. You seem to be surprised that we're not being helpful- but you are, in effect, asking us to help you vandalize our entries. I've reverted many such edits, and even blocked the perpetrators of the more shameless ones. I'm not going to assist you to do more of the same just because you asked nicely. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I guess I never really expected there to be a lot of people claiming to be the "inventor" of a handful of crappy and nearly useless words. But I do understand of course. Glad I asked here rather than messing with anything. Ill bow out since of course there is no way I can reasonably prove anything.

But before I do, Ill go ahead and make a futile statement about how they came about, knowing full well only a handful of people will see it and it wont prove a thing, nor will anyone likely even believe. No matter, none in the least.

Redonkulous- As a child I accidentally used the word dink" to describe a person being silly or stupid, I now know its a racial term and I do not use it. One day me and a pal were sort of arguing, I was going to call him a dink and say he was ridiculous, ended up saying redinkulous. The fight stopped, we laughed our butts off and we started using it as a private joke. Then after a few months I wanted to take it up a notch, after a friend said wow that was redinkulous man.  I said, "naw man that S#!& was redonkulous."  From then on we said it.- Arizona summer of 1991

Weak-sauce- (and toob-sauce) I played COD and other games online with friends, still do. We use chat headphones that talk to people in the game across the country. People who use grenade launchers in the game are called noob toobers. I was a pro-toober hehe, teammates would call out enemies in windows across the map, and I would say "who ordered the toob-sauce." Because I pictured the grenade flying in the window and making a pile of what resembles sauce out of the fella. Toob-sauce was pre-COD though, I believe it was roughly 9-10 years ago on a PS2 FPS game (with headphones). I also said "ahhh weak" all the time when I died. One day I slipped and said "ahh weak-sauce" and it stuck like freakin glue. After a few weeks my good friend reversed it and made Awesome-Sauce, and then Awesome-sauce-em because it had a better ring to it. One day a guy on the game said he liked that and where did I hear it, I said, of course, that I made it up. He asked what it meant, and not really having a meaning I just stated it was like, you know, a weak-sauce. (in italian accent) Dats' a Spicy-sauce, anna dats' a weak-sauce. In reality it meant nothing, just a poor combination of two random words that sounded like it meant something.

I have like 12 or so more I remember but lets get to the one that absolutely nobody will believe I invented as a nice ending. hehe By the way, Im not 100% positive about this one, I just know it is a high likelyhood. Also Ive only told a handful of people the story for reasons that will become obvious.

Bow-Chicka-Wow-wow- I think I can explain why its used to indicate sexy-ness (originally sex) and where its from to such a T that someone could actually research it and find the long lost porno Im speaking of. I was 12, my buddy J was also, we found his pops porn collection. Come on, give me a break everyone was 12 once. So we pop it in and its a common scene of a person showing up to a home and getting it on with the lady of the house. Cant recall if he was her husband but Im pretty sure it was like a plumber (Opened topped blue work shirt I think) or some worker showing up from the door on the left and walking up to the lady in the kitchen (yellow or white dress) at the sink on the right. They say something corny about fixing whatever then some really Funky 80's music starts and it literally was me copying that sound (again a private joke between me and my buddy J). It was originally Birmp-chicka-Birmp-birrr. Best I can spell it, Phonetically maybe something like Beeurmp-chicka-beeurmp-beeeeeer maybe bowmp-chicka-bowmp-bowww would be a better representation honestly. But the main difference today is that the B in Birmp came out with a bass drum like sound, and the chicka I made was more like a hi-hat. Basically the funky bass line and chicka sound that was in movies like Shaft, you know the ones.

Anyways, when I would say it in school others would try to copy it but they almost always could not make the same funky 80's sound, (im a bit of a mimic) and it almost always sounded like bow-chicka-wowowww. So somewhere there is an 80's porno, that starts out like many with a guy coming to the door, then approaching woman and the sexy starts along with the funky tune. Yes I know there are many, but I know there is one in particular that fits this bill as I can still recall it like a movie. Hey it was my first adventure into adult things so Ill never forget it, not like today and the internet filled with filth. So naturally when we saw a hot chick we just beatboxed out that line and the other guy would start looking to get a glimpse of who we birmped at. Another older friend of mine back in Arizona used to use "nectar" as a way to point out a hottie. Not sure if that caught on or not havent really heard it in 20 years but I always liked it.

Ill just end in saying, I have no idea why they caught on, I dont consider myself special or cool for anything I may have made up. I have plenty of friends and dont need attention or reasons for people to like me, in fact I had to weed through my friends to find the few REAL people who are left. I just find it extremely surreal to accidentally make something up that catches on and gets said on television back to me and even in public. I can say that when I purposefully attempted to start a new word it failed miserably lol. When people mess their words up they usually feel embarrassed, I just find those mistakes hilarious, and not because of the mistake but how funny the words that come from them can be. Also I must add that Im not delusional, I know that its like climbing mount everest with no arms to talk someone into believing you "made up a word" from thin air. Shakespeare was a marvel at it, something like 2000 words and 600 phrases! Now that is something to be proud of, although "dead as a doornail" and the like have always struck me as a little ridiculous/redinkulous/redonkulous. So they say.

There are no awards to win, no prize or status, even with proof or some place writing down and giving me credit it wouldnt change a single thing. Furthermore, I have a VERY common first and last name and it would simply blend back into obscurity. I just wanted to tell my strange story to someone.

Thanks for reading if you got this far, have a wonderful life. Its shorter than you think, dont forget to live and grab moments with both hands while going through the motions. That crying baby that needs your attention day and night might seem like a burdening ball of stress even while rocking her back to sleep, but in your later years you will wish with all your might you could hold her tight again, crying or not. The same can be said about screaming wives, scolding parents, brothers and sisters, etc.

Today may be the very last day of your life, so go out there and live like you mean it.

launching
We have an entry for the present participle, and another entry for the plural noun "launchings", but no entry for the singular noun. Is there any reason for this? Donnanz

 * I have added a singular noun. Equinox ◑ 15:27, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Equinox. It's a synonym of launch, more or less, except for the small boat. I may add some translations later for the nautical sense. Donnanz. 6 Oct 2013.

grace with one's presence
Admissible? --Fsojic (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * See sense 1 of grace and especially the usex. The phrase as a whole seems unidiomatic to me, even when (as it probably usually is) it's used sarcastically. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's common, but not included by any reference at OneLook:, probably because it is too specific. One reference has grace something with something "Fig. to adorn something or some place with something, especially a person's presence." I don't know whether we can make the usage clear with grammatical tags at grace. It might be worth a redirect to that sense, even from Fsojic's suggested entry. DCDuring TALK 17:28, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I added the redirect and a grammar label, but without prejudice to other possibilities. DCDuring TALK 17:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I added two more usage examples and eliminated the erroneous grammar label. The redirects won't hurt, I don't think. Graced by occurs about 30% as often as graced with, with about the same meaning and distribution of objects at COCA. DCDuring TALK 17:50, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Additional meaning of "sink"
Hi, I've been looking over the page for the word "sink" and was wondering if I've come up with another definition of the word that merits a new entry. I'm thinking of "sink" in the sense of reaching a level of despicability or moral reprehensiblity in the pursuit of a goal. For example, "I can't believe you would sink so low as to steal from your own mother" or "He sank to the level of..." etc. Does this fit into any of the definitions already listed or would it be better to create a new (figurative) entry?
 * I think we're missing that sense. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:37, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If someone could add the entry, that would be wonderful! I'm not familiar with using a wiki myself. 203.219.50.51 10:03, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Now added. (There's a similar sense at stoop.) --Avenue (talk) 15:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

saut-de-loup
Good Morning. What is the word in English for the gadget or device used for securing the movable grill placed on saut-de-loupin residential buildings?
 * I would need a picture to be able to help. It would seem unlikely that such a device would be used only for that narrow purpose, rather than for securing metal gratings or grills in many applications. DCDuring TALK 14:57, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

allochero
The Italian Wiktionary defines this word as the "correspondent of allophone in sign languages". Does such a thing actually exist? Or is this complete rubbish? (the word seems very rare) SemperBlotto (talk) 10:52, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

 * It exists. Where spoken languages have phonemes (where phone = sound), sign languages have cheremes (χείρ = hand). So the spoken allophone corresponds to the signed allocher, which in Italian is allochero. —Stephen (Talk) 15:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

 * OK. I'll add the Italian, and leave you to define the English. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:13, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Latvian Phrasebook sveiks
A little question: I wanted to upgrade the coverage of the Latvian adjective sveiks “safe (from danger, as in "safe and sound").” But since this word is, by itself, the Latvian equivalent of "hello!", it is already listed as part of the (quite incipient) Latvian phrasebook. My question: if I edit this word and add more information, should I delete the ==Phrase== heading? Because the "hello!" examples can perfectly well be listed under ==Adjective==... Also, it strikes me as weird to have both ==Phrase== and ==Adjective== in the same entry. Can an entry be a mixture of Phrasebook and Dictionary information, or should these be kept apart? Is there something in the guidelines about that? --Pereru (talk) 12:04, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know how many advocates of the Phrasebook are around, let alone folks working on it actively in any language, nor if there is any consensus to keep it. I doubt there is consensus to expunge phrasebook-only entries.
 * No matter what, I'd make this entry a real dictionary entry, which I expect is a consensus view.
 * BTW, my personal preference is to avoid using Interjection as a PoS header if another header also works. Some use Interjection for terms that stand as pro-sentences. Yuck. We should limit it to expressions that really are more expressions of emotion or have no obvious other PoS, eh? DCDuring TALK 14:35, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

чурка
This word is marked as feminine. It is true for value 'piece of wood', but as pejorative therm it is obviously a common-gender (g=mf) noun, mostly used as masculine. How to mark it? I have not found any information about way of specifying value-bound grammar features. Ignatus (talk) 10:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I gave it a stab. Can you check if it’s correct? — Ungoliant (Falai) 10:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

 * There is a small difference in declension. The abusive word is animate, "chock" is inanimate. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 11:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you two, that's what seems to be more correct. It also seems to me that while 'dumb' meaning is a figurative form of first item 'log', 'one from Central Asia' is derived from some spelling of türk, since old name of Russian Middle Asia is Туркестан, but I couldn't find a source on it. Ignatus (talk) 18:22, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The etymology might be too racist to get a serious source on it, IMHO. Even the demonym can be used offensively, which sounds similar with "чурка". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 21:49, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

zinc
I believe that zinc is used in an adjectival sense also. Could we add this? Воображение (talk) 14:20, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You mean usage like “zinc roof”? We don’t add senses for that, because it’s simply attributive use of the noun, and most nouns can be used this way. — Ungoliant (Falai) 15:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I wonder if any English noun cannot be used attributively. I suppose that there may be some that have no attested attributive usage (because of rarity or length), but I've yet to find a noun that couldn't grammatically be so used. DCDuring TALK 19:45, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You're probably right, but rarity and length are not the only factors. For example, some nouns are unlikely to be used attributively due to by cognate adjectives; while "a U.S. senator" and "an American senator" are both obviously fine, *"an America senator" is not. (Of course, this doesn't mean that "America" can never be used attributively; if nothing else, a sandwich consisting of an enormous slice of rye bread, topped with the United States, topped with another enormous slice of rye bread, is surely "an America sandwich". At least, I think that still counts as attributive use, even though the noun that precedes "sandwich" is presumably a complement rather than a modifier.) —Ruakh TALK 07:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I see, at least in part. Thanks. I get so tired of using weasel words that I seek out opportunities to dispense with them. America seems a particularly well chosen example because it is so ambiguous that in many possible uses another, usually more specific, proper noun is superior. But one author illustrates a not-uncommon attributive use: "It doesn't solve the America problem. What worries people around the world above all else is living in a world shaped and dominated by one country — the United States." DCDuring TALK 09:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * And in that case, he couldn't say "the American problem" because that would mean something else. "The American problem" would be a problem that America has, while "the America problem" is a problem that other countries have. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:34, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

cabbing
I see this is listed only as a noun. I think that modern usage is more likely to see it used as a verb to describe the action of driving a cab for a living. As in "Since losing his job at the bank he has been cabbing for seven years." S a g a C i t y (talk) 20:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Added verb. The noun hardly seems necessary. Equinox ◑ 20:11, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Thanks, I agree about the noun. S a g a C i t y (talk) 08:31, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

truculent
We give truculent four senses. The Quotations header has 8 citations not assigned to any particular sense. This doesn't seem very desirable. Wouldn't we want to identify and clean up any of these? What can be done to make them less likely? DCDuring TALK 00:44, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it just me, or can almost all those cites be included under "eager to start a fight"? Including the cite currently under "cruel or savage" (which looks like projection as much as anything). The exception is the Dickens, which does look like an exemplar for "cruel or savage". --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 01:05, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That's the only way I would use it, too. The other senses don't fit my use of the word.
 * The trouble is that the word didn't have its contemporary sense of "belligerent" when the older cites were published. The two most recent cites fit the modern sense, I think. I'm not so sure of the others. The Tawney cite might fit with a sense like MWOnline's "vitriolic, scathingly harsh". MWOnline also has "cruel, savage" (ie, in manner) and "deadly, destructive" (ie, in result).
 * Reviewing the entry, I don't think our definitions are so good. They were probably copied from Webster 1913 and not modified. DCDuring TALK 02:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

skjóta

Can somebody help me filling the conjugation table of the Old Norse verb skjóta (to shoot), because it would be a good example for the Category Old Norse class 2 strong verbs.

This site has information about Old Norse conjugation and here you can look up Old Norse terms. Thank you for your help.--Bigbossfarin (talk) 19:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * My guess is that the past was skaut, skutu, skotinn? 22:47, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, here it is:  22:50, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help!--Bigbossfarin (talk) 19:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I tried to make the conjugation table but it is not possible to customize it to the template non-conj-strong, someone has to revise it. --Bigbossfarin (talk) 20:01, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks ok to me. I've added it to the entry. 21:21, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ I just removed one mistake in the template and now every term is equal to the education page --Bigbossfarin (talk) 20:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

butt cold
Could butt-cold \ butt cold have its place in the dictionary? Heard this while watching the '80 film Red Dawn: "Sent three whole army groups across the Bering Strait into Alaska, cut the pipeline, came across Canada to link up here in the middle, but we stopped their butt cold." I first thought that the hero meant "stopped them butt-cold" (meaning "completely"). Now I wonder whether he meant "stopped them completely" or "stopped their butts completely", i.e. whether he used the "butt-cold" as an indivisible lexical element. Anyway, "butt-cold" seems to be used to refer to the temperature: "very\utterly cold", like in "butt-naked": "The cargo hold was pressurized but not heated, which was better for the dolphins —they'd be less likely to overheat—but “butt cold” for the humans, Howard said." (Google Books) --CopperKettle (talk) 12:01, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * butt is used attributively with a variety of adjectives as a sort of negative intensifier, meaning "extremely, in a very unpleasant way". We have butt-ugly, but there are also butt-nasty, butt-stupid, butt-crazy, butt-awful, and probably others. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Should we then have an Adverb section for butt? Or is that a (near) universal capability of nouns? (There are many uses of nouns like "people smart", "ice cold" that seem "adverbial"). Or is butt different because it is used as an intensifier rather than having only its meaning as a noun?
 * To me it seems that the intensifier use warrants a new PoS. Is butt also used to modify nouns as an intensifier? I don't remember such use, but I'd be surprised if there weren't some. DCDuring TALK 14:25, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Other approaches might be a usage note or a non-gloss definition. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If the line is "We stopped their butt cold", then it seems to be sense 3 of butt, i.e. using butt metonymously to refer to the whole person. It's not in the plural because the group is being considered collectively, so they have a single collective butt. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation, Angr! Now I twig it butt-clear. (0: --CopperKettle (talk) 15:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I missed the actual quote and focused on Chuck's point. What about that? What PoS section(s) for the intensifier. DCDuring TALK 16:25, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not against some mention of the intensifier function of the word. --CopperKettle (talk) 03:45, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * By the way a German translation for butt cold is arschkalt --Bigbossfarin (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

When did the present forms of Russian быть fall out of use?
I'm not sure but I presume that in common Slavic, this verb's present tense forms were still in normal use. But in modern Russian they aren't used at all anymore. So when did this change take place? And is it known why it happened? 22:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

 * I don't have a source at the moment but it probably happened quite early, from the moment Russian was no longer Old East Slavic - in the 14th century. "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" - often considered the beginning of the Russian literature, used those, which is now considered Old East Slavic. Ivan the Terrible is said to use "азъ есмь царь" (аз(ъ) = я) but it may mean that Russians used Old Church Slavonic formally, in Pushkin's works they were not used. The archaic forms like, etc. are considered ecclesiastic, i.e. Old Church Slavonic terms used in Russian. The forms and (much less commonly)  are still in use. If I find something more definite, I'll post here. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:48, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Why are you asking? Perhaps knowing the reason will make it easier to answer? I would personally consider the archaic forms Old East Slavic, not Russian but since for Russians Old East Slavic is "Old Russian" (древнерусский язык), its words, which are out of use are considered archaic Russian words. Forms "есмь", "еси", "есмы", "есте" are used in prayers or some religious books, they are totally out of use in modern Russian (also Belarusian, Ukrainian), some people won't even understand them, like using archaic "аз(ъ)" instead of "я" (I) (cf. Bulgarian ). To emphasise "to be" in the present tense "(и) есть" is used in all persons. The form "суть" has mostly lost its plural meaning but was used, in a bookish manner till the beginning of the 20th century (noteably by V. Lenin) - it's semi-archaic in the sense of copula for the 3rd person plural. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:19, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I thought it might be useful to note in the entry, as a bit of "useful" trivia? 00:24, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

 * References (even quite old ones) on the verb indicate its archaic use, although in Old East Slavic its use was extensive and was also used to form past tense forms (similar to modern Czech and other languages). We can assume (for now, until proven otherwise) that they were not used in Russian at all, as opposed to Old East Slavic (starting from The Moscow period) but remained in some modernised forms of Old East Slavic, such as prayers. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The book on that page (1708) seems to still use it in the very first sentence, or am I mistaken? 01:05, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Which book? "The Tale of Igor's Campaign"? It's in Old Russian or "Old East Slavic". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:14, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No I mean the book about geometry. There's a picture of it there. And the first sentence reads: Geometria est' slovo... 01:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The word "есть" is not archaic and is quite in use but its usage is limited. In this case it's used for emphasis. The refrain of the Internationale in Russian starts with "Э́то есть наш после́дний и реши́тельный бой" (This is our final and decisive battle). The article "быть" doesn't mention "есть" as archaic but "есмь", "еси", "есмы", "есте". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:56, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

came
Came seems very much like a preposition in Came Christmas, I was sick of shopping. It is just like come in Come Christmas, I [am/will be] sick of shopping. Etymologically, of course, it is from the verb. It is odd to have what looks like an inflecting preposition. Does it merit a distinct etymology section? Is the PoS section OK? DCDuring TALK 16:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * To me it looks a bit like the word has been elided: when Christmas came....  is the same, but it's the participle and I think it's somewhat like an absolute construction: (with) Christmas (having) come.... The word order is different of course, but that may be an archaic feature going back to when the order wasn't as fixed as it is now.  16:30, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually now that I look at it, they also resemble subjunctives. The subjunctive was often used for hypothetical phrases, so this fits rather well. 16:33, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Wherever and however it has evolved, came seems to me to have become or to be in the process of becoming a preposition, just as come has. But Macmillan and Compact Oxford are the only two, besides us, of the OneLook dictionaries that treat come as a preposition. CGEL agrees with your analysis of it as a subjunctive diachronically, but not synchronically.
 * Once word order is changed AND words go missing, the situation seems particularly ripe for reanalysis. DCDuring TALK 17:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That's pretty neat...I would never have expected come to be viewed as a preposition, yet I can clearly see that it functions like one in this instance, and could easily be interpreted as one. However, come in Come x... is still so closely tied to (and indeed used alternatively with) When x comes... that it might always be associated with the verb...UNLESS come gets replaced by some other word and its prepositional use becomes its sole function. Leasnam (talk) 03:30, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Latvian vieglums
means in principle "lightness", "easiness", "ease"; but the English translations I was able to come up with for the examples of that word feel to me iffy; several of them seem far-fetched or not idiomatic. Perhaps some of you guys could have a look and point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance! --Pereru (talk) 17:42, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Finnish käydä
sense 5 (go to school) is always said to go with partitive, but what about the following sentence?

Olen käynyt lukion. (I checked in June 2012 and I got 180 google hits when searching only for pages in Finnish containing "olen käynyt lukion", versus 33 hits when searching for "olen käynyt lukiota".) --Anša (talk) 18:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In general partitive indicates uncompleted action and genitive indicates completed action. Thus:
 * Käyn lukiota.
 * I'm (currently) going to highschool.
 * Kävin kaksi vuotta lukiota.
 * I went to highschool for two years (but never completed it).
 * Kävin Jyväskylässä kaksi vuotta lukiota.
 * I went to highschool in Jyväskylä for two years (but never completed it there, I may still have completed it somewhere else).
 * Olen käynyt kaksi vuotta lukiota.
 * I have gone to highschool for two years. (I have done two years of highschool and may or may not continue)
 * Kävin lukion Jyväskylässä.
 * I went to highschool in Jyväskylä (and completed it).
 * Käyn lukion.
 * I will go to highschool (and complete it).
 * The current usexes are correct, but obviously the completed action usage is missing. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:39, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Appendix:Finnish_declension/paperi
Shouldn't Appendix:Finnish_declension/paperi say “Partitive ending -ta/-tä or -a/-ä” instead of the current “Partitive ending -a/-ä”? After all, the form papereja is rather rare and the form with -ta/tä is more common. Compare to Appendix:Finnish_declension/palvelu. --Anša (talk) 18:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your question. Currently we have paperia for partitive singular, and papereita and papereja for plural. They are correct. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:05, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * On the second look I understood: you don't mean the table, but the descriptive text. You are right. I have edited the text. Please check that it's clear enough now. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

vínber
I think the declension for the Icelandic entry may be wrong. All the derived terms show this as a ja-stem, but the inflection table has no j-forms. 18:31, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Fixed. BigDom 07:01, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

word you should know
Corrobory, a common spelling of corroboree is not recogoized here.

 * Thanks. I have re-added the entry. I must have made a mistake before, because I couldn't get any Google Books search results for that word before, and thought you had invented it. I can see lots of results now. Equinox ◑ 20:43, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

vertical bar
This entry has a sense line for each thing that a vertical bar denotes. That doesn't seem right. We don't have separate sense lines at water to specify "liquid for washing", "liquid for drinking", "liquid for cooking"... Equinox ◑ 21:08, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * All but the first sense should be moved to Unsupported_titles/Vertical_line. — Ungoliant (Falai) 21:21, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That seems right. Vertical bar might be attestable with all of those meanings, but only if we had a corpus of transcripts of mathematics lectures to show the claimed usages. DCDuring TALK 22:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, there are a lot of open-access papers on the web. I've added two cites and can do the rest if you like. Hyarmendacil (talk) 08:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But these cites don't contain uses of the expression "vertical bar", they contain uses of an actual vertical bar in mathematical expressions. This would be like adding a real dog (or a photo thereof) to the entry "dog" and then saying it was a quotation: a confusion between signifier and signified. Are there any examples with the expression "vertical bar" itself? --Pereru (talk) 13:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I definitely support moving the Math senses to Unsupported_titles/Vertical_line in lieu of an actual entry at |. Of course there are no cites of the actual text 'F vertical barundefined' - that would be silly. The citations I've added are citations of | to denote its uses. If DCDuring is asking whether there are any oral citations of mathematicians saying "F vertical bar x = 0" as opposed to "F evaluated at x = 0" then that is a tricky question; but it doesn't influence which entry the info comes under, because orthographically it is always |.
 * Whatever mathematicians do, don't linguists give precedence to the spoken language? " | " is Translingual. "Vertical bar" is English. Other tongues may use other names for it, which is why, like other Translingual terms Unsupported_titles/Vertical_line needs a translation table. DCDuring TALK 12:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Right. Procedurally, we could RfV each specific sense and hope we get reasonable citations for at least the one sense.
 * The entry has been here since 2005. It must have been intended to be in lieu of a proper entry for " | ", just as our "unsupported title" entry is now. Our current entry doesn't work with " | " in the search box either, so we still haven't reached the objective we should want. Maybe someday. DCDuring TALK 13:22, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added a "See also" for Unsupported_titles/Vertical_line in case someone comes to this entry in search of this kind of content. Wouldn't such "See also"s be appropriate from all the most likely searchable terms that correspond to our unsupported title entries? DCDuring TALK 13:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Presumably vertical line could be either a hard redirect or a soft one. Any preferences? DCDuring TALK 13:35, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

 * The two example quotations are ridiculous. Citations are meant to be useful and helpful, and giving random examples from advanced research instead of very elementary notations found in high school texts is just plain rude.

 * If you Google "vertical bar" Hilbert or "vertical bar" Banach, for example, you will come up with lots of mathematical texts that use the actual English phrase. They look pretty dodgy to me, like stuff written by someone using 1970s typesetting software that were published in an unreviewed abstracts collection.  Some of it seems to be press releases.

 * You will also come up with examples of mathematical texts where the phrase "vertical bar" is being used to clarify notation. See, for example, .  Note the instance here: "Dirac has used a vertical bar to denote an inner product." which reads like synonymy of "vertical bar" with "inner product", but of course is not, since Dirac actually used the symbol.

 * I have certainly seen over the years notation spelled out in text for extra clarity. Some have become completely standard, like "dot product".  The most common examples after this are probably "star" and "big-O".  Thus, one might write "star-algebra" instead of "*-algebra", just so the symbol does not get lost, or write "f is big-O of everything in A", because "O" by itself seems to beg for clarification.  Among set theorists, the standard use of lightface versus boldface fonts for certain classes has led to "lightface" and "boldface" taking on a precise mathematical meaning. Choor monster (talk) 14:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You might be the right guy to get this cleaned up across the board. I'm thinking that we would want the detail to be entirely at the funny-typography entries. Entries for the common names would usually have as definiens only the funny typography (wikilinked, if necessary to the appropriate unsupported title entry). In the cases where a specific application of the verbalized typography (eg, big-O) would be attestable, we could have that specific definition (or not, as the specific definition at the funny-typography entry would only be a click away). DCDuring TALK 15:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Oops. OK, I'm probably going to carry this out, but in slow motion.  As a rule, I normally only edit outside my areas of professional specialty.  But yeah, the linguistics of mathematical text has always been on the bizarre side.

 * For the record, I consider the examples I found with Google that I described above as 1970s typesetting failure as nothing but misspellings, as pointless as citing an ALL-CAP RANT from Usenet as a "variant". Choor monster (talk) 17:20, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The Dirac-related citation looks like a mention. The low typesetting standard of a citation would not matter. The print is valuable as a durable record of speech. We accept non-standard speech and its written record all the time.
 * Symbols add a layer of conceptual difficulty, but mathematical symbols are just a bit more complicated than some of the other symbols we have. DCDuring TALK 20:10, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The Dirac-related citation was, to me, not really even a mention, let alone a use, of the mathematics, although it superficially reads that way. That was my point.  The meaning of "vertical bar" in that citation was to the symbol, despite the fact that the sentence seems to be saying that its meaning was the actual mathematical operation. This is because Dirac did not use "vertical bar", he used the actual symbol.
 * In referring to the low typesetting standards, I'm claiming something akin to dord:, which was a published accident and remains all-mention, or asdf:, which seems to have mutated into a use. (Where did the citations go!?)  That's why I'm cool with the examples I mentioned: people really do write "big-O" for an explicit use.  I have my doubts about anyone ever referring to Dirac brackets by saying, "now we vertical-bar x with y", but I've heard "now we bracket x with y".  But I would never cite a typesetting failure for CFI purposes.  That's like the original dord:.
 * While I'm here, let me mention the #1 spelled-out symbol of all: pi:.
 * We're heading into some interesting linguistic issues here. I highly recommend .  Not exactly bed-time reading. Choor monster (talk) 15:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I doubt that we have to address the philosophy of it. Which should come as a great relief to most. Either it is, on the face of it, attestable in a particular or it isn't. The conventional written representation of the conventional sounds made to communicate verbally the conventional symbol generally or its use in a specific way to conventionally reference a particular mathematical entity, relationship, structure, or operation seems entry-worthy to me, just as the conventional symbol is. I don't at all see how it could be an error. For it to be an error it would have to be an error to attempt to verbally communicate something mathematical that contained it. Then such errors are being committed in classrooms and on videos regularly. DCDuring TALK 18:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Whether we explicitly address the philosophy of it or not doesn't affect that we are taking a stance that weighs in favoring one theory more than others. In an ideal world, philosophers of language would take note and cite us as empirical evidence for how language really works.  Typically they wade in like economists who tell us commoners that we're spending our money all wrong, no wonder it looks like there's a recession. I think it more fun to be consciously aware of these issues—the book I linked to makes sure you know how baffling they can be.
 * My point about typesetting errors is that I simply cannot recall or even imagine a situation where someone reads out loud a Dirac bracket and says "x vertical bar y", except when he is dictating, at which point the meaning of "vertical bar" is the symbol, not the operation. The reading of what I found on Google is simply there was a word-processing cock-up.  The stuff was typed up with the intent the phrase "vertical bar" would be converted into the symbol. Just like "D. or d.–density" was written up on an index card way back when and ended up as "Dord–density".  Go through manually typeset material and you'll eventually find all sorts of obvious gibberish.  If it's an edition of Shakespeare does that mean one instance passes CFI?  I hope not!  Some of it, like repeated letters or asdf patterns were just tests that made it into print now and then.  The New Yorker used to have a field day with some of these blunders.  I recall one famous mathematician who always called xi's zeta's.  You had to pay attention very carefully during lecture.
 * In brief, the proper interpretation of the meaning of "vertical bar" in these cases really is the symbol, and then the unseen symbol is what has the meaning of the operation.
 * In contrast, people say "big-O" or "star-algebra" out loud all the time, and it sometimes get written down that way deliberately. Wiktionary has this for "pi" and "dot product" (which, by the way, probably deserves a sense referring to the symbol itself, in addition to the concept).  I see people have put this into practice in programming: sense 9 of pipe: refers to the symbol, while sense 10 refers to the concept, although there is no indication that the two are tightly related.  Missing is the Lisp/AI community's one-time(?) tendency to use "-p" as a suffix converting a verb into a yes-or-no question, the classic instance being Minksy's "split-p soup?".  These all, with proper citations, belong in Wiktionary.
 * I hope you see why I want to stay away from my professional expertise here? The linguistics is seriously abnormal.  To give a non-Wiktionary challenge: some journals insist on proper punctuation at the end of a displayed equation, others prohibit it.  I think the proper response of a comprehensive, scientific, evidence-based English grammar to this is to simply wave it off as as a translingual curiosity. Choor monster (talk) 20:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

rolling introduction and Google books
This isn't really a Wiktionary issue, but maybe someone here knows more than me. I added rolling introduction with three citations. I especially liked the first citation from a 1972 US Congressional hearing. Google Books only shows a snippet view, which was enough to get a citation. Of course, the text is public domain. (I am vaguely aware of Carl Malamud's work.) Any suggestions? Choor monster (talk) 15:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

 * If you Google a phrase in quotation marks, like "you are not going to do them all at once. I wouldnt say tracked air cushion vehicles", you can often get more text from Google’s excerpts, in this case from multiple copies of the original source. At least in this case I am certain that there is no problem from using google as a source, because they cannot copyright the public-domain government text. It is always a good idea to either confirm from multiple sources, or view a scanned preview from the original, in case Google’s text has OCR errors or imprecisely reproduced punctuation, etc. —Michael Z. 2013-10-15 20:08 z

 * I tried that kind of trickery, but I got nothing new and I gave up quickly. Since the part I could see made sense I let it go and decided to grumble.  Thanks!

 * Incidentally, rolling introduction seems like a sum-of-parts phrase, with a simple use of rolling, sense 2. I think the citation would be useful in that entry. —Michael Z. 2013-10-15 20:10 z

 * It's not SOP because sense 1 covers a lot of ground. So does introduction:, for that matter: The acrobats began their act with a rolling introduction.  Note that I actually defined rolling introduction: using rollout:, not introduction:, for precisely this reason, and not for terminological similarity, suggestive of an etymology.

 * As it is, it only looks like SOP because I edited it to look SOP, but not on purpose. I introduced yesterday the second sense of rolling:, for blackout: and brownout: only.  (It's been a Usage Note/Example I introduced in brownout: a few months ago.)  Today I thought of the use with introduction:, but it seemed kind of vague in my memory, so I went looking and found a few citations.  I put them in, and decided it really should be its own separate entry.

 * Part of the oddness here is that this use of rolling: does not seem to actually be a participle for any use of roll:. Choor monster (talk) 20:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Wildcard asterisks are your friend when searching Google Books. Stick one at the beginning of a snippet of text surrounded by quotations to see what precedes it or at the end to see what follows it (e.g. "I wouldn't say tracked air cushion vehicles*"). Do this multiple times and you can patch together a complete sentence. You just can't do a lot of searches using advanced operators in a row, or Google will think you're a bot and temporarily flag your IP, requiring you to complete a Captcha every time you do a search for the next few hours. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 01:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

reproduktors
This Latvian word will have (when I create it) two basic meanings: "loudspeaker" (as a synonym of already extant skaļrunis) and "animal farm for producing animals; reproductive farm" (if this is the right English rendering of the idea). Now, the two senses are so divergent that I'm wondering if this is one word or two (homophony vs. polysemy, the eternal yin-yang of semanticists...). If they are two words (one of my dictionaries indeed treats them as such), how should I format the entry? I can't have two Etymology sections, because the etymology is the same; they're just different developments from the idea of "reproducing" (animals vs. sounds). I can't use two different part-of-speech headings either because the word is a noun in both senses. But I don't think I should list the two meanings simply as two numbered senses one under the other -- they seem to me too different, too divergent; two words, that is, not two senses of the same word. What do people here usually do with such cases? --Pereru (talk) 20:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't think of any alternative to listing the two senses one under the other if they really have identical etymology. In English "reproductive farm" would not be understood.  Perhaps "stock rearing farm" or "stock breeding farm"?    D b f  i  r  s   09:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * English would I think tend to use "breeding" and the word specific to the housing of the animal in question, e.g. "breeding kennels", "breeding stables". For livestock animals I think we'd either just use "farm" assuming that it as a normal part of the operation of a farm, or something like "pig breeders'" i.e. 'the [place of business] belonging to a person who breeds pigs'. "Stock breeders'" is probably the closest to a generic there is, but that wouldn't feel right for domestic animals. For wild animals, then this would just be done at a zoo or safari park so at most you'd have a "breeding centre" but that would be specific to each institution and not all will have something. Thryduulf (talk) 10:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The two senses seem not so unrelated. In English "sound reproduction" is a general term used in screen credits and elsewhere. See Sound recording and reproduction. DCDuring TALK 18:02, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Our entry for reproduction includes definitions corresponding to the senses discussed above and others. Reproducer, with an agent noun suffix. seems to have, in UK English at least per'' Collins, the meanings of "sound reproduction system" and "loudspeaker". I don't see those senses in other English dictionaries. DCDuring TALK 18:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Right y'all are. Thanks for the advice. --Pereru (talk) 01:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Edinburgher?
What is the correct word for a native or inhabitant of Edinburgh? (lots of guesswork on the web, but nothing really solid) SemperBlotto (talk) 14:43, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Of the various possibilities that occurred to me (Edinburg(h)ers, Edinburg(h)(i)ans, Edinbourgeois), Edinburghers gets the most hits on b.g.c (1830 hits), then Edinburgers (275, though the very first hit refers to a kind of sausage and the very second hit is in Dutch, and for all I know some are in reference to ), then Edinburghians (164), then Edinburgians (66) then Edinbourgeois (40), and then Edinburgans (1). So Edinburghers gets 3 times as many hits as all others combined. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:09, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

 * The only one I ever hear is the slang one – Edinbugger, as opposed to a Weegie. Ƿidsiþ 17:55, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

scoop
Senses 5 ("(automotive) An opening in a hood/bonnet or other body panel to admit air, usually for cooling the engine.") and 7 ("A covered opening in an automobile's hood which allows cold air to enter the area beneath the hood.") are the same, aren't they? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely. DCDuring TALK 17:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Invasiveness
I want as many English words as possible for the ideology, topic or people who are invasive and tend to butt into other people's personal lives. Pass a Method (talk) 16:02, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * busybody and buttinsky are the first two that occur to me off the top of my head. The synonyms listed at those entries are: marplot, meddler, kibitzer, nosy parker, backseat driver. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:13, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Intrusive seems more apt than invasive. See for other dictionaries' synonyms, especially, MW, WordNet, and "Dictionary/thesaurus". DCDuring TALK  16:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
 * gatecrasher, interloper, persona non grata are some found at "Dictionary/thesaurus" at . DCDuring TALK 17:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Some verbs: pry, interfere, stick one's oar in, stick one's nose into. Equinox ◑ 19:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

all vs. everything
Why is it that the part-of-speech heading for all says it's a noun (when it has the sense of "everything", e.g., "she gave him all"), but the part-of-speech heading of everything says it's a pronoun? If the words are synonymous and interchangeable, as the examples suggest, shouldn't they belong to the same word class? --Pereru (talk) 01:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

 * "he is alive", "she is alive", "they are alive", "everything is alive", !"all is alive". --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 01:10, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * But all are alive does work, and don't forget about all is well. And you can say all has been drained, with a singular verb, when referring to water. So "all" has more of a mass-like meaning whereas "everything" is more collective or iterative, referring to groups. 01:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The noun senses of all are special senses, one being justified principally by an old use in the plural. "All is well" is a fixed expression, not useful for determining word classes.
 * The relevant comparison is between all and everything. CGEL calls some uses of all "fused head constructions" with the following examples:
 * Her friends have got their results: all (of them) have passed. [partitive]
 * All here admire her. ["all people"]
 * All I want is peace and quiet. [needs a dependent, except in fixed expressions]
 * I think our treatment of all is meant to follow something like CGELs.
 * CGEL calls everything a compound determiner, not a pronoun, but, for some reason we do not call it a determiner. DCDuring TALK 02:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, I don't think all and everything are completely interchangeable.
 * all can refer to people, whereas everything cannot (everyone is used instead)
 * all agrees with either a singular or a plural verb; everything only with a singular
 * everything can be modified (postpositively) by adjectives, all cannot.
 * I hope I have this right. I doubt that it is a complete list of differences. DCDuring TALK 02:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Fused head determiners, fused-head adjectives, pronouns, nouns, certain clauses can all be used as nominals. I'm sure I could find realistic examples for every pair of these types, in which members of the classes can substitute for each other. That is not sufficient to put them in the same word class. DCDuring TALK 02:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Frequency lists/Turkish
Is this list based on anything? We received a question about this via OTRS (ticket 2013101610019309). Also the comments at the talk page make sense to me. Jcb (talk) 11:01, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Who knows? It was added as the last edit of a user who only made twenty edits in all (two of them deleted). Chuck Entz (talk) 00:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * So maybe it should be nominated for deletion? (I don't know the local procedure for deletion nominations). Jcb (talk) 15:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

bitch
This entry has a problem. See senses 1 and 2. Sense 2 is "despicable or disagreeable, aggressive person, often female" — fine, that covers the insult. But then sense 1 is "an insult that implicitly claims the victim's sex is female, and therefore the victim is understood to have supposedly undesirable female characteristics". Firstly, that sounds like some odd gender politics; is this really a separate thing from sense 2? And to define a bitch as "an insult" is clearly wrong; insults are not bitches. Equinox ◑ 23:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Would anyone see a problem with simply deleting sense 1, and moving what is currently sense 2 up to the top? I'd do it, but it's locked. I mistook how locked it was. Is that better? --Catsidhe (verba, facta) 00:16, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Certainly better IMO. I see that the questionable sense was only added quite recently. Equinox ◑ 00:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

English equivalent of French word
I can't seem to find the English equivalent of French (as in "thème latin, thème grec"; see also the French wikipedia article), the opposite translation exercise of the. Would you know about it? --Fsojic (talk) 22:35, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there isn't any? I would simply call it a translation exercise. --WikiTiki89 23:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't seem to find anything about the closest thing I can think of in English: theme paper, which is writing, not translation. It's the most important paper one writes for a class, which often serves as a sort of final exam. I vaguely remember something about theme as an older word for a class, but can't seem to find it in references at hand. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:21, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
 * After a search on Google Books for "had to write a theme", it would seem my vague recollection is faulty, but the term is real. Perhaps it just means a paper written on a theme. At any rate, we're missing the sense in our entry for theme. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:29, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

étatisme and etatisme
Both of these words seem to be glorified alternate versions of etatism. Could we just put for the definition as "alternate form of etatism" for both of these in the English section, since their definitions are quite redundant.Воображение (talk) 21:28, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. --WikiTiki89 21:36, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 03:46, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

What is a NCMO?
Question in the title. --Fsojic (talk) 23:26, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

 * Acronym finder is handy for that kind of thing. See . It's hard to help without context. DCDuring TALK 02:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

x-word euphemisms
I added r-word, and gave it three separate meanings, where "r" could stand for "retard", "redskin", or "rape". In addition, I lumped together r-word used humorously, with citations to it being used to mean "recession", "retire", and "Republican". Then I added to c-word an entry for "cancer", but soon noticed that the existing definition has 5 different words beginning with "c", including "cancer", so I deleted my separate entry.

Is it proper to lump together like this?

In the case of the well-known, standard euphemisms, it strikes me they should be distinct, but in the case of on-the-fly humor, it's better to lump them together. On the other hand, it seems that perhaps r-word meaning recession is actually common enough, and it's simply a humorous euphemism, but not taboo or vulgar. I also added "t-word" meaning tax/taxes, and labeled it as humorous. I cited an example, and frankly, I can't tell: Clinton was referring to Republicans and accusing them of stealth tax hikes, and "t-word" on his part could be snark, euphemism, a bit of both.

Suggestions? Choor monster (talk) 19:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

tequito
Is this a real Spanish word? What does it mean? It seems to be used in the names of German Mexican restaurants, snack brands (El Tequito corn chips), etc. (It's not taquito: I know that one!) Equinox ◑ 17:22, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * According to this, it means "little tick", though that may be Spanglish since the usual Spanish word for tick is garrapata. Googling for "tequito" and "el tequito" is useless because of all the restaurants etc. by that name, but googling for "un tequito" came up with a few things. It looked like some people were using it to mean techie; other uses I couldn't figure out at all. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:46, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's probably just a blend of the words tequila and the suffix -ito. --ElisaVan (talk) 21:03, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The Tequito in Hamburg is known for its drinks; it, and the various alcoholic concoctions named tequito which are mentioned on German and English webpages, probably derive their names from tequila, as Wonderfool says. As the name of tortilla chips, it may be a marketing coinage intended to seem Mexican the way Häagen-Dazs was intended to seem Danish. - -sche (discuss) 01:38, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

useless
What do you think of this? If you are ok with it, could you please move the translations of your language(s) accordingly? --Fsojic (talk) 17:09, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that if we have separate full senses in English we ALWAYS need to have separate translation tables for each sense. If folks choose not to populate them, perhaps users would assume that the translation in the first translation table covers all senses, or that the translation was missing, or perhaps they would just be confused. How do you think users behave if there are no translation tables for an English definition? What if there is a translation of one sense, but of no others? Other cases?
 * Something similar would apply to subsenses, with users facing the corresponding set of issues of interpretation, but probably to a lesser extent. As an aside: Thus it would be in the interests of those supplying translations and of users that English entries be structured as much as possible with senses and subsenses, in hopes that the English semantic sense-subsense structure had some carryover value for other languages. DCDuring TALK 17:46, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Whatever was your intention, the result is not what we should have, IMHO. Now we have two translation tables with identical headers ("pointless"). If your intention was to arrange the translation tables to the same order as the definitions, you were doing the right thing in principle. But, instead of creating a new table to the right position, you could have moved the table labeled "pointless" up to the second place and added French translation to that table. I'll proceed to edit the translation section such as I would want to see them. --Hekaheka (talk) 05:05, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I didn't even notice the translation table for pointless was already there… I just thought there was none at all and we were supposed to put the translations of the first two senses in the same one. --Fsojic (talk) 08:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

This topic seems exhausted. Striking. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect meaning of juga
I don't know if I am posting in the right place but trust that someone will tell me if I should post this elsewhere. The definition of juga is listed as: "1. Third-person singular present indicative form of jugar. 2. Second-person singular imperative form of jugar." That is incorrect. The third person singular present indicative form of jugar is juega.

 * In Catalan? — Ungoliant (Falai) 11:47, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ca:jugar gives juga for both of these. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * He probably thought it was a Spanish entry. Luckily there is a language flags gadget. — Ungoliant (Falai) 12:30, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Or you can just read the big black header on a white background saying 'Catalan'. Works for me. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

mamporrero
Do we have a word for this in English? "Person who helps horses when breeding, by placing the colt's penis into the mare's vagina." --ElisaVan (talk) 19:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe we call it "Wonderfool". --WikiTiki89 20:52, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I shall add that definition to wonderfool. Thanks. --ElisaVan (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

quinceañera
The OED emailed this out as their word of the day, and gave a pronunciation: Brit. /ˌkɪnseɪənˈjɛːrə/, /ˌkɪnsɛnˈjɛːrə/, U.S. /ˈˌkinseɪənˈjɛrə/, /ˌkɪnsɛnˈjɛrə/. First, is anyone concerned this is copyrightable? Secondly, where did this come from? We have kin.θe.aˈɲe.ɾa for our Spanish pronunciation. (If I'm not mistaken, the Mexican version would have an s instead of a θ, bringing it closer.) I'm seriously wondering where they got a British pronunciation for a Latino word, and makes me wonder if their US pronunciation was the result of actual speakers or an expected Anglization of the Spanish. (And, yes, they give the etymology as given in the Spanish entry.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:33, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The UK pronunciation looks plausible- the quinceañera is a big enough phenomenon that I can imagine they might talk about it on that side of the pond, but they do tend to be a bit careless with Spanish vowels. I'm not so sure about the US pronunciation given: I don't think I've ever heard the first a pronounced as a schwa, and I certainly haven't heard the e and a merged into a single e- but most of the people I would talk with about such things speak at least a little Spanish, so my sample may be skewed. Perhaps they extrapolated it from the UK one using general information on how US and UK correspond in pronunciation of similar words. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:19, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Living in the US, I have heard all of /ˌkɪnsɛnˈjɛrə/, /ˌkinsɛnˈjɛrə/, /ˌkɪnsənˈjɛrə/, and /ˌkinsənˈjɛrə/. I have never heard a variant a variant that clearly enunciates both the "e" and the "a" in the "ea" of the Spanish, and since I have never until now seen the word in writing I always thought of it as being spelled "quinceniera". Therefore, I am surprised that Chuck here has never heard the "e" and "a" merged. --WikiTiki89 04:44, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah. Well, I've never heard the word; I added it after seeing a number of signs offering services for weddings, parties, quinceañeras, etc. Naturally, none of those pronunciations approached this gringo's naïve pronunciation.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:09, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

confabularse
A bug came up in the template: The vos imperative form is given wrong. Any fixes for that? --ElisaVan (talk) 14:02, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Category:Chinese English
This seems to be another instance of the "Brazilian English", "American German" phenomenon. At the moment, the following words are in this (still uncreated) category: chit, chophouse, hoppo, MB, MM, People's Liberation Army, PLA, PLAN, splittist, squeeze, VOC. In some cases, is apparently being used to convey that the word is restricted to the variety of English spoken in China, which would be a correct use of the template. But do we want categories for non-native varieties of English? In other cases, is being misused to note that the thing being defined is Chinese (though the word itself, like People's Liberation Army, is not at all restricted to use in China). Can anyone think of a way of catching categories like this? Perhaps Module:labels/data could be told which languages certain regional templates were associated with, so it could flag use of those regional templates by other languages? - -sche (discuss) 17:47, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I've removed the ones which didn't seem to be restricted to Chinese English. - -sche (discuss) 17:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The trouble is that our templates/modules and contributors don't make distinctions between usage contexts/indicators and topical labels. The problem can be finessed in specific cases (as -sche is doing and I and others have done), but that simply delays facing the persistent problem, which will surface here and elsewhere until the problem is squarely addressed. As the problem has been repeatedly ducked and even worsened by veteran contributors, I don't care to bring it up myself, but I would strongly support any effort to do so. DCDuring TALK 17:30, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

French gent / gents / gens
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gents#French has 'gents'(noun f pl). I am not native French speaker, but I am sure this is incorrect. The French noun 'gent' exists only in singular form; there is a related French noun 'gens', which only exists in plural form and can be either masculine or feminine. (According to Wikipedia page, Reforms_of_French_orthography#19th_century , The French spelling reform of 1835 kept gent/gens, because it was perceived that the singular and the plural had different meanings). Maybe the 'gents' (noun f) was created automatically? I am a novice, please could an expert remove or correct the entry at 'gents' ?
 * gents is the plural of gent. gens is the word that was once a plural of gent but came to be perceived as having a different meaning. --WikiTiki89 15:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Fr.wikt considers gens the plural of gent; likewise, this Trésor and this Académie dictionary (4th edition) seem to use gens as a plural (though the Trésor also mentions gents). This Académie dictionary (8th edition) explicitly calls gens the plural of gents. It would seem we should at least add "gens", even if we don't subtract "gents". - -sche (discuss) 16:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

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

title: Wiktionary:Tea room/2013/October