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Latest comment:2 months ago25 comments9 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "(proscribed) A person who does not believe in any religion (not even a religion without gods)". This could be a really interesting sense for atheist if it exists (three cites). I'm trying to imagine how to look for it- something about communists in China throwing off Confucianism or something? Really interesting one. Don't dimiss it out of hand, because I think have seen this discussed before. I found something close to this in Taiwan:[1] "Taiwanese-American hip-hop singer Stanley Huang's (黃立行) new album has triggered protests from the religious community because the title song is about atheism, a Chinese-language daily reported yesterday.[…]It's not clear who has been offended by the tune, but most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists. A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists." Here's an atheist discussion on the topic of Taoism[2] --Geographyinitiative (talk)14:24, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
It seems to me that this is the way a lot of people use the term. Whenever you see "atheist" listed alongside "Buddhist" and "Christian," is this not the adjectival analogue to this sense? I would reword the definition, though. Rather than "A person who does not believe in any religion" (because it's not a lack of belief that religions exist), I would say "A person who is not an adherent to any religion" or something along those lines.Andrew Sheedy (talk)18:41, 10 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
For my money, the 5 cites at the citation page more clearly prove that 'atheist' can mean 'non-religious', not just 'someone who doesn't believe in a God/deity', than the 2 you've actually added as they starkly contrast atheists with religious people who don't believe in God (such as Buddhists and Jains). In any case, I don't think any of the senses we have are at all uncommon or merit the label 'proscribed' - they're just hard to disambiguate. Based on those 5 cites alone let's call thiscited. --Overlordnat1 (talk)00:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Beliefs in deities do not exist, the definitions miss what actually happens. Gods cannot be conceptualized and accordingly have no seat in anyone’s mind. Were it otherwise, we would have to speak of medically relevantdelusions (the psychological fact of persistingly adhering to an idea in spite of it being incompatible with empirical data), but the intuition here is correct that it is factually inappropriate topathologize. They are indeed indirect references to what someone, a particular group, demands in a behaviour throughout man’s life. You would be yourself anautist if you assumed that people actually mean what they claim.
Nowadays in developed countries those who continue to practice religion have a general awareness that they are phoneys, but it works. So contrary to how discourse makes it appear, choice of religion is secondary to previously fostered social convictions. The occurrence patterns of religiosity, i.e. communication that indicates allegiance to a god of choice, have beenstudied in their environments with the observation of their being “determined by the need to moralize others and ultimately by the level of social trust (i.e., what people think of others’ level of cooperation)”. Consistent with this observation, that everyone is directed towards in practice, Wiktionary already defines the particular sense of “belief” in question as “religious faith” and the sense of “faith” as “a religious or spiritual belief system”, probably not even circularily referring to the same sense of “belief”: the system character is substantial, the religiosity or spiritualityaccidental. Hence, religion is the adherence to a cult, by definition structured around supernatural entities. You can thus define an atheist as someone not believing in a cult, i.e. the value systems espoused by it. Do you really think that people are that decided about particular meaning restrictions as provided in our dictionary entryatheist when they use the word? The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive.
Consequentially,freedom of religion is incorrectly comprehended as someone’s freedom “to carry out any practices in accordance with those beliefs”, since people don’t even causally act on beliefs which don’t exist, and such specific provisions cannot be a mere general power of competence on religious grounds. So in spite of the more popular definition, containing a confused causality, the minority definition in legal literature is more accurate, according to which freedom of religion is only freedom to perform ritual acts,exercitium religionis anddevotio domestica, which has beendefined since thePeace of Westphalia. E.g. of this legal literature calling it thus restricted:Johannes Hellermann (1994) “Multikulturalität und Grundrechte – am Beispiel der Religionsfreiheit”, in C. Grabenwarter, editor,Allgemeinheit der Grundrechte und Vielfalt der Gesellschaft: 34. Tagung der Wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter der Fachrichtung „Öffentliches Recht“[3], Stuttgart: Boorberg, pages129–144;Gerhard Czermak,Eric Hilgendorf (2018)Religions- und Weltanschauungsrecht[4], Berlin: Springer,→DOI, margin numbers 131–134. While it is in any legal opinion that religion as opposed toweltanschauung is distinguished by making reference to deities or at leasttranscendental reference, so I repeat that belief in a deity is accessory to religiousness and the distinction in our entry nonsensical.Fay Freak (talk)09:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Fay Freak You write: "The proscribed sense, which comes to the mind of @Andrew Sheedy as that of the lot of people and thus attains the greatest support of usage as opposed to mention that deliberates about the term, is with this footing the only sense, the rest is theology, to be rejected as partisan instead of descriptive." Would this mean that mean that the other senses are religious terminology within Abrahamic religion? I don't propose Wiktionary should label them that way, but I feel that's what the implication of your statement would be, perhaps. --Geographyinitiative (talk)12:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
Fay Freak, I don't mean to be harsh, but can you try making your point more succinctly? Beyond the philosophically and sociologically dubious claims and the off topic commentary, what lexical point are you trying to make? I don't know what your intentions are and it could well be that you mean very well, but be aware that you often come across as just trying to show off how smart you are and it's exhausting to wade through the cruft to decipher what's of actual value for the rest of us.Andrew Sheedy (talk)18:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Andrew Sheedy: I pointed out that so-called religious beliefs or beliefs in deities are embedded in religious systems and accessory to them, which are themselves accessory to habituations of humans to social conversation and thus what persons believe in is not actually gods but religions which bring their points, about what men should do, forward by the figure of gods. If people claim they ascribe truth to their god it is actually to manipulate people in the desired direction as they believe in the commandments and recommendations structured around the particular god figure and thus ascribe truth to them;value judgments andfactual claims are treated the same in general language:Fact–value distinction. Andperlocutionaryspeech acts also use to look exactly the same as any statement. The gods a religion has are just brand variations: Like if I like to wearA Bathing Ape because of the qualities and fits and designs and flex and attitude transmitted by items etc. I believe in that ape and the A Bathing Ape® and BAPE logos and their powers—what does that even mean? It is a breviloquence for what I exactly believe in, that this is the top brand to wear. Religion is also presented in the demeanours of people like clothing, rather than being believed by anyone only in its nakedmain character. Hence “A person who does not believe in any religion” is the only definition ofatheist. Because people don’t believe in gods, as only symbolic for the complete religion. It wouldn’t make sense to say, e.g., I believe in the Christian God, without ascribing some traditional properties to him which then serve as a guideline to behaviour and then make aningroup andoutgroup; and even if you believe in only some kind of God then you have an ingroup of religious people and outgroup of nonreligious people, people see similarities between him who believes in a god and them who don’t: as this is still a distinction in how people operate, it was a requirement to be categorized asgottgläubig to bein the SS.
You could instead add a particular language rule, gloss or usage note, to “believe” as applied to the brands created by religions, but then the “true” linked in its first definition “to accept as true” has enough diverse meanings. If people believe in this or that god, they accept his system as “genuine; legitimate, valid” or “fair, unbiased”. So don’t people comprehend gods as “conforming to the actual state of reality or fact”? In spite of being meaningless due to facts and reality never being some otherworld, which itself would have to be interconnected with the real world, the idea pops in, only to reinforce the religion bymotte and bailey; in no case the alleged beliefs in gods are exclusively in them without even their religions. The quotes given for the “belief in god” senses ofatheist can easily be analyzed as “somebody who does not support, i.e. consciously furthers the practical effect of, the religion of a particular brand having the god X”. Andagnostic is someone who is doubtful or uncertain what he does of religious teachings.Fay Freak (talk)21:08, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
As Andrew implied above, this is unhelpful gibberish that just makes a long page longer. Nobody is going to get any meaningful information out of that.Equinox◑23:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Equinox: I make the claims extra-easy for Equinox: Nobody is advancing deities without religion. When arguing something with reference to gods specifically vs. their religions, adherents of them playmotte and bailey. Ultimately the goal is to further or reject a religion. If the context of quotes is broad enough we may witness this lack of the former meaning in each individual case. Why is aChristian according to Wiktionary one who “believes in Christianity”, a whole religion, or one “who seeks to live his or her life according” to the founder’s church while an atheist can be one merely rejects any deity of the religion? This distinction is contradictory and contrafactual—an atheist is conceptualized by the language community as someone who does not ascribe to a religion even if people aren’t that explicit about it as I can. People aren’t that exact and speak in figures. (Elaborated in detail.)
So we should change the definitions of “atheist” to e.g. after our current structure “A person who does not ascribe [or adheres] to a religion”; subsense strict: “one who rejects all religions”, broader sense: “one who doubts whether he should follow one”, loose sense: “one who is unaware of the reality of religions”, uncommon sense “a person who does not ascribe to a particular religion (but may ascribe to another one)”. Religions are supported like football clubs. They all believe very much in their teams. And because they have been so pervasive, we have this term for outsiders.Fay Freak (talk)09:58, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
As an aside, what the heck is going on with the translation tables (the ones that have a bunch of translations, not the ones I just added). I added a qualifier to the first one (so that it corresponds to a definition), but the second doesn't have a corresponding sense.Andrew Sheedy (talk)17:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Al-Muqanna Which other sense(s) do you think they could fall under? Note that Buddhists are atheists in the sense of not believing in a god, yet they are listed alongside atheists in a couple of the current quotes. Or do you think there's a better way of wording the definition that captures this sense better?Andrew Sheedy (talk)17:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Andrew Sheedy: Buddhists in most parts of the world do in fact "believe in deities or gods", as sense 1 has it—see the whole wp article onBuddhist deities—so listing atheists alongside Buddhists is not proof of much. Sense 1 also fits fine for the Beaman and Seidman quotes. I don't think there's anything wrong with the wording of the sense if it can actually be verified, but as far as I can tell what the quotation selection actually seems to be getting at atm is atheist meaning "an opponent of religion" (rather than just not believing), but since opponents of religion in general will almost by definition be atheists according to sense 1 anyway that's quite hard to disentangle as a separate sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)17:43, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Al-Muqanna: I see your point, though from my (admittedly limited) studies of Buddhism, my understanding is that those aren't deities or gods in the normal sense of the word, making the Wikipedia article a bit inaccurate. What the definition is trying to capture is the sense in whichatheist is often used as a religious category, on par with "Christian" or "Buddhist". Many people would find the list, "Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and people who believe in gods" a bit incongruent (one would expect "andother people who believe in gods"), but not the list, "Confucians, Taoists, Buddhists, and atheists," which suggests that for many people, "atheist" means not so much "person who does not believe in a god", but rather, "person whose religious beliefs are that there is no god". Note that the capitalization of "Atheist" in the 2002 quote supports the understanding that "Atheism" is a category of religious belief on par with Buddhism, rather than simply describing oneaspect of religious belief, which could equally be applied in the strict sense to Buddhists. You may however be right about the two most recent quotes.Andrew Sheedy (talk)18:29, 17 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hmm. This is tough, because it'sbelievable to me that some people think of the word in this way, basically as a synonym ofnone(?), but I have to agree with Al-Muqanna that few if any of the current citations support it: I see no reason to take the 1766 "a Heathen or Christian; an Atheist or religious Person, a Papist or a Protestant" cite to be using anything but the usual sense (1), and likewise nothing about the 2002 or 2014 or 2015 Seidman or 2019 cites suggests anything but the usual sense to me. It's not as if relatively aggressive atheists like Jillette think of deityless superstition as being great and only deity-having superstition as bad, so AFAICT "many atheists [are] antireligion" is an accurate statement [for at least some definitions/interpretations of 'many'] using the usual sense of the word and posing no lexical problems. I wonder if this would be better handled as a usage note, that some people think ofreligion as meaning belief in one or more gods and therefore think ofatheism andreligion as mutually exclusive...? (Or perhaps that is a cop-out and we should either cite the sense or remove it.) I note that a corresponding sense is present atatheism and either needs to be cited or RFVed. More generally, I wonder if we would be better off trying to centralize things, so eitheratheist defines itself in terms ofatheism and points people to go find all the definitions there (hopefully someone can come up with something better wordsmithed than "one whose view isatheism"!) or vice versa.- -sche(discuss)15:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm having trouble understanding it the way you and Al-Muqanna see it, to be honest. "Religious person" and "theist" are not synonyms. Some religions do not involve believe in gods (like many forms of Buddhism--just google "do Buddhists believe in a god"). So any citation that draws a direct contrast between atheism andreligion, as opposed to atheism andtheism is clear evidence (IMHO) of atheism being used to mean "a non-religious person" as opposed to "a non theist". Otherwise, Buddhism would not be contrasted with atheism, because that would be nonsensical. The citation that says "most Taiwanese are Buddhists or Daoists" but "A small number are Christians, Muslims and atheists" is nonsensical according to sense 1, since Buddhists are atheists in that sense.
The same thing applies when you have a census or a survey and it asks you your religion/religious beliefs. Often, "atheist/-ism" will be an option, alongside various religions (including Buddhism). Yet theism is justone facet of religious belief, which is not shared by all religions. So the fact that the word "atheism" is used in contrast to these means that it is used to refer to non-religiosity as a whole.Andrew Sheedy (talk)01:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
@-sche If you still don't see my point, maybe we could send this to RFD? We might have better luck achieving a consensus if we start a new discussion from a different angle. And then hopefully more people would weigh in. I'm convinced that I've cited the sense in question. Not to mention that I've encountered dozens of annoyed atheists online trying to convince religious people that sense 1 exists, not just sense 3! So I'm a bit bewildered that people are questioning sense 3.Andrew Sheedy (talk)01:22, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I doubt that "(obsolete) Absence of belief in the One True God, defined by Moore as personal, immaterial andtrinitarian (thus Islam, Judaism andunitarian Christianity), as opposed tomonotheism." is distinct from the sense right before it, viz. "absence of belief in a particular deity, notwithstanding belief in other deities",
and the sense "(sometimes proscribed) Arejection of all religions, even non-theistic ones." is just the-ism version of the-ist sense RFVed above, so has the same issues and should (AFAICT) be handled similarly, i.e. either cited or removed or perhaps made a usage note.
I don't like the wording of the "One True God" sense, and I have no reason to believe it's attested, but I think it is distinct from the "particular deity" sense because the "One True God" sense additionally requires belief in certain properties of that deity. The "particular deity" sense can't call unitarianism a form of atheism, whereas the "One True God" sense does.McYeee (talk)21:12, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Comment: FWIW, I know an agnostic on the CBB (a conlanging forum I frequent) who has his religion on his Indian ID card listed as "atheist", because "agnostic" isn't one of the options India recognizes on its ID form.Khemehekis (talk)23:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would say that censuses and ID cards worded with ‘religion’ on them with ‘atheist’ as an option are sloppily worded but nonetheless go to show that ‘atheism/atheist’ has long been contrasted in many people’s minds with religious belief, whether than involves a belief in a God or Gods or not. That fact and the great many quotes we already have on the citations pages mean that there should be absolutely no doubt that these senses exist. The only dodgy sense is the overly precise one talking about ‘trinitarianism’. Perhaps a more general sense of ‘the lack of belief in the existence of a particular God or Gods or the tenets of a particular religion’ could be supported, though such a sense would seem to me to be a pedantic way of saying that a lack of belief in a God or gods is impossible as God exists as a CONCEPT in the minds of the religious even if not in reality. I shall remove this overly pedantic and specific sense that no one likes for now but we really should’ve passed the other senses a very long time ago.Overlordnat1 (talk)07:12, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
These codes are defined as US and Canada, however there is certainly not the degree of standardization that this implies across all of these codes. Some,code blue for example, are quite standard in the US (and Canada?), but most of the others vary in meaning from hospital to hospital or at least regionally. If these are actually universal in Canada we should probably remove the US label from many of them, and either add regional meanings or define them more generically. -TheDaveRoss17:03, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I agree, but this isn't something that lexico-nerds at RFV are going to do. How can we determine the meanings from actual documentation, to be placed into References sections? (Perhaps we should call Luciferwildcat back from the ninth circle of emergency healthcare... hahah...)Equinox◑17:07, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm unsure what it would be best to do here; as you say, some so commonly have a certain consistent meaning (Citations:code blue) that it makes sense to record it, while others seem to have no set meaning (code black has four definitions so far), and yet... is that a sign we should generalizecode black's definition to e.g. "A hospital code, signalling any of various situations, varying from hospital to hospital"? Or that we should keep every attestable definition? Or that it's not idiomatic at all? Colour codes are also used by e.g. police, prison guards, and others, so is having four definitions atcode black like having definitions for every institution's meaning oflevel four (e.g. "a security level indicating a heightened threat", "a security clearance level granting access to...", "a pay grade equivalent to...", etc), i.e. something we don't/shouldn't do?- -sche(discuss)08:55, 4 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
This reminds me a bit of my idea a few years ago to create a page forcategory five, which can mean a very strong hurricane, but which must surely have quite an array of other meanings in other industries. And surely more so for the smaller numbers.—Soap—21:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
As it has had no cites for over a year, and I did not spot any (which looked to be using any of the medical senses we listed in a lexical and idiomatic way), I have deletedcode black's four definitions; I have also deletedcode pink's two definitions as uncited (when I searched, I could only find the capitalized organization name Code Pink); the other codes remain to be dealt with. Deleting any which still don't have cites would allow us to sidestep the issue, though it would not reallysolve the issue.- -sche(discuss)15:45, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Code white exemplifies what OP (and I) said, that most of these have no set meaning, asthese books use it for disparate things. Andthis definescode silver as an active shooter, not merely a weapon being seen.- -sche(discuss)15:51, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I couldn't find any relevant uses of "code orange" in the sense we gave (and can find mentions of a variety of other definitions); it's been uncited for over a year, so:RFV-failed. It's the same with "code grey": ofthese four uses-and-mentions, one means fog, one means weather (such as a hurricane), one means "plane wreck, earthquake, bombing" and one is opaque. As OP said, most of these seem to have no set meaning.- -sche(discuss)02:51, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
That doesn't surprise me. 'Lay' meanings seem easier to attest as idiomatic / lexical than the various meanings that hospitals have officially assigned to their 'code red', 'code pink', 'level 3', 'level 4', etc. Indeed, thecites of "code red" in reference to hospitals that I can find often highlight how many different definitions it has, e.g. among EMTs vs hospitals, or among different hospitals, since some seem to use it in the way that led to the usual lay meaning, of a critical emergency. BTW, is anyone familiar with sense 2, "(Canada, US) An extrajudicial punishment."?- -sche(discuss)08:01, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is the top sense onUrban Dictionary, where a much-upvoted entry from 2017 claims the word was coined by Jackie Christie from the US TV showBasketball Wives.Here is Jackie herself giving a definition. Looking on Google, a better definition would be "a conversation, in the context of Jackie Christie's participation (or lack thereof) in said conversation"...This, that and the other (talk)02:40, 18 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
There’s a YouTube clip of ‘ponderosa’ being said in that dreadfulBasketball Wives show here[6] and searching for ’have a ponderosa with’ produces two Instagram hits and one comments section of a website (lipstickalley.com) that no longer seems to contain the comment in question. I could also find two hits on FB where people talk about BW using the word in that context but that’s it (though your link to ‘Jackie herself’ defining the term doesn’t work for me). Probably too rare and not durably archived enough to pass.Overlordnat1 (talk)06:55, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the variation in the Latin wording and the definition suggest it SOP, sodelete. (GermanUnwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht is idiomatic colloquially with marked syntax in contrast.) Why would it be a dictionary entry from jurist usage? The law determines what “excuses” in detail. There can only be an idiom with those that are remote from legal knowledge, but they will hardly say in English these Latin words, meaning that no quotes will suffice.Fay Freak (talk)21:14, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
It's a common legal maxim which will be found from time to time in English legal texts, but I don't know if that's enough to justify having a separate English header for the term. —Sgconlaw (talk)21:53, 12 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think our current treatment of Latin expressions - to the extent that we have a coherent policy - is not optimal. That an expression is used in running text in English (even unitalicised) is not enough; it's still Latin, and felt as such. Imo we should only have a Latin header, and maybe create a new section where we'd mention in which modern languages the expression is frequently used. It'd be a bit comparable to the descendants section.PUC –12:23, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Any "short" expression derived from Latin can readily become part of the English lexicon. One issue is how "short". Four syllables seems to beper say sufficiently short. Eleven seemsipso facto too long. Another question is whose lexicon: the man in the street or the men talking in a courtroom? That English has the adageignorance of the law is no excuse, which we might include as a proverb or merely as a collocation, means that there is little reason for normal speakers to include this expression in their lexicon. But those in the legal profession may include Latinate expressions to signal to their clients, opponents, and judges their superior education. However, only occasionally and whimsically do we include expressions solely for their pragmatic function.DCDuring (talk)17:14, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Most people believe that ignorance of the law is a pretty good excuse, were it not for the existence of the oft-repeated adage. SoPitude is why we would only include it as a proverb or as a collocation (probably underignorance).DCDuring (talk)18:29, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" could definitely be considered a proverb but the meaning is so transparent I'm not sure what the benefit of an entry would be. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)19:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
The law itself does not take the expression too literally: "TheLambert decision explicitly recognized this fair notice requirement as an exception to the general rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse". "The U.S. Supreme Court, however, by a 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Douglas, held that Ms. Lambert's due process rights were violated because she was not notified about a registration requirement that she could not be reasonably presumed to know existed. In this case, ignorance of the law was a legitimate defense."
IOW, the US Supreme Court believes that the principle expressed does have significant exceptions, ie, that it is not literally true.DCDuring (talk)22:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
To be picky about it, I thinkheartburn is the discomfort or pain resulting from an annoyance. IOW, I don't think it is substitutable for any definition ofannoyance, at least in most of the citations.DCDuring (talk)18:42, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Seems perfectly substitutable to me except for "have heartburn" (since one would simply say "I'm annoyed" rather than "I have annoyance"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)19:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Surprisingly, no OneLook dictionary has a figurative sense forheartburn. Perhaps OED does. The base sense refers to discomfort and not cause. Do our definitions ofannoyance cover both the feeling and the cause? They do so imperfectly at best. I don't think we usually are willing to rely of users being able to infer meaning from metonymy. If we would our polysemic entries could be much shorter.DCDuring (talk)19:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
I disagree with the plausibility of the distinction you're trying to draw, I think. The metaphor drawn by this use is between the psychological state of annoyance (which is akind of discomfort) and the physical discomfort felt from heartburn (another kind). It's not at some remove from the state itself. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)19:28, 3 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
That is not morphologically a suffix (I see it's your entry): I think that was created in error. But it's another story. In general, entire words attached to other words are not "suffixes": a greenfly is not "green" suffixed with "-fly", but rather a compound. Your "-pilled" is more likely something like "red pill" + "-ed".Equinox◑05:41, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Ehh... I remember this discussion coming up before at some point in connection with blends (last year?). I'm not sure what you mean by morphologically not a suffix. The dividing line between a word that forms compounds and a lexicalised suffix is fuzzy in general.-gate for political scandals is definitely a suffix now and not just a novel recoinage fromWatergate every time it's used, for example, but that was a process. The citations already at-pilled suggest a similar process going on, and I've personally seen stuff like "brunchpilled" without any intention of referring to a "brunch pill" or a generic verb "to brunchpill". Note that they're adjectives—they take "more", "very", predication "is ...". So-pilled is probably fine as is IMO. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)09:18, 23 August 2023 (UTC)Reply
Definition needs work: currently, "a reporter or journalist whose viewpoints change frequently". What's whorish about that? I don't think we mean someone who learns new things (e.g. science journo) and adapts their views. Surely it must mean one who doesn't properly study and respect their subject, or is amenable to bribes, etc.Equinox◑13:29, 19 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
The current definition line might refer to the analogy between changing viewpoints and sexual partners. However, I don't think the quotations atCitations:whorenalist support such a definition. I am not sure whether it can be considered synonymous topresstitute or just a general derogatory term for a journalist disliked by the speaker.Einstein2 (talk)19:36, 25 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This entry needs some help; if we can cite it it might be better classed as historical; otherwise moved to Middle English. OED has one non-dictionary ModE quote from 1598 inStow'sA Survey of London:
The charter of King William the Conqueror, exemplified in the Tower, englished thus: "[...] Know ye that I do giue vnto God and the church of S. Paule of London, and to the rectors and seruitors of the same, in all their lands which the church hath, or shall have, within borough and without, sack and sock, thole and theam, infangthefe andgrithbriche [...]"
I have put a selection of modern English quotes on the citations page. It looks to me like Stow is referring to the fines arising from enforcing this law (definition 2).Kiwima (talk)23:06, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
The phrase may seem odd to most people outside Norway, but various variations of the phrase have been used in non-racing contexts by a fair few people:
To the extent I rapidly learned the RFV system this morning, I have now alsocited 3 quotes on-page instead of the previous 1, with the 2 new ones being from English-language pages as well.Dandelion Sprout (talk)08:24, 16 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't go as far as to call it a simple meme, but even I admit it's hard to describe the exact meaning of it. The core meaning fits very well with "easier said than done", but with a kinda playful tone, sometimes (but not always) one that makes fun of/with broken English or an undertone of "If you use this phrase, you're from Norway". I suppose I can agree it's an in-joke, but it's an in-joke that around 3.5mill people are into (of a population of maybe 5.2mill).Dandelion Sprout (talk)13:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense: 2 mathematics definitions defining the supposed adverb more as an adjective (or perhaps just hand-waving instead of defining), without cites, without references, without any support from any OneLook source, with not very helpful usexes:
Thanks for the ping,DCDuring. I've added two cite for each sense and don't have time at the moment to add a third. (Nor to check the CFI to see whether my cites are good ones. As you're no doubt aware, I've been fairly inactive of late; in particular, I haven't kept up with changes to the CFI.) But there are plenty more cites in math papers for each sense, and neither should be deleted.—msh210℠ (talk)20:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
@User:Msh210 Thanks for responding. You'll be getting the occasional ping for undocumented or incomprehensible (to me) math definitions. Some definitions seem to rely too much on specialized definitions of highly polysemic terms. In the aboveindex is an example. The others seem okay. I don't know whether thisindex def. covers it: "A raised suffix indicating a power". Even if it does, it does not nicely substitute into the definitions given.DCDuring (talk)20:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:7 months ago7 comments3 people in discussion
This might be unconventional, but I want to request verification of a specific citation for this word. I saw that the OED cites Sir Walter Raleigh'sHistory of the World, the same as we do, but the OED gives the quotation as "Before the vse of the Compas was knowne, it was impossible tonauigate athwart the Ocean." Perhaps an older version of the OED entry quoted this sentence with "vagitate", but it was since corrected? In any case,the scan of this book at archive.org clearly shows "navigate", which also seems to make a bit more sense in the context. But I want to make sure I'm not missing something that might save this quotation. If anyone wants to look into the other citations, that would also be welcome, since they're pretty obscure and I'm not entirely sure Ian Edge is using it in the same sense or even with the same etymology as the others. Some are also missing page numbers, which would be nice to have.--Urszag (talk)02:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I saw something similar when I filedthe RFV forendizen. During the preparation of the NED (OED 1st edition) someone must have misread, miswrote or mistypedendenizen asendizen, and the NED ended up with a hapax entry for this verb, which persists in OED Online to this day. However, OED Online has apparently undergone an automated (?) process of updating quotes to reflect the original texts, so that the only supporting quote for theendizen entry actually uses the wordendenizen. The same thing has probably happened withvagitate. Unlikeendizen, though, this term has a more plausible etymology, which means others have taken it up.
I removed the Raleigh and checked the other quotes:
The Beckett is a legitimate quote, but I've got no idea what he's talking about. The quote certainly doesn't unambiguously support the given definition, I'll say that much.
The 1982 text uses "vagitating" but this was changed to "vegetating" in a 2003 republication. The 1982 text uses quotation marks to imply this is a quote from Marx, but the 2003 edition removes the quotation marks.
The 1987 text seems legitimate. Given the similar subject matter and point of view expressed, I had a suspicion that the 1982 and 1987 texts may have been by the same author, but alist of texts by D.N. Dhanagare doesn't mention any work on Buddhism.
The law text is a little baffling. Here is the broader context:
Paul Matthews complains that when the Cayman Islands legislature defines a form of ownership from which humans are absent, it is trying to "Call Sunday, Monday". Anthony Duckworth sums up his rebuttals in a final salvo:
"We will not mind greatly if Mr Mathews says that a STAR trust is as anomalous as a charitable trust, as strange as a discretionary trust, as weird as an unadministered estate, as bizarre (or nearly so) as a trust for unborn persons."
These are all instances when English chancery doctrine would allow that some or all of the equitable ownership has disappeared into thin air. Duckworth's point is that the STAR trust merely generalises these English instances. The crucial difference, however, is that in all but one of these English situations, the equitable ownership reappears within at most eighty years: the discretion is exercised, the estate is administered, the unbornvagitate. The exception is the English charitable trust which, like the STAR trust, can exist for ever.
Here, the word seems to be intended to mean "be born".
I would note that these citations were probably obtained from Quiet Quentin using the default Google Books metadata.PSA to RFVers: please check the metadata before adding a quote - if you don't, you are liable to (a) get the publication years totally wrong, (b) attribute the work of acontributing author to theeditor of an edited book, or (c) miss out the author info entirely when it is findable with reasonably easy searching. I know all this takes a little more effort, but it makes the dictionary that much better.This, that and the other (talk)06:16, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
I agree that the "Marx had characterized" cite is most likely a misspelling/typo of a different word and not this word (like e.g. the few books that havereconditing as an error for other editions'reconditioning); "stagnant, unchanging, vegetating" makes more sense there than "[they are] stagnant, unchanging, not stagnant, and changing positions a lot". The "unborn" cite seems to intend a connection tovagina ("come out of the/a vagina"?) rather than tovagus, and E. Barry,Samuel Beckett and the Contingency of Old Age (2016), takes Beckett's use to be connected to connected to birth too ("just as Malone fears that he may have “vagitated [given the birth cry] and not be able to bloody rattle”"), so I think we are left with just one cite that is plausibly for the given etymology/meaning, but two cites that might support a "give the birth cry"-related meaning, as it happens.- -sche(discuss)15:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
@-sche @Urszag It occurred to me that, since Beckett's work was translated from French, the word's sense can be pinned down more firmly. According to[7] (you may need to log into Internet Archive and borrow the book for 1 hour), this passage is a translation of "Avoir vagi, puis ne pas être foutu de râler". The wordvagir(“to wail, as a baby”) has been translated asvagitate to maintain the resemblance tovagina. We are to linkvagitate tovagitus andvagient, and ultimately to Latinvāgiō.
The "My head spins like the vagitated gears of a drunken kaleidoscope" cite is ... odd. I confirmed that the edition Google has digitized does have the italicized wordvagitated spelled sic. On one hand, is this an error for another word likegoogle:"agitated gears" or "variable gears"? On the other hand ... the text is odd — the next sentences are "Triptic may be an annex, albeit a distant one, of the Alamüte-Megalopolis, but I'm uncertain everywhere ... an empty vessel ... a king's ransom ... a three-legged bitch. The Telos-5200 cruises down the lining of my metal-trousers, conforming to the bent posture of my leg and fastening down its length. It sticks into my groin on recharge like I always imagined hot pokers might feel if carried on the wings of bluebottle flies that live in the folds of an octogenerian's crotch. As I droop in the setting sun, dreaming of the Big Dipper, the ovoid Pox Roman burns into my retina, a memory, recalled from glimpses of recalled posters. Aries is ascendant now, and like Moses, I feel horns mistranslated on my head. The dim, incommoded peacekeepers barter their way around the grafts and chasms that form the looped, meandering people-weave outside "The Tertiary Panel" maingates. In a sense they appear human, but then, in a sense, doesn't everyone ..." — so it's possible the author did pick the ghost word out of a list of obscure words, and while we might need to tweak the definition because "the wandered gears" doesn't sound right, "the randomly moved gears" works, I guess. If this is real, it's apparently a ghost word (originated as an error in theOED).- -sche(discuss)20:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Sense 1 is firmly attested. Sense 2, however, has only 2 cites. This is somewhat problematic, as Samuel Beckett's work is quite prominent and the entry might not be properly comprehensible if sense 2 is not included. I want to leave this open to see if any further evidence can be found for sense 2, but also to decide how to present the entry if sense 2 is not attestable.This, that and the other (talk)03:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The etymology for it seems to be unsupported by the major dictionaries (and one newssite) and the link used to justify the change the etymology is now a dead one.A westman (talk)19:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
The bird sense is definitely an alternative form ofbunting. Some of the birds called buntlings in 19th century books wouldn't be called buntings today, but that says more about changes in ornithology than in the language.Chuck Entz (talk)01:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
For the most part I could only find it in old texts (17th century) and dictionaries on GB for early English and "Scottish" (that's what the book called what is presumably Scottish English or Scots)
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion
I think sense 2 atsobby is actually a mistake forsoggy. Can we find cites that unambiguously demonstrate this meaning? If not, do other dictionaries, particularly the OED, list this meaning? Even if our cites are actually mistakes by the authors, I'd be satisfied that the word does exist if we can at least find it listed in another dictionary.—Soap—20:39, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for adding a third cite, Ioaxxere, but how do we know what it means? I was originally thinking of making this a Tea Room post instead of an RFV, because I could see myself looking at a dozen cites and still not being satisfied, since few if any of these cites are going to use the word and then define it for the readers.—Soap—21:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
OED has only the senses "to look at from below" (the wording of our sense 2 needs checking based on any available cites - looking underneath a thing is not the same as lookingatthat thing from below) and "to fail to notice as a result of looking too low" (both direct parallel tooverlook). The other senses are very questionable.This, that and the other (talk)07:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "that tends to accumulate in the adipose tissue of the body", as distinct from sense 1 "Soluble in lipids, and in organic solvents / dissolving easily in fat".PUC –11:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "(derogatory) A mercenary; a regular or irregular soldier used to oppress a minority, such as in anti-Jewish pogroms; a police officer, particularly one used in strike-breaking; a violent thug." Removed out of process by IP inSpecial:Diff/77847941. —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/22:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Rfv-sense: "Anadditional monetary payment charged for a service or good, especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost."
Underlined portions were added is two anonymous edits in late 2022 and seem unwarranted. I also doubt that the termfee is used for charges for goods rather than for professional services or forprivileges. I have added two definitions similar to what other dictionaries have as their only senses, which fit with my experience.DCDuring (talk)04:49, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
It seems okay to me: you might book a flight and have smaller additional charges added to it, like a "late booking fee" or a fee for an optional in-flight meal.Equinox◑20:26, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
But "late booking" is certainly a privilege. Maybe "in-flight meal" too, though I would like to see examples of that usage. I'm sure we could find instances that fit quantitatively, just as I could find many instances that fit the definition ofmedium-sized as "of the smallest available size of a packaged good".DCDuring (talk)21:56, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
BTW, Wiktionary's definitions forfee are featured at“fee”, inOneLook Dictionary Search., with the definition in question offered at the top of the list. I'm so proud. Not.DCDuring (talk)22:00, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
"What was the fee for your flight?" sounds weird to me; I would expect "cost/price of". Fees are typically small/optional "bolt-ons". Maybe it's British usage.Equinox◑22:05, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
To me too. Also, I don't pay afee for my groceries, car, gasoline, etc. Is a flight a "privilege"? Are admission fees all small bolt-ons? License fees? Professional fees certainly aren't. I had added a few collocations for the two definitions I added. Economists call everything aprice, not afee,charge,tip,gratuity,toll. But I can't speak to what usage is outside US off the top of my head.DCDuring (talk)23:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also, the use ofcost in "especially one that is minor compared to the underlying cost" goes against the grain for me. Even worse, the NP "underlying cost". "Underlying" what? As an economist I learned thatcosts were of production andprices were what customers paid or what sellers asked.DCDuring (talk)23:53, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't think laypeople observe such a distinction between cost and price. Moreover, the type of privilege for which a fee applies, as it is generally understood, doesn't correspond to any sense atprivilege, so we need to make the definition more specific.
I came up with these two senses which cover most of it, and which broadly match lemmings:
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion
All three citations use the formmethanolics. So they confirmmethanolics as a noun, but do not confirm noun use ofmethanolic. For all we know based on those three quotations, typical usage might be "Compound X is one of the methanolics," rather than "Compound X is a methanolic". (Consider the case of the study oflinguistics, which comprises many topics ...yet we don't talk about studying *"onelinguistic".) —DIV (1.145.19.11910:09, 17 February 2024 (UTC))Reply
OK, the homographic adjective makes searching tedious (e.g., both ofthese could be adjectival) but I have addedtwo cites wheremethanolic (singular) is clearly a noun;this is a third if accurate, but I can't see the snippet to confirm that Google has OCRed it correctly. Nonetheless, the later two of the three plural cites (which confirm that this can be a noun) seem to be using a regular plural of whichmethanolic is the expected lemma form, so I'm inclined to hit this with a "chiefly in the plural" and pass it.- -sche(discuss)04:17, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
HiThis, that and the other, Yes I am asserting that the quotes are from unreliable sources. Artists describing their own work as a style. “Oz Van Rosen Featured In Group Show At The Whiteroom Gallery”, in The Southhampton Press - interview. "Goldberg will give a brief introduction to Techspressionism" “Mountain Monday’s presentation on ‘Art, Technology, and Emotion: Techspressionism’”, in The Sierra Sun - Not reliable. Churnalism. Thanks for considering deletion. --WomenArtistUpdates (talk)00:54, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@WomenArtistUpdates Here at Wiktionary we don't have a notion of "reliable" sources as such. That is a Wikipedia concept. The fact that Van Rosen described her own work as Techspressionism isn't important for lexicographical purposes. What matters is that (a) she used the word, and (b) this use has been recorded in what appears to be a durably archived source (I can also find it inthis print magazine).
Having said all that, it would be ideal to find some stronger attestations of this word, and I am not at all sure that this will be possible. The only available Google Books result is already in the entry, and the Google Scholar papers are low-quality and possibly not durably archived for our purposes. Issuu looks like the most promising source, but I haven't investigated closely.This, that and the other (talk)01:09, 12 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
HiThis, that and the other, I appreciate the clarification on the lexicographical usage being a criterion. Would these be considered additional relevant attestations?
While there are indeedpentacles on theWikipedia page with six-pointed stars (and one on our entry too), I dont believe thatpentacle is the term for the star in the drawing, but rather the term for the drawing as a whole.
We probably should add a new sense, perhaps a subsense of the first sense, describing a handheld object used by occultists that most often features a star design, often but not always with a five- or six-pointed star.—Soap—09:51, 16 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
I've been too busy lately. I'd like to clarify that the new sense would be categorically a subsense of the first, whether we list it as such or not, so it's already covered. We just don't have it in detail. Anyway, I still think sense 4 may have been a mistake.—Soap—20:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago8 comments4 people in discussion
In regards to the "alien" sense. This seems to refer to a2012 meme, but I couldn't quickly find evidence of usage beyond a) referring to the meme itself, or b) as in, "aliens would say 'ayy lmao'". The possibility that it's synonymous with "alien" seems farfetched.Polomo47 (talk)04:02, 18 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Seems to be an in-term mainly in certain online game communities, especially XCOM and Terra Invicta. There are sporadic uses elsewhere, such as thisfic which doesn't seem to belong to those universes.This, that and the other (talk)08:52, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure about this. The entry has been changed since last year, andayy lmao has been created. This makes me think the entry is more more reasonable, and there is a reasonable amount of usage on Reddit, Twitter and such. Seems reasonable for it to be citable (durably, even).Polomo47 (talk)05:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I will try to look myself. I made the request months before I started to actively edit the project, so I didn’t have the know-how then. Promptly forgot about it.Polomo47 (talk)10:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I added another web cite, so it now has two, but it doesn't seem to be common. For example, "the ayys" seems to have been used just 5 times on Bluesky (plus once more in the other, aye, sense), and Google finds only 17 pages of results for "an ayy" of which most are other senses or other languages.- -sche(discuss)04:16, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Seems like we can't do "durable", then. And if it's notthat common, then it seems "widespread usage" is also off the table. Just recalled that the cites onayy lmao are all from 4chan, so maybe the common usage is restricted to that website.Polomo47 (talk)04:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Ioaxxere I see you've added some. (Is Reddit actually valid for citations now? I can't keep up.) I see a mixture of transitive and intransitive (i.e. I am rejerking, vs. a topic is being rejerked) so apparently there is more than one sense.Equinox◑08:52, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Equinox: We do on a case by case basis. I wouldSupport accepting the Reddit quotations asrejerk and its abbreviation/rj are actually pretty widespread across a variety of Reddit communities. Admittedly, the term is pretty much never used outside Reddit, so I would understand if others decide to delete it. Also, thank you for adding the other sense!Ioaxxere (talk)13:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Ioaxxere: Still got the issue that the citations with "it was rejerked" and "rejerk that shit" are transitive uses, so the definition "begin to participate" does not fit.Equinox◑15:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
It's worth reminding everyone that there isno figurative use requirement for names of asteroids, as they fall under the exemption for "minor planets" atWT:CFI#Celestial objects. We only need to find three uses, even if literal.
Surely these entries should be moved to Translingual. As I understand it, these are the official, worldwide names of these celestial bodies.
Do cites where the name is preceded by the systematic number count towards attestation of the name alone? To take one example, the entries257261 Ovechkin and(257261) Ovechkin are not eligible for inclusion under our policy, but one could argue that any usages of these systematic names count as usages ofOvechkin, the number being a non-lexical element.
In contrast, I'm confused by the definition "from sunrise to sunset".Dawn, as typically defined, starts a bit before sunrise, when the sky starts to lighten. Is "from dawn to dusk" anything more than a SOP expression anyways? I would interpret it as just meaning exactly what it says.--Urszag (talk)23:42, 2 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
No objection from me to simply deleting it as SOP. Someone added "(idiomatic) All day." but AFAIKany phrase denoting this timeframe, like the others you mention, can have that meaning or implication: "They slaved awayfrom sunup to sundown", etc. Perhaps there are interesting translations or some other reason to keep one or more of these phrases.- -sche(discuss)23:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
There’s also the translation issue where ‘from dawn to dusk’ is (rightly) defined as ‘from sunrise to sunset’ but the translations table is headed ‘from sunset to sunrise’Overlordnat1 (talk)07:04, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have added three cites, but one of them is hyphenated, and the other two occur at line breaks, which means the authors might also have intended them to be hyphenated.Kiwima (talk)03:07, 1 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Sense 2: "masochistic". In GBooks I can find for example "masochistic suprasensual play" but this does not mean they are synonyms: on the contrary, the use of both words together suggests they are not (or else such use could be redundant).Equinox◑12:23, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
So the confusing thing here is that "suprasensual" is the wordLeopold von Sacher-Masoch invented to describehis own sexuality. I think the quote here means something like "suprasensual in Masoch's sense". I can find plenty of cites, but the majority are analysing Masoch's writing (mainlyVenus in Furs) or Deleuze's essay about Masoch:
2001, Kriss Ravetto,The Unmaking of Fascist Aesthetics, U of Minnesota Press,→ISBN, page220:
While in Pasqualino's sexual imagination woman representssuprasensual sexuality, promising excessive pleasure, his actual sexual coupling with the commandant, this monumental image of woman, transforms into the opposite of sensuality, becoming what Deleuze calls supercarnal, that is, sadistic and cruel.
2020, Jonathan Faiers,Fur: A Sensitive History, Yale University Press,→ISBN, page182:
Severin, the European nobleman in Venus in Furs who desires to be enslaved to a woman, describes himself as asuprasensual person.
Reading this definition closely, I don't think this sense can be attested separately from sense 1, or at least I haven't seen and haven't succeeded at finding any such uses. On the other hand, I think this sense is trying to get at a different use of "exponential" which we currently don't cover: probably something like "of or relating to the [natural] exponential function."
To give just one concrete example, in the study ofLie groups, there is a particular map called the "exponential map" (notated); when Lee (inIntroduction to Smooth Manifolds) defines the exponential map (a rather abstract definition involving no exponents), he offers the following comment on its name:
The results of the preceding section show that the exponential map of GL(n,R) (or any Lie subgroup of it) is given by. This, obviously, is the reason for the term exponential map.
Other examples include "exponential order" (in asymptotics; almost always defined in terms of a [natural] exponential [function]); "the exponential series" (the series expansion of the exponential function); "exponential window" (in statistics; [a function] almost always defined in terms of a [natural] exponential); etc. Of course we also have "the exponential" or "an exponential" for and (as function), respectively.
Part of the reason these senses are muddled is that when mathematicians are dealing with the class of functions of the form (which is rather often), it doesn't really matter what is--in fact, without any loss you can always force to bee just by scaling by.Winthrop23 (talk)19:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
I would say that basee can be mentioned as a particular important special case of the general principle, either on the one definition line, or as a subsense. However, is present sense #1, "Relating to an exponent", supposed to beonly the mathematical sense, or could it conceivably apply to any other senses of "exponent"? If the former, it should be labelled as such. In the mathematical sense, I'm not clear whether "expressed in terms of a power (of anything)" is usefully distinct from "relating to an exponent or exponentiation". This distinction, if it exists, exists irrespective of the base, I suppose?Mihia (talk)13:16, 20 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
(Replying to Winthrop as well) I think I agree with both of you. I think def 1 (Relating to an exponent) can refer to the non-math meanings ofexponent too, so we'll have to look to the present defs 2 & 3 for the maths definitions.Leonhard Euler, standing on the shoulders of Newton and others, is arguably the best-ever mathematician and (like Newton and da Vinchi) a good engineer too. (We engineers also love him becauseEuler is homophonic withoiler.) As an example, he derived the equation, in which he had invented the concept ofe, had invented the name for the Newtonian concept ofi and popularised the use ofπ for its Ancient Babylonian concept (previous use by a Welshman and an Englishman had been ignored).e is a fantastically useful number for use in many proofs, since it simplifies many formulae -- which is why, along withlog (orlog10) andexp on a math calculator, you will findln (orloge) ande. So yes, exponentiation is often done to basee, but certainly not always. I suggest altering #2 to read "#(mathematics) Expressed in terms of apower of abase, often10 ore". Def #3 should then be left as is, since it makes a reasonable attempt to explain the effects of its use in non-mathematical jargon which, with the help of its example sentence, it achieves.No one ever mentions that, between exponential exponential growth 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256... and exponential decay 256, 16, 4, 2, 1.4, 1.2, 1.1, 1.0 [to 1 dec place] lies exponential constancy, where the exponent is1 and so the value never alters 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.... And those who thinkexponential means something is of growing severity might also be confused that exponential decay starts by "falling off a cliff" then gradually levels out, never quite crashing.--Engear02:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm gonna say now that sense 2, the mathematical sense about "expressed in terms of a power", isverified, and I have transferred the "RFV" label to sense 1, the generic "Relating to an exponent" sense, so the goal now is to find examples (mathematical or otherwise) that fit sense #1 but are not sense #2. I have also tried to work the word "exponent" into def #2, so that if #1 is removed, the entry will still prominently mention that word, so as to illuminate the connection.Mihia (talk)17:40, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
"(slang) A long rant that serves no purpose." I can see some Web hits along the lines of "I did not order a yappuccino" (perhaps used when yourbarista is too talkative?). But seems like a protologism.Equinox◑17:12, 11 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
The Google Books hits for the plural seem to be either scannos where one column's "insist" and the next's "-ure(s)" are combined by the OCR, or else mentions (not uses). I can however find, and have added, one hardly-intelligible Joyce-related cite of the singular, one cite discussing Shakespeare, and one old newspaper cite in which the word might just mean ~insistance, insistentness. There are probably enough cites to support a somewhat wishy-washy ("x, or y, or z") definition. Works variously define the word as "continuance", "persistency; regularity; method", "fixed position".- -sche(discuss)04:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
OK, if we accept "Valla explains insisture and course for the planets thus" as a use (and as independent of the cite of Shakespeare himself), and if we accept that Shakespeare, Valla andThe Photographic News can be grouped together to support one frankly lumpy definition ~"fixedness; insistence", this is cited; otherwise, this indeed fails.- -sche(discuss)22:12, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
On old English maps (i guess, based on Buache or before him) there are given "disgorgement of the ice", meaning that there is no ice or that there is a passage in the ice sheet of Antarctica. It is correct use of this word?— Thisunsigned comment was added byTollef Salemann (talk •contribs) at16:09, 28 April 2024 (UTC).Reply
@Tollef Salemann: I don't think it's correct to define it as a passage. It probably means that the ice has been discharged from the area in question just as food is disgorged from someone's throat or stomach, so it's just a use of sense 1. —Sgconlaw (talk)21:27, 28 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Theknightwho I'd argue it's the contrary for words like this: the-ic ending is directly based on the Latin adjective ending-icus, and "Proto-Japonic" as a noun is just short for "Proto-Japonic language", i.e. the adjective sense is really the essential sense of the word, with the noun sense being just a nominal use of the adjective. Even if the nominal use is more common, the adjective should still be considered a proper sense of the word, if not the main sense.Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs)12:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
but we have phrases likein proto-Japonic,in Chinese, etc. Can other adjectives do that? How should we classify sentences such asshe was dressedin green? I honestly dont know.—Soap—22:30, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
It can easily be found in Google Books (google books:"seicont") but both uses therepostdate our entry and the uses on Scots Wikipedia. I wonder ifEmbryomystic can remember what the source for the creation of this entry was.
Yes, sorry, I meant moving theprimary form and keeping this as an alt form. The fact that so few attestations are available tends to suggest this is not the primary form.This, that and the other (talk)10:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The, supposedly limited to the UK, sense "a basic wage paid to an employee while they are on holiday. It can be paid for as many weeks holiday as an employee is entitled to, although an employee can spread their complete holiday entitlement over the whole year."
At least in the Netherlands it doesn't work like that. It's just a monetary bonus, you can spend the money however you like, no need to go on vacation. (seevakantiegeld)w:en:Holiday pay doesn't describe the sense we have here either. Ping @Donnanz who created the page and wrote this sense. — Alexis Jazz (talk)12:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Alexis Jazz: That's the way it worked when I was in employment. I retired in 2012. If you don't take any holiday entitlement, you may lose it, it depends on your employer and contract. Self-employed people don't get holiday pay. I'm not sure if anybody on a zero hours contract gets holiday pay, according toZero-hour contract they can. Some firms close down for two or three weeks in the summer, when everyone has to take their holiday. Apparently different countries have different laws.DonnanZ (talk)16:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Nowadays, in the UK, as far as I would understand the term, "holiday pay" generally simply means that employees continue to get paid in the normal way when they take their (statutory) holiday allowance, whenever in the year this may be, not necessarily (and in practice usually not) contiguously. (No doubt some employers try to wriggle out of paying this entitlement in various ways. There are also potentially complications around determining what is someone's "normal pay" if they are not paid a fixed wage or salary, e.g. they work varying numbers of hours.)Mihia (talk)23:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-senseA knife blade shape/style comprising well-differentiated front and longitudinal edges, somewhat reminiscent of a chisel but with an angled front allowing for an acute-angle point.
I'm not really sure whether this is actually distinct from the primary definition (A traditional Japanese small sword or knife; often used as a secondary weapon to a katana.), if I'm honest. Of the dictionaries I've checked, only the OED has a relevant entry fortanto, and they only give the Japanese sense.
According to our entry, both senses can be pronounced/ˈtɑntoʊ/, but the sense I've RFV'd can also be pronounced/ˈtæntoʊ/, but I find this distinction dubious because/ɑ ~ æ/ in free variation is common with terms like this. I get the impression this second sense is trying to draw a distinction between traditional tanto and other knives crafted in a similar style, which would explain why it's the only one given the less "authentic" pronunciation. Perhaps I'm being too cynical, though.
Latest comment:6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
An IP pointed out on the talk page that this is a misspelling, and I changed it to such. The quote is real - but how common of a misspelling is it? —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/18:50, 14 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Here is the Ngram chart, showing there is one instance of "surburbanite" for every 200 instances of the true spelling. Does anyone remember what our threshold is for considering something a "common misspelling"?This, that and the other (talk)05:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago6 comments2 people in discussion
"a church", "married". Failed RFV in 2013, was re-added later without cites, but maybe it's citable now? I haven't managed to find anything, searching for "an autem", "the autem" (which finds only mentions of the Latin word, saying theautem appears in one edition but not another, etc), "to autem", "in autem", "autems", "is autem" (for the "married" sense), "got autem", "get autem" (the results are all just Latin)... the one hit for "autem building" is an OCR erroneous combination of two unrelated columns, one Latin and one English...- -sche(discuss)02:16, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@-sche I've added 5 cites for the "church" sense, though I'm only confident the 1610 cite is a genuine, period use. It's not very clear from the passage what "could not[…] keepe his Autem" means, but there's a load of other thieves' cant there (e.g.upright man,hooker etc.), and the same book glosses "Autem" as "the Church"later on, so I'm pretty sure it's something like "could not[…] go to church [without getting robbed]". The 1837 cite fromRookwood is clearly an intentional archaism/dialecticism, while the 1823 slang dictionary uses it in a usage example for a different term -go out(“to mug”). Both are passable, I guess. The other two are pretty mention-y, as they directly state what the word means, but they're probably worth keeping since they're the only mentions I could find that weren't simply lists of thieves' cant ripped from older dictionaries, or where it's used as part of a compound. The 1566 cite is also valuable as the earliest known recording of the term, too.Theknightwho (talk)02:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Re-reading it with a fresh pair of eyes, I don't think the 1610 cite fits after all, as I think it's being used to mean "wife" as a clipping ofautem mort (i.e. it's "could not […] keepe his Autem [wife] ordoxie [girlfriend] sole unto himself").Theknightwho (talk)11:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Ah, alas, I think you're right. "Autem is over" looks alright, though, and "autem ken" is OK as long asautem ken is not a term in its own right (which it seems it is not; at least, we don't have an entry).- -sche(discuss)23:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
@-sche I think it is (Greene's treats it as another form), but I'm inclined to say it's fine, because "autem" clearly has to mean "church" sinceken just means "house". How about if we add the label "chiefly in compounds"?
I suspect we probably want to add "clipping ofautem mort(“wife”)" as a second sense, but I can find nothing to support it meaning "married" that isn't simply a dictionary entry claiming as much. I suspect it's probably real, as the circumstantial evidence is quite strong for this term having been both widespread and polysemous in the criminal underworld, but sadly the direct evidence simply isn't there.Theknightwho (talk)20:56, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I considered suggesting this earlier, but as far as citing "church", we could perhaps also look through the various terms likeautem cackle tub,autem quaver tub andautem quaver which have failed, and see if it would work to use their cites for this,iff / as long as we don't also have entries for those things. (IMO we can't use the same citation of "autem ken" to supportboth an entry "autem ken" and an entry "autem", but as long as we don't haveautem ken,autem quaver, etc, we could plausibly use cites of those things for this... but it does mean that if we ever become able to cite those things, it pulls the rug out from under this...)- -sche(discuss)23:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Defined as “The feeling that no matter what you do, it is always somehow wrong—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you.” and supposedly countable, with the pluralpâros.0DF (talk)16:32, 15 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
This looks like nonsense butparo and the variantsparo’ andpara appear in various British and Irish rap songs (as can be seen by searching at genius.com), most notably in the song ‘Ketamine’ by the Dublin band Versatile, and we already have a French entry underparo. Of course the definition should simply be ‘paranoid’ and the etymology should just be ‘clipping of paranoid’. There's also this example of a NY rapper using the term[10]Overlordnat1 (talk)00:24, 16 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
It seems like this spelling only just survived into Early Modern English. Various uses in EEBO, the latest of which isthis 1608 text, but I'm not too sure what is going on there (the word "space" is used everywhere else, and there is a footnote which could be read as indicating that "espace" has a special meaning). Some others:[11][12][13]This, that and the other (talk)04:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
This comes from the OED, but the OED's definition of "English" is somewhat broader than ours; this is partially reflected by the fact that the user who added this back in 2013 used the first citation in the OED's list, which dates from 1455, which pre-dates the year we usually use to mark the start of modern English (1500) by quite some way. We're a bit flexible about it, but 45 years is too much in my opinon, so I've removed it as invalid.
The OED also include citations from 1508, 1553–4 and 1565, but they read like Scots to me, which is the other issue here. I've got no objection moving this to Scots if needs be, though.Theknightwho (talk)21:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
The DSL has a bunch of "Scots" cites (mostly 1500s but with some from as late as the 1680s). Most of their cites aresco, but similar to the OED (in the other direction), they seem to have included some English as well... unfortunately, despite the DSL's assignment of the cites to this sense, it seems hard to be sure they are actually this sense (it seems possible to read them as meaning the name, instead), e.g. "The Lord Lovet called Fresell [i.e. Fraser] … A surname esteemed honest and very hardy", "Jockies who go about begging, and use still to recite the sluggornes of most of the true ancient surnames of Scotland".- -sche(discuss)22:33, 19 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "not relevant to". Does this exist outside of the termbeside the point? Seems to be a very straightforward extension of sense 3 ("besides; in addition to"), wherebesides is being used to mean "other than; except for; instead of". This also explains the (now uncommon) alternative formbesides the point.Theknightwho (talk)07:46, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also "beside the mark", a run-in in Century 1911, which is closer to the metaphor of aiming at a target and "beside the question".
We are deficient in contemporary citations ofbeside andbesides, excepting those just added by -sche.
Among OneLook references only MWOnline has "not relevant to" as a definition. They also have three subsenses of sense 1 without an explicit sense: "by the side of"; "in comparison with"; and "on a par with". Their def. 3 is "besides". MW seems to have taken a revisionist stance, trying to bring the definitions closer to their conception of contemporary meaning. In contrast other OneLook dictionaries are similar to MW 1913.
Interestingly, Century 1911 has seven definitions, three marked as obsolete, none of them "not relevant to". The four:
"at the side of; near" (cf. our 1. "next to; at the side of")
"over and above; distinct from"
"apart from; not connected with; not according to"
"out of; in a state deviating from"
Definition three seems closest to our def. 2 "not relevant to", esp. "not connected with".
Our def. 3 "besides; in addition to" does not closely correspond to any of these. I don't think def. 2 atbesides: "Other than; except for; instead of." works very well forbeside.
Has the meaning ofbeside the point become more pejorative thanbeside the mark/question/subject/topic/focus, more reminiscent of "missing the point/mark", "off the mark"? If so, MWOnline's and our separate "not relevant to" is distinct from a definition like "not connected with".DCDuring (talk)18:09, 21 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
I've added some more cites, but this sense often bleeds into sense 3 and it's possible they should simply be combined, like: "Besides; in addition to, and (sometimes) not relevant to."- -sche(discuss)00:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sensesoftstem bulrush (Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani). The only unambiguous mentions that I found were actually referring tosoft rush (Juncus effusus), a plant which is similar enough that I'm not currently comfortable trying to determine whether any of the mentions that lack a taxonomic name could be referring to the bulrush instead.One source is unambiguous in using "Softstem Rush" that way; but since it repeatedly uses "Soft-stem Bulrush" in the surrounding sentences, I'm not certain whether it was intentional.Qwertygiy (talk)00:55, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 year ago2 comments1 person in discussion
rfv. I hate to do this, but is it only present on Robert Steele's edition of Bartholomew Anglicus' work? The second quote is erronously attributed Robert M. Torrance, but it turns out it also comes fromRobert Steele's 1893 edition, as shown in Torrances'sown book. So, are there three independent citations for this word? --[Saviourofthe]୨୧13:51, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also worth noting that there is a 400 years gap between the last Medieval English instance of the word (shipbreche), and Steele's 1893 book, which would indicate that "shipbreach" is some kind of learned borrowing (and modernization) rather than an inherited word.[Saviourofthe]୨୧14:00, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:11 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
@Gluepix marked this as{{d|It is pluralized as aguas frescas in the vast majority of attestations; very rarely is the form agua frescas used in comparison.}}
I could find quite a lot of hits on Google, and thengram also suggests that it is used, despite being an order of magnitude less frequent than the "correct" plural. Being "rare" doesn't mean that it isn't attested.
It's hard to find pure cites. IMO, a reference in US-based writings to Jewish newspapers refers to Yiddish newspapers, but that is a probability based on the empirical fact that there are/were hardly any Hebrew newpapers in the US and those that existed had relatively few subscribers. SeeCategory:Jewish newspapers published in the United States on Wikipedia.Wikipedia. WP articles about these newspapers do not always state in what language they are written, but, unless stated otherwise, one might assume they were written in English.DCDuring (talk)15:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yiddish newspapers are Jewish newspapers, so the fact that a Yiddish newspaper is referred to as “a Jewish newspaper” does not imply thatYiddish is a sense ofJewish. Deer are animals, andhere a deer is referred to with the term “animal”, butanimal does not have a sensedeer. A usable attestation should take a more explicit form such as “he spoke Jewish” or “written in Jewish” while the language referred to cannot be Hebrew. It is more difficult to think of usable attestation forms for the cultural sense, since, as for newspapers, Yiddish culture is also Jewish culture – but not necessarily vice versa. --Lambiam22:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
To be clear, the RFV'ed sense is the adjective, not a noun (so "he spoke Jewish" doesn't count towards citing it). I have in fact cited the noun sense though, fairly unambiguously, I think.Andrew Sheedy (talk)01:50, 18 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Struggling to find good cites, but this sense surely exists (I've heard it in reference to grandparents' speech), probably influenced by any number of foreign languages where "Jewish" and "Yiddish" are the same word. I don't have the patience to sort out literal English translations of foreign-language passages; for example, the passage "They speak Jewish [i.e., Yiddish] and have created their own literature. A whole slew of Hebrew and Jewish [Yiddish] papers and journals is being published." is a translation ofa 1912 German essay; perhaps searching similar phraseology can help find viable attestations, like see (and many from around the first quarter of the 20th century, as since then the accepted glottonym has shifted):
"The Jews of London and of the United States, who, to escape the persecutions to which they are subjected in Poland and Russia, abandoned their native country, have formed associations among themselves in their new homes; they have organized societies calling themselves "Jewish-speaking groups," and as such have gained representation at the labor congresses. They speak a jargon which is a mixture of German and Hebrew, and not only employ it in their daily intercourse, but even publish their party organs in that vernacular and print them in Hebrew characters."[14]
"Jewish-speaking Christian missionaries invaded a thickly Jewish section in Brooklyn for the purpose of winning souls to Jesus.… In the course of a heated argument one of the missionaries grabbed a Hebrew Text Book and turning to a chapter in Isaiah exclaimed "Read what your own history says!" And to interpret into English the particular passage which he translated from Hebrew intoJewish would read something like this…"[15]
"Mr STARNES Do you speak Russian? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY No, sir; I do not speak Russian. Mr STARNES Do you speak Polish? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; I speak Polish. Mr STARNES And youspeak Jewish, do you? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; Ispeak Jewish. Mr STARNES And you also speak German, do you? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY No, sir; I cannot speak German. Mr STARNES But this manspoke to you inJewish? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY Yes, sir; he did. Mr STARNES What was his name? Mr DAVID LIMONSKY It was Heimie."[17]
Latest comment:2 months ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Rfv-sense:A person, generally one with a background in construction or civil engineering that reviews properties to find issues, faults and fixes to be remedied by the construction company before the client buying the home moves in (Republic of Ireland). --Svartava (talk)03:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Smurrayinchester We probably want a corresponding sense atsnag. It falls under "a problem or difficulty with something", but it's more specific than that, as they're issues that prevent a development from being deemed complete (i.e. they get in the way of the developer being able to hand it over to the buyer). Also, I'll have a think about reviewing the definition given here forsnagger, because it's also used in commercial property development, and I don't think it's any less common in the UK than it is in Ireland.Theknightwho (talk)19:31, 18 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
An argument could be made that the sense of "snag" is just a trivial specialization of a generic figurative sense ofsnag. What is different aboutsnagger is that it is not a specialization of "one who snags", using the agent suffix-er, but "one who finds potential snags" (in closing the sale from the seller and realtor PoV OR in the buyer getting getting the sound property ostensibly being offered). It is possible to view the meaning of-er as similar to theVariety-er.DCDuring (talk)23:04, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Nury Vittachi (2002) “From Yinglish to sado-mastication”, in Kingsley Bolton, editor,Hong Kong English: Autonomy and Creativity, Hong Kong University Press, page213: “Another word with what is apparently a direct translation is the word 'first', which is 'sin' in Cantonese. The two words do seem to have largely identical meanings, except 'sin' also carries the meaning 'now'.”
It's not totally clear from this passage, but I think it's saying that Englishfirst is used as a direct translation of Cantonese先(sin1) in all senses, including the additional sense "now". However, it would be good to see some actual use.Theknightwho (talk)12:40, 28 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
This entry used to simply be defined asSynonym ofotherkin, but was expanded by new userWanderingdrake. This user wrote at the Grease Pit that they personally identify with the term and felt the definition failed to accurately reflect the way the term is used in the community. Perhaps the real problem is the definition atotherkin is too vague. In any event, it would be good to see some citations (WT:") to assist in verifyingalterhuman, especially the very specific sense 2.This, that and the other (talk)11:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
I am confused as to what @Wanderingdrake means. It seems like a synonym forotherkin, at least going by our definitions. Wanderingdrake definedalterhuman as "an opt-in label and umbrella term for identities that are not considered typical to the human experience" and later added the examples "otherkind, therianthropes, phytanthropes, celestials, soulbonders, spiritual mediums, and plural systems".
However, our definition for otherkin says pretty much the same thing: "A person who claims or believes that their soul, essence, or identity is non-human" i.e.everything he listed above; otherkind, therianthropes, phytanthropes, celestials, soulbonders, spiritual mediums (save maybe for plural systems?). So, it sure seems like a synonym? Either way, it is good to meet a fellow alterhuman, @Wanderingdrake.LunaEatsTuna (talk)10:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC)Reply
AFAICT, there is no consistent difference between the scopes of the two terms, at least as far as their use by the communities referred to above (and in the way WD defined), so I have simply undone WD's changes so that this entry is once again simply defined as another term forotherkin. It might be possible to cite and add an unrelated sci-fi use ofalterhuman to mean ~"altered human" (like an augmented human or a cyborg), e.g. 2017, Nick Bentley,Contemporary British Fiction,[…] in a variety of science fiction and cyberpunk novels that explore the marginalized position of cyborg, posthuman and alterhuman identities.- -sche(discuss)04:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Rfv-sense as anadverb:By itself; of its own.
Given with the usage exampleIt is nothing to worry about sui generis, but in context of the other factors it's alarming indeed., as a synonym ofper se.
No dictionary except for legal dictionaries callsui generis a noun. The legal lexicographers must have a reason for calling it a noun. What is the reason? Is it short for "a thing (law, decision, situation) that is sui generis". Or, better, where are the cites?DCDuring (talk)01:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
A few cites (of the noun) for you:
2013 June 29, Bimal K. Matilal, A. Chakrabarti,Knowing from Words: Western and Indian Philosophical Analysis of Understanding and Testimony, Springer Science & Business Media,→ISBN, page100:
It is word-generated knowledge or knowledge by testimony ( K. T. for short ) – asui generis.
2020 May 21, Michael R Licona,The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Inter-Varsity Press,→ISBN:
Prior to the 1990s a large segment of New Testament scholarship maintained that the Gospels represent asui generis, that is, a genre unique to them. Thissui generis was viewed as a type of mythology.
2021 October 5, Sze Ping-fat,Carrier's Liability under the Hague, Hague-Visby and Hamburg Rules, BRILL,→ISBN, page124:
Insofar as none of these approaches has ever been formally overruled by the highest Court of the land, the law of deviation remains an area of controversy and is practically treated as asui generis - that is, as a law quite distinct from the general law of contract.
These look like adverbial cites:
2003, Canada. Parliament. Senate. Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology,Délibérations Du Comité Sénatorial Permanent Des Affaires Sociales, Des Sciences Et de la Technologie:
They came up with a program that the federal Minister of Agriculture and his provincial colleagues agreed was a good and appropriate approach to handling that particular problem. They did itsui generis.
2014 August 7, Jonas Ebbesson, Marie Jacobsson, Mark Adam Klamberg, David Langlet, Pål Wrange,International Law and Changing Perceptions of Security: Liber Amicorum Said Mahmoudi, Hotei Publishing,→ISBN, page 5:
Another possibility is that the council actedsui generis and expressed a one-off view on the facts with no precedential significance.
2015 December 31, Llewellyn Howes,Judging Q and saving Jesus - Q’s contribution to the wisdom-apocalypticism debate in historical Jesus studies., AOSIS,→ISBN, page62:
The refutation of Kleinliteratur conceptions enabled Kloppenborg to do away with the idea that Q was createdsui generis, which, in turn, enabled him to compare Q with other ancient literature (Kirk 1998:35–36, 64).
@DCDuring The reason it's used as a noun in legal contexts is because it's a convenient shorthand for "something that issui generis". Outside of law, it's not a term that people use very often.Theknightwho (talk)02:19, 17 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
We already haveitzcuintli and its cognates. I propose adding this guy:itzcuintlipotzotli, aka „yzi-cuinte potzotli", „itzcuintepotzotli”, „ytzeuinte porzotli", „itzeuinte potzotli”, „itzcuinte-potzoli” (all fromNahuatl, here isthe proof) - the most developed (by me) references are now inits plwiki entry, e.g.Desmond Morris, Dogs: The Ultimate Dictionary of over 1,000 Dog Breeds, Trafalgar Square Books, 2008, page 590,ISBN 978-1-57076-410-3, or its 19th century versions:
Frances Calderón de la Barca (quite famous and popular in her days),Life in Mexico 1843 : "Hanging up by a hook in the entry, along with various other dead animals, polecats, weasels, etc., was the ugliest creature I ever beheld. It seemed a species of dog, with a hunch back, a head like a wolf, and no neck, a perfect monster. As far as I can make out it must be theitzcuintepotzotli, mentioned by some old Mexican writers.... "Zezen (talk)23:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
RHU (via InfoPlease} has: "noting or pertaining to R. Buckminster Fuller's concept of the use of technology and resources to maximum advantage, with minimal expenditure of energy and material."
I agree. If this phrase were used in the place of "absence makes the heart grow fonder", it'd be erroneous. It almost feels like an eggcorn for that other phrase, if used in that sense.ScribeYearling (talk)09:03, 17 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense
This entry was such a mess that it was hard to figure out what to do with it. If I understand it correctly, it was originally supposed to be an alternative plural ofsriracha, and thus an alternative form ofsrirachas. A quick look at Google books shows it to be used in the singular, possibly as an alternative form ofsriracha. I made this an rfv-sense because it's obviously in use, and I don't have the time or energy to sort out the usage. I have no problem with this ending up as cited or resolved, and will be happy to withdraw my nomination if someone who has looked at the usage thinks I should. Thanks!Chuck Entz (talk)20:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I was looking for an etymology or a different attestation for this term, but as an internet friend of mine pointed out, it would be easiest to interpret this entry as a faulty interpretation of the pluralhelioses, which might equally well be the plural ofheliosis. This interpretation would have the advantage thatheliosis has the meaning "exposure to the sun" according to LSJ, which is much closer to a meaning 'solarium' than just plainhelios. One further argument is that the authors of the quotations onhelioses also usedsolaria, notsolariums, implying they were knowledgeable enough about classic languages and especially proper plural formation. Chuck Entz, you reversed the edit, is this enough justification?— Thisunsigned comment was added bySuryaratha03 (talk •contribs) at15:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC).Reply
@Suryaratha03: Let's see how the rfv plays out. As for the revert: you just removed Etymology 1 and left Etymology 2 hanging. That was bad enough, but this is a cooperative project: someone took the trouble to find the quotes and do the data entry a couple of years ago, and you just obliterated it without explanation. You may be right and it may be a misinterpreted plural of heliosis, but even then, this is an English entry and English doesn't have to follow Latin grammatical rules. It might even have developed a new singular in the same way thatpease (plural,peasen) gave rise topea. The key is whether anyone can find usage of the alleged singular. By the way, your ping didn't work because you forgot to sign your post.Chuck Entz (talk)04:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
I didn't delete the quotations, I moved them toheliosis because I think that is the correct lemma form. As for the Etymology 2, I will personally adjust that should the move be confirmed. Looking at google books, heliosis is very often used for Ancient sun-therapy and once possibly for a sunroom ([21], though the context: "practiced by the Greeks in the "Heliosis" or resting places" makes me think it's either a typo or a qualifyer of 'places'). As far as I can see it looks worse for plain helios though (no relevant results for "helios" + "solarium"/"sunroom"/"sun parlor"). The problem at root in my opinion is actually that the idea that the Ancient Greeks had any kind of named sunrooms is actually some kind of misconception derived from a line of citations that leads to no classical or archaeological source. Even Latin solarium just means any part of the house exposed to the sun, mainly the flat roof. In that case its dubious whether a few citations, solely in the plural, warrant a dictionary entry. If anything, the meaning "Ancient Greek practice of sunbathing" would be justified, though it usually only occurs with an added explication anyways Suryaratha03 (talk)19:41, 25 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I can't really find uses that are not referencing the line fromShrek (which doesn't really count as an attestation for an "anus" sense).Einstein2 (talk)23:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Only the 1856 quote supports the sense (looking up the 1986 quote, there's a footnote that explains thatBirminghamize here means "Reform Ireland's local government along the same lines as Birmingham's"), and I can't find any use of it by other authors. Every Google Books seems to be quoting Emerson.Smurrayinchester (talk)06:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
We could probably attest this if we generalised the meaning a bit to ‘to do or say in a Birmingham/Brummie manner’ - the ‘make ersatz’ meaning is after all a specific subsense of that based on offensive stereotypes. CompareBirmingham screwdriver, in fact there are some websites claiming that Birmingham had a reputation for minting fake coins at the time of Emerson too.Overlordnat1 (talk)08:09, 2 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I was able to read The New World of Words by Edward Phillips and John Kersey 1720 as digitized by Google Books. And it was right there: ..."also a Dagger".Cmbaugher (talk)20:53, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
yes, the edition ofAreopagitica cited in the entry also mentionedThe New World of Words. this is still a mention though, not a use, likeSgconlaw said. also note thatThe New World of Words, like most early dictionaries and glossaries, contains its fair share of dictionary-only words that would not meet the CFI hereragweed theatertalk,user22:23, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "partly conscious," distinct from "not accessible to the conscious mind." The latter sense was labeled "dated." What do people think of that? Do you agree with what wikipedia has to say about the usage ofsubconscious andunconscious (w:subconscious)? Should that sense maybe be split into a technical usage and a colloquial usage? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk)21:13, 12 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
‘Dated’ seems a strange tag to me. Perhaps professional psychobabblers don’t use the word ‘subconscious’ any longer but the general public do. I’ve also never personally used or encountered ‘subconscious’ as, essentially, a synonym forsemiconscious. I’ve made a few adjustments to reflect this, we might also consider merging the translation table for ‘partially conscious’ atsubconscious and the one atsemiconscious. —Overlordnat1 (talk)09:32, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
The RfV question remains, but the entry was wrong about the links and the continent. If it fails RfV, the content should be moved to one of the attestable vernacular names.DCDuring (talk)13:05, 20 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago7 comments5 people in discussion
Verb sense: "(informal, British, transitive, intransitive) Topunish,reprimand orintimidate."Get the hell out of here!" Dantemonstered when Santa approached the high school carolers." — Added by an American. I've never heard of it in British usage. The usage example does not look British either ("Santa" would be Father Christmas; "carolers" would have two Ls).2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:580C:F1AF:B902:5AA610:53, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
We might need help from the creator here, @Flame, not lame. They credited "Oxford Languages" - not sure exactly what resource this refers to. OED has two transitive senses marked "originally Australian", one which essentially means "to harass", and the other which roughly corresponds to this sense, although the meaning is closer to "demonise".This, that and the other (talk)11:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I searched "monster meaning" on Google when I was 15 and it showed the dictionary. As a verb, it defined monster as an informal British verb for criticize or reprimand. The example sentence stated, "Mother would monster me for getting home late" as in indicator monster is a transitive verb. The bottom of the default dictionary on Google states Oxford Languages is their source.Flame, not lame 💔 (Don't talk to me.)11:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Flame, not lame thanks for that, that's very helpful. Needless to say, Oxford is a reputable lexicography provider, but my cursory searches are really not turning up any evidence for this sense. Maybe Kiwima will be able to find something.This, that and the other (talk)11:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I’ve not come across this either but ‘monster’, especially in the phrase ‘monster it’ or ‘monster them’ can be easily found online used by British and Australian authors to mean ‘do well at’, ‘do well against’, ‘defeat’ or ‘succeed in’. I'm also seeing 'monster him/her' meaning 'defeat him/her', 'monster' meaning 'devour/demolish' in culinary contexts, also 'to turn a truck into a monster truck', 'to drive a monster truck over' and 'to strike with monstrous force' or 'move forcefully'. There are interesting results if you search for 'monster one's way' and 'monster it over'.Overlordnat1 (talk)09:03, 1 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "(intransitive) to be troublesome." I find an intransitive sense in some dictionaries but I can't actually think of a true intransitive use. I think the adjectiveannoying doesn't count. Nor do the contexts in which you can use almost any transitive verb with an implied object, like "Don't annoy!" ("Don't disturb!") or "Mosquitos are designed to annoy." ("Some people just love to humiliate.") Rather, is it actually possible to say something like "The dog's howling annoyed all night long"? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk)12:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
has cites on Twitter. it would pass if we say in a vote that it does. probably hasnt caught on much outside social media—Soap—21:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Possibly coined by the writers of a blog called Shakesville (one writer, Melissa McEwan, writes "Today in Manclaiming" as if it's already an established term). But since it's so simialr tomansplaining it may have been coined more than once, and McEwan's uses of it are about fashion and don't seem so angry.—Soap—21:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Four senses, all very rare at best in Google Books. I couldn't find anything for these two: (i) "(intransitive) To become cheesy (overly dramatic, emotional, or exaggerated)"; (ii) "(transitive) To make (someone) smile". Bewarescannos of "cheered up".2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:BDC1:47AD:61BB:811D14:33, 19 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Arangas, a least in Russian, is the singular, not plural, also used in official documents (well, kinda, official, but like museum documents and news), also massively in different kinda stories. Can not find so much ethnographical material with usage in Russian or English. The -s ending is anyway not plural.Tollef Salemann (talk)17:21, 16 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
aranga doesn’t exist, because arangas is the singular. What is aranga I don’t know. What plural is for arangas I also don’t know. But it is RFD for aranga, not arangas.Tollef Salemann (talk)07:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
it's not a dead link, I can access it just fine. this might be because Twitter is a horrible platform and may hide NSFW posts if you are logged out. viewing these on an archive works, but the Internet Archive is still down and read-only. if you know any other archiving solutions, please post it and I can archive these properly.Juwan (talk)19:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Never had a Twitter account in my life. However, Wiktionary had its "hot word" policy for words that popped up quickly. I'm not sure it was intended for words where a Google Web search finds about 20 results, all referring to the same initial tweet. -- (Funny Eqx story) My client had their Twitter account permanently blocked (and like Google there's no way to actuallycontact them and restore it) because the social-media intern set the "age" to 20 years, meaning "our organisation has existed for twenty years". Twitter immediately decided "you must have been underage when you set up the account then" and banned it forever. VERY funny. I've been telling them "nobody uses Twitter any more anyway, for political reasons" but... yes, they shouldn't listen to my marketing ideas, in the same way I don't allow marketing to edit my program code.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:89DB:E713:C8BF:E57E21:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Lots of Latin phrases are used in English, and this is one of them. I'm finding various examples on Google Books where it's used as a stand-in or substitute for a person of unknown (or concealed) name, or as the name of a hypothetical person in examples (besides the ones where it's just defined, but not used, which come up first). Will try to add some citations in the next couple of days if nobody beats me to it (feel free, I may not have time tomorrow or Thursday).P Aculeius (talk)05:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Since I'm not fluent in French or German, I'm not likely to be able to find and sort outmentions fromuses. I'm just saying that you can't infer a phrase not having a meaning in Englishbecause it's Latin, which is what the first two lines appear to say. It's not clear from reading your post whether the discussion of the cites relates to "at best it's translingual" or what grounds there are for that assertion (which, to be clear, I am not attempting to refute). My reply only concerned its use in English, because that's the reason it's here, and that's the only language (besides Latin) that I'm able to verify its use in.P Aculeius (talk)13:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
I first encountered this online in the delightful phrase "trifling niggah". I was interested to encounter it again recently in Julius Lester's (Afro-sympathetic) 1980s or '90s retellings of the Brer Rabbit stories.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1DDE:A582:20BE:E3BB00:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree the current definition is wrong. I am not sure whether the actual meaning of the term, as used in the way we are discussing, is distinguishable from the other two senses, "of little importance" and "idle, frivolous".- -sche(discuss)14:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Rfv-senseA hobgoblin. Not in the OED.
I have a feeling this is intended to refer tohobgoblin(“a source of dread, fear or apprehension; a bugbear”), but that isn't what springs to mind when I read "hobgoblin" in isolation, as it's a figurative use of the term, so if that is the case then this definition needs improvement. However, if it truly is intended to refer tohobgoblin(“small, ugly goblin that makes trouble for humans”) then it definitely needs some citations.Theknightwho (talk)21:35, 1 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
The reference to a hobgoblin is present inWebster Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged originally published in 1993 and reprinted by Könemann (page 2204).--Carnby (talk)22:14, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 1993, p. 2204.
Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1859), "Spook. (Dutch). A ghost; hobgoblin. A term much used in New York."Webster's New International Dictionary (1911) gives: "A spirit; ghost; apparition; specter; hobgoblin." In these two, the words are treated as synonymous; for some reason the Wiktionary entry separated "hobgoblin" into its own sense when it was created back in 2005. OED (1919) gives fewer synonyms: "A spectre, apparition, ghost."
I haven't added any examples yet because I'm not sure whether "hobgoblin" should be folded back into the main sense. It's also a bit difficult to figure out how to tell whether "spook" describes a hobgoblin other than by searching for the two together. But I find:The Optical Journal, vol. XI, No. 6, "Tales of an Optician: In the Form of a Man" (1903): "Nevertheless, it was such a relief to find he was not a ghost, hobgoblin, spook, spirit, apparition, or some such airy substance..." Arthur Kent Chignell,An Outpost in Papua (1911), "Peter, in the afternoon, when he came to me with a cut finger, explained that it was all the fault of aDau (devil, ghost, spirit, spook, hobgoblin, what-you-please)." Tom Stoppard, in "Shipwreck" (2002) has Turgenev playing with Karl Marx' suggestion of the phrase "the ghost of Communism" by replacing "ghost" with "phantom", "spook", "spectre", "spirit", and finally settling on "hobgoblin". This is of course too early to have been influenced by Wiktionary, so it appears to confirm that all of these words can be considered synonymous, even though for many of us "hobgoblin" instead calls to mind an imp, rather than a ghost.
There are likely other and perhaps better examples; I came up with these three in the first three pages of Google Books results. But I'll wait to add them until I have an idea whether to recombine "hobgoblin" with the first sense, since we may not need so many examples for each synonym.P Aculeius (talk)00:06, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the underlying issue is whetherhobgoblin should be used as a definiens in this entry (or possiblyany entry). It was apparently a synonym in the US of one sense ofspook. Maybe it still is a synonym of one current definition. An even deeper issue is whether we should use as definiens any term that currently has multiple common definitions.DCDuring (talk)00:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure that gets us anywhere; not only is it a possible meaning of "spook" explicitly given in numerous sources (if we include the many dictionaries that say it is, as well as those that seem to use it as such), but all of the other terms seem to be defined by reference to each other: "ghost", "spirit", "spectre", "spook", "apparition", "phantom"—and nearly all of them have multiple common definitions. And I think that no matter what verbal contortions we resort to, any particularly useful definition of "spook" is going to depend on other words that have different possible interpretations. The fact that the best dictionaries all do so would seem to make this inevitable.P Aculeius (talk)02:26, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Where it could get us is a differently worded definition or, better, placement as one of the synonyms of the first definition ofspook.
At least some dictionaries don't define their words with synonym clouds: I think Webster 1913 does so the most. We should placehobgoblin where various thesauruses (not ours, however) place it: as a synonym ofghost,spook, and other members of the cloud. It could be slipped right in under def. 1 ofspook.DCDuring (talk)04:11, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Any chance that the author was confused by the appearance of "ſpoon" in older printed works? Someone unfamiliar with 'long-s' would likely mistake it for an 'f', and perhaps assume it to be a hybrid instrument, like a spork (which evidently dates from a later period; the name seems to be twentieth century). I suspect occurrences of "fpoon" in Google Books from around 1800 or earlier would usually be scannos for "ſpoon".P Aculeius (talk)00:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Not sure that the first two citations are either independent or uses of the word: they are both examples of how spoonerismdoesn't work in real life—both pointing out that "spoon and fork" are spoonerized as "foon and spork",not "fpoon and sork". Which makes them hypothetical examples of a phenomenon that is also explicitly saidnot to occur. And the fact that they both make the same point about the same combination of words—nine years apart—suggests that they arise from a common source, although neither is available to me, even in snippet view, and in neither case is the author of the article cited. It seems likely that they have the same author, or that the first was used as a source by the second. I'm also not sure that the third citation counts as a use either: it is simply an example of someone intentionally blending the two words as a joke. What we don't have is an example of somebody using a "fpoon" or finding one in a drawer: these three citations aretwo examples of making up a word for the purpose of demonstrating how they make it up, but never using it.P Aculeius (talk)15:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the rail and auto labels are reversed. Railroads in the US, pay each other for the use of their railcars. Something similar must happen among the railroads of the EU and wherever there are interconnected systems.DCDuring (talk)21:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
There's no point in having this page even with the{{no entry}} template on it. The template claims, "Some information about this term is available inAppendix:SI units", but that's not true; the appendix only lists the actual spellingskilometer andkilometre. —Mahāgaja ·talk 16:08, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, a question for RFV. If the term exists it should have a proper form-of entry. If it doesn't it should just be deleted. I'll move it there.This, that and the other (talk) 01:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Not too easy to search for thanks to end-of-line hyphenations. There are also some "primer" type texts that spell out "milli-gram(me)", "kilo-metre" etc when first introducing the terms, then use the single-word form throughout the remainder of the text.This, that and the other (talk)01:14, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
It looks like the busted cite was removed and some more added, so that there are now 4. The fourth one is clearlypro- +legalism(sense 1) - it's even hyphenated in the source text. The capitalisation of cite 2 also suggests the same thing. Cites 1 and 3 need more context to be comprehensible.This, that and the other (talk)08:48, 25 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
It's hard to find much even for "inflected me", other than obvious errors, typos and rubbish, probable correct/intentional uses of the "curve towards" sense, or dubious examples from low-quality sources. Could be a blend of "influence" and "affect", I suppose, possibly deliberately coined, perhaps independently on occasions, or accidental mixing up of words. Also, if the word itself means "to influencein style" then it seems unnecessary to say "No other poet has inflected mein style".Mihia (talk)22:05, 25 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
You can deliver over something into the hands of someone, though. Or into custody, etc. But this is just sum-of-parts: deliver + over + into. I note that we don't have "deliver over", presumably since it's transparently sum-of-parts, and the only reason we have "deliver over to" is because the same user created both of them simultaneously. There will be plenty of hits for these on the internet, but none with any other meaning. I think both of these should probably go toRfD instead of here.P Aculeius (talk)18:48, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:7 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Those words are real grammatical terms, but "preverb" is used for a large variety of languages, much more than the definitions in the articles, and "prenoun" does not appear to be specific to Algonquin languages.87.88.150.1522:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Created on the basis of a mistaken quote (the original text had ‘adrip’, not ‘adrop’), but could it be citable nonetheless? There seems to be another alchemical sense, too, that we currently don’t have, so any quotes that can be found should be checked for what sense exactly is being used in context. —Vorziblix (talk ·contribs)00:47, 6 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I tracked down two more cites, but someone ought to check the metadata: Google Books (in one case) and Archive.org (in the other) assert 1900s dates for books that look, just from the way the text is printed onto the page, centuries older. Is this term obsolete, in this spelling?- -sche(discuss)05:59, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't see how it's misspelled; that's merely an older typographic convention, where 'u' and 'v' are not distinguished.This dictionary has two uses in Tasso, one of which did not come up on a Google Books search, and a second meaning inWilliam Fulbecke, which also did not appear in my search, and which I did not search for separately, since I did not think it would go toward verifying the current entry. I also saw a few 20th century agricultural uses, where it seems to refer to hiring male livestock for breeding, but these were snippet views and possibly from newsletters, and again would not go toward verifying the entry as it stands. Perhaps I'm mistaken and these can be used somehow.P Aculeius (talk)16:57, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
None of these look like protologisms to me, and while seemingly absent from 'durably archived' media, I think that they could pass according towt:ATTEST's 'clearly widespread use' criterion. This is one of those requests that would have had @Ivan Štambuk a little up in arms. (((Romanophile)))♞ (contributions)22:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
We havechoco as a shortened form of "chocolate". Most probably "mint choco" has been used or said somewhere. However, just because "choco" is short for "chocolate", it doesn't IMO mean that we need to separately include the "choco" version of all phrases involving "chocolate". By the way, isn'tmint chocolate SoP anyway?Mihia (talk)10:14, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I added a mention and three uses from a. 1500 to 1857, with 19th century ones referring to 16th or 17th century texts. It appears to be quite obsolete.Cnilep (talk)04:49, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
As you noted at the Grease pit, 'put[ting] each POS under its own header ... could get unwieldy.' Indeed, especially with abbreviations that cover multiple words, and especially with ones that are also words in normal English orthography, where having multiple stenoscript entries would unduly dominate the page. But there's also the problem that many of these substitute for simple letter sequences, and not all of those correspond to affixes, or at least not consistently to affixes, and in those cases I don't know what POS we would use. But that's a matter of layout, and I agree that 'possibly we should make an exception here.'
Attestation is a more difficult issue. I occasionally come across stenoscript abbreviations in manuscript form, and I thought it would be useful if they were covered here on Wikt where they'd be easily accessible. They're certainly notable in terms of use in the real world, but finding multiple attestations in digital format will be more difficult.
There are multiple hits on Gbooks formds., but as an abbreviation in normal English text, not as stenoscript. An example ishere. It is spelled out explicitly, and asmds without the period,here, though for 'merchandise' only, not for all the meanings it has in stenoscript. That abbreviation dates back at least to 1856 and so was evidently borrowed into stenoscript, but I also see the reverse, stenoscript used in abbreviated English manuscript.kwami (talk)01:48, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
How do readers find things in these appendices? I picked a red link from the Star Wars appendix,lado azul da Força, and when I pasted it into the search box I didn't get any hits. The appendix entry didn't show up. Even where under the search results where it says, 'See whether another page links to lado azul da Força,' the appendix didn't show up even though it does link to it. [You'd have to select 'Namespace: Appendix', and how many readers are going to know to do that?] So if they don't have their own entries, and don't show up on search, what's the point of having them at all?kwami (talk)02:10, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, appendices can be categorized and found that way, and a link to the appendix could be included in the article on the wordStenoscript. But regardless of that, if these terms can't pass CFI, they don't belong. From Wikipedia's article on Stenoscript, it seems like this system was never very popular, so I would not be surprised if they can't be sufficiently attested.Benwing2 (talk)03:01, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I was thinking how someone who came across stenoscript abbreviations in papers they found -- say financial records they inherited -- could look it up. They might not know it was stenoscript, esp if it was just the occasional abbreviation rather than full stenoscript that would obviously be something distinct. Sure, if they heard of stenoscript and wanted to check it out, they could look it up on Wikipedia. But what if they just came acrosspn ormds and wanted to look it up -- where would they go if not Wiktionary?
I remember stenoscript being offered in adult ed classes in the US in the 1980s, alongside piano and macrame and ballroom dance and self-defense classes. So it wasn't exactly obscure.kwami (talk)03:28, 11 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I could easily believe thatmds would be used to abbreviatemerchandise in various contexts, although the "stenoscript" aspect seems like more of an etymological detail rather than a context label - the abbreviation is not being used in thecontextof stenoscript. The verb abbreviation and abbrevation of less common terms likemerchandiser seem more doubtful to me.This, that and the other (talk)03:20, 18 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
He was gentlemanly, steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the secret truth of hispretences, not only to others but also to himself.
An insincere attempt to reach a specific condition or quality.
Possibly I'm just having a mental blank about this word, but I am struggling to see as many distinct senses as we (and in some cases even more so) other dictionaries list for it. Even sense 2, which I added myself, is arguably just a "false show or appearance". But what about senses 3, 4 and 5? Can we come up with examples that do not actually on inspection simply mean "a false show or appearance", per sense 1? I don't see how the existing examples achieve this.Mihia (talk)18:27, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Def. 2 is distinct by reason of uncountability.
I'd expect some definitions to be of neutral phenomena and others of negative ones, though an "especially" or "usually" might make one def. cover both.
Google Ngrams has the following nine "adjectives" as the most common ones directly precedingpretense:false (nearly twice as common as the other eight combined),mere, such, little, other, fraudulent, hypocritical, slightest, only. The plural addsvarious, specious, frivolous, plausible.
I'm not sure whether this means thatpretense is intrinsically neutral and needs a negative adjective or thatpretense is usually used in cases where the negativity warrants extra emphasis.DCDuring (talk)20:21, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
"false pretence", also "false pretences", is very much a set phrase, and I would expect it to be conspicuously common. Nowadays the word "false" seems strictly unnecessary (I can't think of any modern neutral or positive uses), but apparently this phrase dates back hundreds of years, so I suppose it is possible that at one time there could be a "true pretence", or perhaps it was always strictly redundant and just used to reinforce falseness. I really don't know. There is certainly, as I alluded to in my post, no shortage at all of multiple different definitions of this word in different places, but what I would like to see at Wiktionary are examples that actually illustrate the alleged differences between our senses in a clear way, so that definitions of one sense can't just as well be substituted into examples of another. And, in particular, modern examples that on inspection are not essentially "false or simulated show or appearance". This is what I am struggling to come up with. Thanks for reminding of the countability issue. Sense 1 is (or should be) actually both countable and uncountable. I'll address that.Mihia (talk)21:45, 11 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago11 comments3 people in discussion
Sense: a woman's breast. And the associated plural; I'm not sure whether I need to tag that as well. I believe this is a misunderstanding of a sketch inMonty Python and the Holy Grail, where the ruler of the swamp castle is trying to persuade his uninterested son to go through with an arranged marriage. He says, "she's gothuge... [gestures as though holding a large pair of breasts] ...tracts of land!" But I don't think that he's using "tracts of land" as a metaphor or euphemism for "breasts".
There are two issues here: 1) is the character using the phrase "tracts of land" tomean breasts, and 2) has the phrase entered general usage with that meaning? There is a second definition in the entry, but it is literal and sum-of-parts; not sure if that needs to go to RFD if this sense is deleted.
As for 1): I think the editor misinterpreted the line. It's unclear to me which of three interpretations—all jokes for the viewer—should be placed on the line, but in none of them do thewords "tracts of land" refer to breasts. A) the father is about to say "breasts" or some equivalent, but changes his mind and instead refers to her literal tracts of land. B) because he knows he cannot refer directly to her breasts, he gestures in such a way that his sonshould understand that, while he can only mention her literal tracts of land, she also has huge breasts. C) he only ever meant to refer to literal tracts of land, but the gesture was meant to mislead theviewer into thinking that he was going to say "breasts" or some equivalent.
As for 2): irrespective of whether my assessment of the scene is correct, has the phrase entered general usage tomean "breasts"? There are (predictably) many internet references to it, but all or nearly all refer directly to the Monty Python sketch. A search on Google Books for "her tracts of land", which I would expect to find if writers use the phrase to mean "breasts" reveals only references to literal tracts of land. For that matter, scanning 25 pages of results for "huge tracts of land", I still found only references to literal tracts of land. Not even one trashy novel! I'm almost surprised by that; but then, I don't think that anyone would understand such a metaphor without being familiar with the Monty Python sketch. As a metaphor for breasts, as opposed to a visual gag, the phrase is rather clunky, and I do not imagine there is any significant usage that does not refer directly back to the film.P Aculeius (talk)14:57, 12 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I can readily find examples of this:
And everyone was too busy staring at her tracts of land to actually ring it up.
You can see him glance straight at her...tracts of land...right before he goes in for the embrace.
Big-Breast Pride: She is rather proud of her...tracts of land.
Her lower body seems scaled up, and her tracts of land do not really hang like sacks of fat
You can see him glance straight at her...tracts of land...right before he goes in for the embrace.
I think some of the fat from her butt was taken and given to her tracts of land during her transformation
... and I could go on. On this basis, I don't see why we shouldn'tkeep, but we could consider whether to make the plural form the primary entry.Mihia (talk)23:54, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
But are peoplereally using this, or just referring over and over to the Monty Python sketch? You can find lots of random internet content, but how much of it is actually citable to published sources? The film is almost fifty years old, but the most likely collocations found zero hits in Google Books. And it's so awkward that nobody would understand what it means without somehow pointing baffled readers to Monty Python. Are there any good sources that arecompletely independent of Monty Python? Because the entry has been tagged requesting examples for more than three years, and there's still nothing there.P Aculeius (talk)01:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
What would you consider to be a use "completely independent of Monty Python"? I mean, how would you recognise this if you read it or heard it?Mihia (talk)15:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I might be wrong, and stand to be corrected if so, but I got an impression that P Aculeius was looking for something more than this – looking to exclude cases where the speaker was "mentally referring to" or "thinking of" the sketch, even though it is not explicitly mentioned, but I don't know how it is possible to tell, short of actually contacting them and asking. I mean, you could say the same about e.g.bucket list or other phrases that have an exact known origin. Were the people quoted in our citations ofbucket list "thinking of" the film when they used the phrase? Does it disqualify the entry even if they were?Mihia (talk)19:40, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think what we want are citable uses where the author provides no indication that he or she is alluding to the scene inMonty Python and the Holy Grail, and relies on the reader to understand that "tracts of land" means "breasts" without any other clues. If the author has toexplain what he or she means by alluding to Monty Python, including clips, stills, or more extensive quotes from the movie, then the phrase isn't idiomatic. I didn't find any obvious examples in books, and a general search turned up clips, memes, or random message board posts, most of which relied on the reader to recognize the exact joke from Monty Python. I didn't see anything that looked citable. Maybe someone else will have better luck, and the entry can be verified.P Aculeius (talk)20:01, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
My examples above "should be" absent explicit reference to Monty Python (that was the intention!). I'm not sure where we stand at the moment on "random" Internet mentions. These were apparently sufficient in the recent case of "go = go to the". Personally I believe that weshould accept these, provided that the source is not just "rubbish", e.g. bad or broken or non-native English, "telegraphese", etc., which can be a value judgement. I think that these sources aremost likely to throw up words and phrases that readers will not understand and will wish to look up in the dictionary, and hopefully ours, if we include them, rather than UD.Mihia (talk)20:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
And they may be fine, but I don't know where any of them are from, so I can't really comment—except one of them looks like it might be from TVTropes, which is a lot of fun to spend (or waste!) time reading, but I don't think it's citable. I may be wrong!P Aculeius (talk)20:52, 17 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I've had time to look over the citations for "go = go to the", and there are five: two from Twitter, two from Reddit, and one from a pdf file produced for a school. I would not have thought these counted as durably archived sources, though a search of the Beer Parlour brought me to a 2022 debate about whether certain sources were allowable, which ended with no consensus about either Twitter or Reddit (of the two, Twitter seemed to have more support).
With no consensus, I suppose there is no formal obstacle to using them if they can demonstrate that "tracts of land" is understood to mean "breasts" without any context pointing to Monty Python. That said, I would not regard them as particularly good sources, because I do not know whether they are durably archived or whether the hundreds of billions of tweets that have been tweeted will still be available—and searchable—in another five or ten years (particularly as they can be edited and deleted, along with the accounts that posted them, at any time). I know even less about how Reddit works. And I have no confidence at all in what is basically the electronic version of an anonymously-authored school worksheet.
I'm not a policy warrior, and I'm not making it my mission to eliminate quotes from sources I don't feel are very good. I just think that we ought to be searching for sources that demonstrate lexical use, other than by an insular community of people who've all seen the same movie.P Aculeius (talk)03:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Delete I think it's arguable that the original Polish termbiały węgorz could be reasonably attestable (cf. the Polish Dancing Cow lyrics), thoughGoogle search only returns mentions from the Polish term, indicating that it did not enter the English lexicon.廣九直通車 (talk)03:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
While I have read some commentators pointing to a connotation of dice throws in the use of this term by John Gower or Gerard Manley Hopkins, it does not seem to be part of the denotative meaning - rather, it looks more like definition 2 (a consequence).Kiwima (talk)02:22, 14 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
This is an RFV of the sense "A television game show where word puzzles are solved by filling in the missing letters". The sense waspreviously discussed 17 years ago, but only two editors participated substantively. The sense requires quotations which are, among other things, not "about any person or group specifically associated with the product or service" or "about the type of product or service in general", and do not "identify the product or service to which the brand name applies, whether by stating explicitly or implicitly some feature or use of the product or service from which its type and purpose may be surmised, or some inherent quality that is necessary for an understanding of the author's intent":WT:CFI. The quotations currently in the entry all seem to refer to theAmerican game show. —Sgconlaw (talk)18:32, 16 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we should try to capture TV shows under WT:BRAND - I mean, yes, there is commercial value in the intellectual property ofWheel of Fortune as a trademark and as a concept, but that doesn't makeWheel of Fortune a "product or service".
Send to RfD. This appears to be nothing more than shorthand for "a textbook case of" fear, i.e. "fear in its basic definition", which seems like the sum of its parts. Nothing in the entry suggests that it is in any way idiomatic, and I do not think there is anything to search for. It might make sense as a gloss of "bibliophobia", but that does not seem to be how it is defined.P Aculeius (talk)12:07, 19 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
As far as I can understand it, the distinguishing feature of this sense of "textbook fear" is supposed to be that you hear or read about something being difficult/dangerous/frightening and fear it only for that reason. So, for example, if you often encounter spiders in your house, and you are terrified of them, you might have a "textbook fear" in the sense that it is a "classic" fear described in textbooks, but it wouldn't be "textbook fear" in our sense because you originated it yourself. Whether this is a clear and valid distinction, and, if so, whether it is a property of the word "textbook" or solely of "textbook fear", I do not know. (By the way, our definition seems poorly worded. The phrase structure seems not to be totally coherent.)Mihia (talk)13:41, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I cleaned up the formatting, but I'm very skeptical. I look forward to any citations that show support forany non-SoP definition. This smells to me like someone misinterpreting standard attributive use oftextbook. If enough people misinterprettextbook as it seems from the RfVed definition, there should eventually be citations that support a further extension of the meaning oftextbook. I wouldn't think thatfear would be the only noun modified by such an extended sense oftextbook, so, even if this collocation is cited, we should see whether there are other collocations that show the same extended meaning oftextbook.
On the subject oftextbook#Adjective, I added an example there, "Well done everyone, the tree fell exactly where we planned. That was textbook", partly to try to bolster the case that this is truly an adjective (which is ambiguous in many of the existing quotations), but then it struck me that our existing definition, that you quoted, does not exactly capture this kind of usage. The "tree felling" example does not describe something with "typical characteristics" so much as something "done exactly correctly, in the way that a textbook might describe". Do you think we are missing a sense? Or is it all part of the same sense?Mihia (talk)15:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Also, ", so that it might be included as an example in a textbook." does not really define the term, but rather explains the (obvious?) sense development.DCDuring (talk)16:19, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
In the end I found it difficult to broaden the definition in a way that appealed to me, so I made a separate definition. Anyone who prefers to merge them, please go ahead.Mihia (talk)18:32, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I can't distinguish senses 2 and 3 under "textbook", as they seem to be describing exactly the same thing. That said, I haven't tried to merge them, so I can't really comment on how difficult it is. But to return to "textbookfear", I fear we still haven't escaped the textbook use of "textbook" as an adjective. It still seems to be a textbook example of a phrase that means nothing more than the sum of its parts.P Aculeius (talk)20:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Returning to the RFV, I think it might be difficult to find examples that we can be certain are meant in this alleged special sense rather than the general "textbook" sense. I had a quick trawl of Google results, and found some thatcould be read as our sense, but all of them could be read in the "normal" sense too. Perhaps someone else might have more luck.Mihia (talk)21:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
(figuratively) Learned from, or as if learned from, a textbook, as opposed to personal discovery or experience.
He has atextbook understanding of company law but no practical experience of litigation.
Perhaps even if "textbook fear" does exist in the RFV'd sense, this definition might just about cover it? (I think there is a slight question about whether all the senses attextbook#Adjective are truly adjectives, but that's a different discussion.)Mihia (talk)21:38, 2 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Found two quotations listed in OED, and added. Was able to see one of them and elaborate on it. A third was from a glossary, so I left it out. There are probably more published uses, but a Google search was swamped by people named "Shirl" and "Shirley", the words "shield", "shields", "shielded", "Stirling", "shearling", etc., and if the word is dialectic then genuine uses may be less likely to have been digitized and indexed searchably. Maybe someone else will have better luck.P Aculeius (talk)05:36, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Dubious - one quote says "Shirling is neither sliding nor skating". One is used as noun "Ther's a grand shirl on t' pond.", final one "boddom o' t' stack wad be a lot o' smo 'at hed shirled doon" is from a shitty dialectal glossary.Vilipender (talk)15:49, 20 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Maybe cited. The concern would be the third cite, which is technically a mention:
1917 June 1, “Queries”, inEnglish Mechanic and World of Science, number2723, Throw Lathe, page299, column 1:
Throw Lathe—I am no longer able to use my lathe, which is worked by the feet. I am told I could get a small lathe, such as is used by watchmakers, and called a"throw lathe." I have never heard of such before, but would be very glad of a description, if possible with sketches. […]—D. B.
Just personally, I would consider this of a different character than a mention as in a dictionary entry, but that may not be consensus.166.181.86.16500:49, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago7 comments4 people in discussion
Rfv-sense: "The flight of a thrown object" as distinct from "The distance travelled by something thrown" and various other senses in the entry. It is not in OED, Century or Webster. It wasadded in 2003 byDvortygirl with the usex "a fastthrow", which does not seem to support the sense as defined.This, that and the other (talk)11:16, 22 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
A throw itself seems more like sense 1, the act of throwing. The "distance" sense gives as an example the expression, "a stone's throw", which really does relate to distance. I'm not sure whether the sense here is or isn't an example of sense 1, since "a quarterback's throw" seems to be the same thing, but at the same time in the example here, "a fast throw" seems to refer to a thing with qualities besides merely the act of throwing: the path of a thrown object, or other qualities associated with the traveling object. Perhaps some rewording is in order.P Aculeius (talk)00:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree that "a fast throw" is notquite "a fast act of throwing", and also there are examples such as "his throw reached the boundary", where it is again not really theact that reaches the boundary. It could be quite hair-splitting to try to reflect this in the definitions, perhaps. On another point, I question whether the single idiom "a stone's throw" justifies a whole sense "The distance travelled by something thrown". I'm not even totally convinced that "throw"in itself means a distance even in that expression. Or are there other examples?Mihia (talk)15:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
There are cutesy variations, such as "a pebble's throw" when referring to proximity to a beach, but I think this kind of thing hardly counts as different.Mihia (talk)22:43, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
There are also expressions relating to the time a throw takes and the quantity of stuff thrown rather than the speed or distance of the throw and I’m not sure how we should best cover these instances either. For example ‘one second throw’ ([29] and[30]), ‘one second throw’([31] and[32]) and ‘gram throw’ in relation to coffee machines[33] and hot chocolate machines[34].Overlordnat1 (talk)09:16, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "grammar". is this really a separate sense from sense 1? the morphosyntax of a language naturally is (part of) the grammar of that language, and i doubt the word "morphosyntax" is ever used to include other aspects of a grammar e.g. phonology. also see the rfc for this word.ragweed theatertalk,user14:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
thank you! it would be really nice if we can have an official guideline on this.
it seems to me that a "three (presumably verification-passing) words that use the affix" criterion is potentially too strict-- for example, say there is a combining formabc, for which we find three formations (sayabc-ic,abc-phobic, andabc-form, or something like that). now let's say every one of these terms is seemingly a one-off formation. in this case none of the three derived terms would pass verification, but i do believeabc itself should pass: its productivity is basically on par with a full word that is attested three times.ragweed theatertalk,user23:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
back toammo-(“related to sand”): a search in OED does not turn up anything relevant other thanammophilous.ammodyte <ἄμμος(ámmos,“sand”) +δύτης(dútēs,“diver”) should be considered a wholesale loan from Ancient Greekἀμμοδύτης(ammodútēs,“sand-burrower”) or Latinammodytēs(“id.”). out of the wiktionary lemma list,ammotrechid(“solifuge of the amilyAmmotrechidae”), although ultimately <ἄμμος(ámmos,“sand”) +τρέχ-(trékh-,“run”), should be regarded as a loan from (scientific) LatinAmmotrechidae and coined there. similarly goesammoxenid(“spider of the familyAmmoxenidae”), though i'm not entirely sure of the meaning of the name-- "sand-wanderer"? besides these,ammoidin points toAmmi, and almost everything else goes back toAmmon in one way or another (viaammonia orammonite).
RFV sense 9 as distinct from 4.2 and 4.3. As far as I can tell, the sole present example (Herschel) is either 4.2 or 4.3 (not certain which; full context at[38]).Mihia (talk)10:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Investors face a quandary. Cash offers a return of virtually zero in many developed countries; government-bondyields may have risen in recent weeks but they are still unattractive. Equities have suffered two big bear markets since 2000 and are wobbling again. It is hardly surprising that pension funds, insurers and endowments are searching for new sources of return.
RFV "law" sense. Is there really such a sense distinct from the finance sense? The existing example does not appear to demonstrate so.Mihia (talk)20:43, 25 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
The "law" label is implausible to me.
Yield is sometimes an amount, sometimes an annualized rate (as % of either face or market value) in finance, easily cited if necessary (I would assert widespread use.). It is generally a 'yield' of money on money. As an amount it could easily be combined with definitions that applied to timber, crops, fish, effort, labor, etc.DCDuring (talk)20:24, 26 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "(especially religion) A formal statement of doctrine". if i'm reading the context right, the "formulae" in the one quote we have now doesn't seem to refer to "statements of doctrine", but the set phrases and/or structural elements (the specific ways one should say the prayers, etc.) in the rituals. it would then correspond to the primary sense listed in the OED: "A set form of words in which something is defined, stated, or declared, or which is prescribed by authority or custom to be used on some ceremonial occasion"-- which is a sense we happen not to have at the moment.ragweed theatertalk,user20:44, 28 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
No, but I'm not aware that enclosing a single word in quotation marks would produce any different results; I did a general search and then narrowed the results to occurrences in books. As far as I know, quotation marks are used to enclose a string of words to produce an exact match, so they should make no difference to a single word. And if occurrences ofabnegation orabrogation have been misindexed asabregation, then they ought to appear whether or not you encloseabregation in quotation marks; I don't know how doing so would eliminate hits for words that have erroneously been indexed with the same spelling.P Aculeius (talk)15:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I cannot find any instances of "abgregation" besides dictonaries, of which there are many. OED says "apparently never used" (1888), and Johnson said "rarely used", but any examples would have been included in OED. Not a word I would really expect in more recent times, unless someone was being deliberately florid.P Aculeius (talk)00:35, 5 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just FYI, in some search engines double quotes around a single word will suppress matching of near homonyms. So it can make a difference, depending on the search.166.181.86.16501:25, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Rfv-sense 4: "(informal, slang) Someone who is sexually attracted to anthropomorphic animal characters." Added a month ago by an IPhere; removed by another IPtoday. As I understand it, the question is: if someone does not identify with an anthropomorphic animal character or have afursona (i.e. is not a furry in senses 2 or 3, which at present seem ill-distinguished), but isattracted to furries, does that make that person a furry? It seems possible.- -sche(discuss)06:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
That's how I understand the term, yeah. Would be hard to cite (how do you prove someone doesn't have a fursona?), but I did find these:
2020 September 25, Kathy Merlock Jackson, Kathy Shepherd Stolley, Lisa Lyon Payne,Animals and Ourselves: Essays on Connections and Blurred Boundaries, McFarland,→ISBN, page245:
While members of the fandom seem to use " fandom " in a formal capacity explicitly to describe particular interest in forms of art, it is also used less formally to refer to all members of thefurry community regardless of artistic involvement and commitment to a fursona.
2021 August 26, Jessica Ruth Austin,Fan Identities in the Furry Fandom, Bloomsbury Publishing USA,→ISBN, page57:
24 per cent of respondents of the 1,011 results did not have a fursona at all. This shows that having a fursona is still in the majority but it opens up questions as to why a significant minority do not have them but still consider themselves aFurry.
"...one-third of furries say that sexual attraction to furry content is a motivator of their participation ... while certainly a motivator for some furries, it is not the primary motivating factor for most furries..."
I think the error made by the editor was that theydefined "furry" as meaning "someone sexually attracted to [furry content]". That is just not what the word means, any more than "animal" means "something with fur, long ears, and retractable claws". Simply, a "furry" is as in senses 1, 2, and 3, and senses 2 and 3 include a whole host of interests.
I vote removal of sense 4 as incorrect and unsubstantiated.
You make a good point about "animal". It seems reasonable that what is currently sense 2, "member of the furryfandom", couldinclude someone who was a fan of (and particularly attracted to) furries, but it seems like the meaning of "furry" is still "member of the furry fandom (in any capacity, whether by having a fursona or being attracted to one)", rather than that "furry" ever specifically means only "someone attracted to...", i.e. that a speaker would use "furry"only for "someone attracted to..." and wouldnot consider other members of the fandom to be "furries".(Like how some people use "animal" to mean "any non-human animal" and would not include humans, while other people use "animal" to mean "any animal (including a human)", but no one uses "animal" to mean "a human specifically (to the exclusion of non-human animals)", so defining animalas "human", a la our sense 4 offurry, would be a misunderstanding.) Smurrayinchester's cites seem to bear this out, remarking that a minority of furries don't have fursonas (but a majority do), including themall as "furries", rather than using "furry" to mean only the fursonaless minority. I suggest reorganizing the entry either likethis or likethis (merging what are currently senses 2 and 4, and putting "someone who has a fursona" and "fursona" next to each other, rather than sticking another sense in between them like our entry currently does).- -sche(discuss)16:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
RFV of all senses
The free-fall one is potentially citeable (I found two, plus a mention), the skydiving sex one is obvious vandalism, and the facemask one seems to be a joke during the pandemic that was mentioned but never actually used as a word.Smurrayinchester (talk)23:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion
Only used in one poem by Wallace Stevens from what I can see, and even in that one poem it's not clear what it means (the next word ishands, so the poem actually sayshis jigging bluet-eyed hands). The first hit onarchive.org at first appears to be a second use, but this is simply a book of poetry quoting the Stevens poem.—Soap—21:56, 3 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
i see now that its actuallythe [women] came for his jigging, bluet-eyed, [their] hands [outstretched] so the sense is presumably as we say it is after all, but i still see only one use of this.—Soap—22:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Our second nounal sense ofgallant is ‘seducer’ so I see no contradiction here. The definition could be slightly reworded to make the meaning more clear though, I suppose.Overlordnat1 (talk)23:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
There’s not much independent of the bard (‘quondam carpetbaggers’ appears in Much ado about nothing here[39]) on Google Books. This book[40] uses the phrase ‘carpet-monger, or Primrose Knight of Primero’ to refer to a libertine and it seems to be written by Thomas Nashe but others list the whole of that phrase as being from the Merry Wives of Windsor (I couldn’t find it here[41]). There are also snippet views of other authors possibly using the word with this meaning here[42] and here[43].Overlordnat1 (talk)23:03, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
May have been a mistake by the creator assuming that sincepee is a euphemism forpiss, it can stand in for that word even in the sense of alcohol. Either that or they just didnt think it through. I agree this seems unlikely and wouldnt really know how to search for it. Calling alcoholpiss requires a speech register that just doesnt overlap much with the situations where we'd want to use a euphemism.—Soap—23:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "To add ermine to someone's coat of arms"
Can't find any citations of this, which seems like an overly literal reading of the phrase. Every hit is metaphorical and refers to the ermine robes won by lords and judges.Smurrayinchester (talk)09:40, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense 3, "The ruins of a broken-down structure." Must be distinct from main sense 1, "Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed." Other dictionaries (Chambers, Merriam) do not seem to distinguish, and in my experience debris is small pieces, never large components like castle ruins.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E1CB:650D:44C7:C9617:05, 14 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
If not a joke listing (with "Not mine" meaning "don't clap WF's cheeks" and not "this entry isn't by me"), note that we haveclap cheeks already. The only thing I really see missing from the latter are 2 more cites and a figurative sense by extension, meaning "to beat someone handily (e.g. at a game)".Hftf (talk)05:13, 17 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Of the attestations I could find for this supposed plural form ofbenthos (which I could count on one hand), all appear to be possible errors by writers for whom English is not their primary language, and all dictionaries I have consulted do not cite a plural form.
Latest comment:5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "Lonely; solitary; desolate". Had an "archaic" label, but an IP recently removed it. This sense has three quotes... but they're all Middle English. —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/13:31, 28 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense: "The way in which the eyes are drawn across the visual text. The trail that a book cover can encourage the eyes to follow from certain objects to others."
A very wordy and specific definition, but "vector + eye tracking" or "vector + book cover" don't seem to turn anything up. Just a lot about vector graphics and the sense 2 vector encoding of eye co-ordinates.Smurrayinchester (talk)14:37, 29 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
I searched around but have not managed to find anything. The OED's only "cites" seem to be two mentions/definitions in other dictionaries or glossaries.- -sche(discuss)17:03, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
rfv-sense for "Horse show-class in which contestants are members of a formal hunt and wear its livery, as opposed to appointment show-class."
rfv-sense for "A small tubular wafer used in desserts" (if real, probably from the wafer cookies brand named Corinthians, in which case refer toWT:BRAND)ragweed theatertalk,user10:50, 3 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
If verifiable, the definition might be(obsolete), since we now know that different species of salmon have different growth cycles, and I think even within the same species some may grow faster than others. In other words it wouldnt be a useful term.—Soap—12:52, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
GNU reports this as "Prov. Eng." and Century 1911 (earlier years?) had it (labelled "Local, Eng.", with "Willughby" as source) before MW 1913 had it. OED?Francis Willughby (1635-72) was, among other things, an ichthyologist and linguist. HisHistoria Piscium (1686) was written in Latin and his journals are lost, so it is unclear whether he actually used the English wordhalf-fish. OTOH Google Books has many reference works withhalf-fish with this definition and many books about fish or fishing have mentions of the term, often citing Willughby/Willoughby, but at least as often using the same wording without citing him. Many of the mentions refer to the term being used in Yorkshire, by fishermen on the riverRibble. The term is one in a sequence (yr. 1:smelt; yr. 2:sprod, yr. 3:mort; yr. 4:forktail; yr. 6 et seq.salmon. At Wiktionary onlysmelt lacks the salmon definition.DCDuring (talk)18:26, 7 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Okay so it looks like it's a term for a four-year-old specimen of a species that typically matures after five years. If this stays, I want to write a usage explaining why it wouldnt b e appropriate to use for other species.—Soap—22:27, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
i do agree that this probably isn't passing CFI, but what makes you think that the usehere (assuming this is the paper you mean) is an "apparent error", or that the etymology is nonsensical? the word is clearly intended to mean "in aheterocrine manner" in that paper since it's used besidesparacrinally andautocrinallyragweed theatertalk,user12:26, 6 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
This definition misses the point, since it's not the sending of just any virtual media, but of sending virtual media of someonefarting.
The whole entry needs to be reworked- the usage seems to be entirely in reference to the recent prosecution of a woman in India for allegedly doing this, so it's probably a hot word that doesn't fit the labels in the definition line, and it probably should be lemmatized at the verbcyberfart /cyber fart. I decided to post it as an RFV rather than an RFC because it's completely wrong in its present form and should be deleted if not cleaned up.Chuck Entz (talk)21:41, 8 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "sex with a boy." A conceivable definition judging from the popular etymology of the Latin etymon, but the uses I've seen all take this word to be basically equivalent to "anal sex" or more specifically "anal penetration", with no reference to pedophiliaragweed theatertalk,user01:43, 12 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "(computingtheory) A formal system specifying thesyntax of a language." Doesn't really look like a distinct sense. there could definitely be a nuanced difference between this and Sense 1, but the way the one quote we have now uses the wordgrammar, although certainly adapted a bit for its purpose, is imo still an ordinary use of Sense 1ragweed theatertalk,user16:53, 14 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
My feeling is that these are valid senses (though possibly don't need to be three separate definitions), probably based on the idea of clicking one of those hand-held counting gadgets. I can find a few relevant examples of "click off the miles", "click off the days", "click off the items" etc., albeit not quite as many as I expected.Mihia (talk)21:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense: "A large fish of speciesMegalops atlanticus (Atlantic tarpon)." or an extended definition like "any of the genusMegalops oftarpons". Not easy to search for because of the other sea-life definition, the genus name, and use as a specific epithet. I've tried searching for the plural form and on Google NGrams for the upper- and lower-case forms witha orthe, but the displayed search results don't differentiate by letter case. I also tried '"a meglops" tarpon -crab' at Google Books.
I think many lower-case versions of genus names are suspect. The hard redirect lower-case search term to upper-case entry and the use{{also}} with the upper-case form at any entry for a valid lower-case form should be sufficient help users decode and properly encode.DCDuring (talk)18:02, 16 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
all attestations I can find are for the comparative platform for green plant genomicsPhytozome, no usage ofphytozome as a name for plant genomes.Anatol Rath (talk)11:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:12 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Etymology 2: “Capability of being infused, poured in, or instilled”; “rare” in theOED, with only “in N. Webster,American Dictionary of English Language ; and in mod. Dicts.”J3133 (talk)07:40, 24 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
It would make senseto me that there would be two points of view about two materials that were being fused, say, one a porous solid, the other a liquid:
from the PoV of the porous solid: "capable of being infused (into)": A highly hygroscopic, microporous solid would have lowinfusibility.
from the PoV of the liquid: "capable of infusing". A highly viscose liquid would have lowinfusibility.
Whether it is actually used in both ways, I don't know. It would seem worthwhile to have distinct definitions if both can be supported.DCDuring (talk)16:47, 26 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-senseA member of the barefoot movement; a person who chooses not to wear shoes or socks.
Sense not established. I could see it being used to refer to someone who habitually goes barefoot, so we could leave the second part of the definition, but I couldnt find three cites in print media even for that looser sense. They're all about waterskiing apart from a couple of unclear uses which I don't have access to the necessary context to understand (and some of the books arent readable at all).—Soap—21:24, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
I see a reasonable smattering of hits on general Google search for"barefooter" -waterskiing -skiing. Term definitely seems to exist (agree we could possibly lose the first part of the definiton), but I don't know exactly where we are on citing "random Internet content". See alsohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_barefooters. Huh!Mihia (talk)22:06, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
RFV sense "Something which changes like the tides of the sea."
Such as?
(Note "changes like", i.e. rises and falls with a regular periodicity, not to be confused with something being like the tide because it is a flow or current, which is covered by other senses.)Mihia (talk)16:02, 27 February 2025 (UTC)Reply
FWIW, the OED has"fig. Applied to that which is like the tide of the sea in some way; as in ebbing or flowing, rising or falling, or 'turning' at a certain time. [...] SHAKS.Jul. C. IV. iii. 218 There is a Tide in the affayres of men, Which taken at the Flood, leades on to Fortune. 1777 PRIESTLEYMatt. & Spir. (1782) I. Pref. 10 The tide of popular prejudice may rise still higher. 1849 MACAULAYHist. Eng. vi. II. 54 From that moment the tide of battle turned. 1900Daily News 7 Dec. 8/5 The dramatic tide has its ebb and flow like other tides. It is not obvious to me that this necessarily requires a sense, as opposed to being an instance of the general phenomenon of words being able to be used metaphorically.- -sche(discuss)15:39, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
The current definition does not make sense; it has dimension (mass/length), whereas a density should have dimension (mass/volume). A definition found in the literature that does make sense is: the mass of a black hole divided by the volume of its Schwarzschild sphere, where the latter is defined as a sphere whose radius is the Schwarzschild radius.[50][51] ‑‑Lambiam13:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
An instrument for measuring columns. How would it measure columns anyhow? Besides, there is clearly a thing called a stylometer, in the world of science (unsure what it does). And this is used informally for a gauge of how stylish something is, like acoolometer. Also,stylometry is something quite different.Wars at my door (talk)17:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
It might be an engineering device similar to a caliper or a compass. Probably related to the subject ofthis 1661–1662 tract, which appears to discuss the various orders of columns and uses the word, though I'm not sure whether I can find a discussion of it in English. Not in the original OED, but in Webster andThe Century Dictionary. There's a technical use probably unrelated to columnshere (1997). Looks like something to do with chemistry, but I can't tell exactly what kind of instrument it is.This (1957) probably refers to the same thing, though I can't be sure from the snippet view. I thinkthis snippet (1970) might explain it: a photoelectric device used to measure chemical spectra. I see two or three other hits on Google Books that appear to be the same kind of thing used in physics.Here (2014) a stylometer appears to be an instrument for measuring, calibrating, or testing a stylus. Same word, different type of instrument. This seems clearly related to the first use, measuring (or perhaps describing) columns; the photoelectric device seems to be etymologically related, though I'm not sure of the exact details.P Aculeius (talk)00:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense
We have 5 citations... but they're all just quoting the same source. Any citations for "lemoga" that aren't referring specifically to Armathwaite Hall (which I think would failWT:BRAND, since it's just a name they're using to promote their courses)Smurrayinchester (talk)11:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I added various citations to the citations page,but changes to the definition may be needed: several dictionaries definefoggage (likefog) not asdead grass but asnew grass—a second growth of grass, grown for winter grazing—and the verb may be similarly polysemous, in which case we need to work out whether the cites are about growing new grass that's suited to growing in late-autumn / winter (as some seem like they might be), or about leaving spring/summer grass dead on the land.- -sche(discuss)15:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
If one fancies, Google Books has more than enough quotes. Some might see better previews than I do on my German machine.Never heard of it never was a good reason, what do you think a dictionary is for, other than to tell you things you haven’t heard or read.Fay Freak (talk)21:50, 8 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
just making sure everyone sees the discussion from the previous RFV, attalk:number three, where it had been listed as just a synonym fornumber one. i think it's used often enough to mean masturbation, but it can also mean
• menstruation, particularly changing or disposing of an undergarment (because that's a bodily function too, and tampons are often dispensed in bathrooms). i once saw aRen & Stimpy cartoon where one of the characters, i think Stimpy, said first he had to do number one, then number two, then number three, as he goes first into a men's room, then a boys' room, and then a girls' room. it could've been the artists' way of hinting at this meaning while staying kid-friendly, but it could also be completely meaningless. possibly proof of usehere, though i understand TikToks are not CFI.
• washing one's hands.
♬ once you've done number one and number two ♬
♬ don't forget to donumber three!♬
• possibly other things. one of the TikToks suggests it means #1 and #2 together. i think there was a different discussion somewhere but i can't find it now. it might have been on Reddit or some other site and not specific to Wiktionary. theRen & Stimpy use may have just been absurdist humor, after all.
i lean towards not including this as currently defined, but i cant figure out how to express exactly why. it seems like we're missing the point if we insist on a precise definition, when the expression is almost always used in such a way that its meaning is derived from context. But, perhaps we could write a definition such asany thirdbodily function besides urination and defecation?—Soap—13:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not "any third bodily function" (eg, not digestion, respiration, motion, perspiration). Perhaps "any of certain common (tabooed?) bodily functions, especially those producing liquids, such as[…]". Harder and probably not worthwhile to include hand-washing.DCDuring (talk)15:46, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
yeah, i didnt make up the hand-washing song, but it must've stuck in my head out of proportion to its use, because i can't even find it now. and i don't think it was on a video, either, so I'm surprised i can't find it. oh well. i agree with you although i'd say the phrasebodily function itself is lexicalized enough to exclude those others .... in any case, i think the definition we use should make it clear that it relies on context.—Soap—21:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
might this be the same as#corocore below? the Wikipedia article suggests an Arabic cognateقرقور(qurqur), which at least has a /u/ in it, and [g] is a dialectal realization of MSA /q/.—Soap—14:06, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
A vegetable jelly. It is certainly some substance, but "vegetable jelly" doesn't look like the right definition. My guess is it is an old word for something with another name--85.48.185.6714:17, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Pectin is the ingredient that makesjellygel, so "vegetable jelly" isn't that far off the mark. A number of 19th-century reference works in Google Books state that grossulin is a synonym forpectin. I'm sure some scientist found a gelatinous substance ingooseberry fruit that later was shown to be the same as pectin, and the name was forgotten. I would label it as an obsolete synonym of "pectin".Chuck Entz (talk)14:36, 12 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense 2: "(loosely, Internet, slang, ironic) A woman associated with and/or adjacent to the incel 'aesthetic', 'vibe', or other connotations."
Looks like this might reflect actual in-the-wild usage (femcelcore seems to be an oft-ironic TikTok phenomenon) but it needs to be backed up by cites demonstrating usage distinct from the "involuntarily celibate woman" sense.WordyAndNerdy (talk)12:17, 15 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
OED has one use as a verb: "Arminius paved his way first by aspersing and sugillating the fame and authority of Calvin. / J. Trapp, Commentary Evangelists & Acts (Acts xxi. 28)"Vox Sciurorum (talk)12:26, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
It isn't hard to findnot worth salt in 19th century and early 20th century works. It also occurs innot worth salt to one's|the|a porridge|poddish|black bread|broth|kail|meat|herring.DCDuring (talk)20:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just noting that OED has an entry undergreen gate labelled "rare (now Scottish)" with only two quotations, one datedc. 1540 and the other a mention in a 1988 glossary calledOrkney Wordbook. —Sgconlaw (talk)21:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
apparently used a lot on the internet to refer to the blåhaj shark plushie from IKEA? a google image search of "shonk" shows that posters in r/BLAHAJ use it routinely. probably influenced bystonk (etym 2) andthonk. might be difficult to cite with durable sources, but we keptcar,sense 11, so there's probably no reason not to keep this as well.
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense:The typicallimb, orlateralfin, offishes. The term was used, but is now archaic, and referred to a fin in the evolutionary stage. Besides, we don't have a fish definition forlimb, andtypical fin is a poor definition. --84.78.23.10919:13, 20 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Definition was imported wholesale from Webster 1913. It seems to me after looking at some sources that it just referred to a fish fin, but usually in evolutionary/comparative contexts; i've changed the definition line to "(comparativeanatomy,obsolete) Afishfin". the related termscheiropterygium andarchipterygium (and maybe more) we should probably also look intoragweed theatertalk,user12:08, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Two senses, one cite, and that says "Say that the Fayrie left this Aulfe," and doesn't actually use auf (andaulfe doesn't have an entry). It's very hard to search for since auf is so common in German.--Prosfilaes (talk)23:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
With the help of Wright'sEnglish Dialect Dictionary, which has this underawf, I managed to find two cites of sense 2 spelledawf and one spelledaufe, and 1-3 cites (depending on whether or not we take "awf shot" to attest "awf" or only to be an alt form ofelf-shot) of a sense, which we lack, "elf". It seems the lemma should be moved toawf (and the link atoaf updated). I don't know if sense 1 is attestable.- -sche(discuss)04:39, 22 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've set upawf, with cites. I didn't just move the entry, because I realized the senses were distinct (but the ones currently listed atauf, and that spelling, may not be attested).Oph may not be attested, either; I'm going to add it to the RFV.- -sche(discuss)07:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Not sure, from a check Google Books check, that the definition is correct. Many of this user's entries have been unattested in the sense given, or have been deleted for other errors...- -sche(discuss)20:51, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This seems like it may suffer from the same problem as#Ancient Meitei (above): it exists as a SOP phrase where uncapitalized "ancient" is adjacent to "Kangleipak", but whether it exists as a capitalized, unitary idiomatic phrase is unclear.- -sche(discuss)21:15, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps barely on the web, but not in durably attested media. Hard to find because of interference from a Japanese-derived game, a proper name, and a Windows background process, etc. Anyway it might be useful for us and for interface designers.DCDuring (talk)13:19, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "A stretching or bending of the mind toward an object or a purpose (an intent); closeness of application; fixedness of attention; earnestness" These definitions are quite fuzzy, and probably just verbose ways of phrasing the main definitions. --90.174.3.9421:38, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
the definition is imported from Webster 1913 and could be worded to sound less archaic, but thisis a distinct (but obsolete; i've added the label) sense. OED gives "the action of straining or directing the mind or attention to something; mental application or effort; attention, intent observation or regard; endeavour." so, not just having a goal in mind in general, but actually putting attention and effort to it, which the modern use of the word wouldn't necessarily implyragweed theatertalk,user14:36, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "above or in front of a leaf". This doesn't fit with the (thoroughly defined) prefixintra-. Probably a change of definiton is all that's needed --85.48.184.13510:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
It does if you look at it the way a botanist does: things start out inside of a bud, and grow upward and outward from there. That means that anything on the stem above the point of attachment of the leaves can be viewed as being inside them. If you view the leaves as facing inward, anything between them and the stem is in front of them. Seethe explanation here] for instance.
Latest comment:3 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "pouring into a vessel". There is a fantasy meaning missing too, the mutual fusion of magical powers or something. It was seen in at least 2 wizardry books --85.48.184.13510:34, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Vilipender: This is found in use exactly once, probably in the whole surviving written corpus of the English language, 1585 as aglossing, not glossed, term, inJohn Higgins’ English bilingual edition of the Latin dictionaryNomenclator … of the Dutch humanistHadrianus Junius,page 232.
InMackay, Charles (1877)The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe. And More Especially of the English and Lowland Scotch, and Their Slang, Cant, and Colloquial Dialects[52], London: N. Trübner & Co.,page121a the word is etymologized withcuach(“bowl, goblet”) +uisge(“water”), literally“water-goblet”. So we know where that Oxford student hailed from: not England.
1531, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettesheim, translated by James Freake, edited by L. W. deLaurence,The Philosophy of Natural Magic, published1913, page202:
So Cyprus, after he was chosen king of Italy, did very much wonder at and meditate upon the fight and victory of bulls, and in the thought thereof did sleep a whole night, and in the morning he was found horned, no otherwise than by the vegetative power, being stirred up by a vehement imagination, elevatingcornifichumors into his head and producing horns.
This one could fit the definition even if the intended meaning is multi-layered (I wonder if it is referencing the idea of "horniness"):
1879, Henry Astbury Leveson,The Forest and the Field, page61:
As we were supping in Fred's comfortable quarters, the doctor, looking significantly at our host, who had only just turned up from escorting some fair party home, remarked in his dry, quaint manner, that he imagined there was something peculiarly "cornific" in the atmosphere so near the mountains, the influence of which extended to other animals besides ibex and wild sheep, and he forthwith commenced spouting after Shakespeare: To wed, or not to wed, that is the question: [etc]
Here's another which is even more obscure:
[53] The cause is not far to seek; think of that stoutcornific* doctor with leaden eyes, a confrère of Froissart, if you like, but how different! He holds in his hand his manual of canon-law, Peter the Lombard, a treatise on the syllogism. *Cornificien, a name given by Jean of Sarisberg to those who disfigured dialectics by their extravagant,cornusarguments—Translator.
Seems to be a rare form (seemingly the French rendition) ofkora-kora, a historic Malay boat (compareKora kora on Wikipedia.Wikipedia). We give that as an alternative form ofcaracore, which we define as a historicFilipino boat, but Wikipedia has a separate article on the Filipino vessel (Karakoa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia). The two vessels look extremely similar and one would need to investigate whether we should treat them as synonymous.This, that and the other (talk)10:40, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cited and redefined as an alt form; I also centralized content on what seems (per Ngrams) to be the most common spelling in both the singular and plural,caracoa and pointed all the alt forms towards there. I did not get the sense, from cites, thatKora kora on Wikipedia.Wikipedia andKarakoa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia are consistently distinctin English. (They could be distinct in Malay and/or Tagalog.)- -sche(discuss)07:13, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, weird case. I can citeعayn (these are arguably more mentions than uses, but letter names are surely a special case since they're almost never used in the strict grammatical sense):
1806, John Richardson,A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic and English, page626:
عayn, The eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, and used as the twenty-first of the Persian; expressing 70 in arithmetic.
1997, Petra Bos,Development of Bilingualism: A Study of School-age Moroccan Children in the Netherlands:
عayn: voiced pharyngeal fricative
2024 January 22, Jane Wightwick, Mahmoud Gaafar,Mastering Arabic 1, Bloomsbury Publishing,→ISBN, page68:
عayn does not have a near equivalent in English , so the Arabic letter itself is used in the transliteration.
and3ayn
2008 November 19, Keith Massey,Intermediate Arabic For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons,→ISBN, page63:
The [Arabic] (3ayn) has no correspondence in English. It's produced by tightening the back of the throat and then speaking a vowel through it.
2011, Zouheir A. Maalej, Ning Yu,Embodiment Via Body Parts: Studies from Various Languages and Cultures, John Benjamins Publishing,→ISBN, page214:
The main objective is to ascertain embodiment through outer body parts, and the experience3ayn profiles in one dialect of Arabic.
2014 November 4, Matthew Aldrich,Arabic Voices 2: Authentic Listening and Reading Practice in Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Dialects, Lingualism.com, page13:
It has sounds from many languages... for example it has the sound "kha", the pronunciation of "kha", the "ghayn", the ... uh ... the "3ayn", the "Ha", so there are a lot of things that don't exist in other languages[…]
But I can't find any evidence that ƹ is ever used. This may be an OCR thing, or it may be that no-one ever had a reason to use it when either they'd be using a typewriter or general printing press (where ƹ and ع would both be unavailable) or a specialist printing press (which would probably be more likely to have Arabic letters than an obscure IPA variant).Smurrayinchester (talk)08:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I spent an hour plus looking through the four references added to the page in an attempt to convert them into quoted attestations, and arguably only one is even marginally acceptable. So far I don't see this word meeting CFI, unfortunately. There is also confusion/conflation of whether this word is a name for an Arabic letter or for a Latin letterƹ used in some romanizations, which I tried to fix, probably in vain but whatever. That said, a couple of the references are good evidence for expanding theƹ entry, as it is used in some romanizations.Hftf (talk)10:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I can’t find much, SOPish is used in the context of a computer language (and might be short for ‘sum-of-parts-ish’) in this book here[54] and there’s a very unclear use where SOPish is used in a sexual context about BBBJs (bareback blowjobs) here[55]. I do personally think that there are a handful of words that we should allow entries for that we currently don’t precisely because they’re Wiktionary jargon and thus would be useful to the reader but that would require a change of policy - among them are ‘SOPish’, ‘usex’ and ‘mentiony’.Overlordnat1 (talk)06:59, 6 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Yet another Webster 1913-imported dictionary, which will remain on this page until August 2025, with 2 comments saying "no quotes", Wonderfool marking it as Failed, and eventually archived by Overlord. Really, I should just{{speedy}} this, but process is process...TypeO889 (talk)15:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
bullhide glue. Lots of italicised hits. Besides, I'd recommend bull semen if you want some seriously sticky, sweet-smelling stuff.TypeO889 (talk)15:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I guess they meantaateraaq(“kittiwake”)[57] (I think that was only worth about 5 points tbh). Presumably it was borrowed into Scots/English via some other language though.
OED doesn't buy this theory, just giving "origin uncertain" and taking-ock as a diminutive suffix. It also cops out somewhat on the definition, saying that it's a word applied to various seabirds in different parts of Scotland.
"fig-shaped stones or pebbles of flint", akafigstone/fig-stone, which are similarly hard to attest. Scores of English mentions, 2 or 3 uses(?) in tables of minerals, 1 use in running text. Possibly attestable in French and Italian. May be attestable asSycite in German.DCDuring (talk)18:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is used in The Skeptic's Dictionary's entry on crystal skulls, and at leastone cite can be found if we cite the Usenet entries that reference Carroll's crystal skull article.Khemehekis (talk)08:10, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Added indiff. I'm not familiar with it, butgoogle:"was very tea" finds various things like "I was very tea last night hun", "ginger was very tea", "A live music video that was very tea", "Morning workout was very tea", "Outcome was very TEA 💋 I’m proud of myself pics will be posted". I don't know if it's made it into magazines or books, because I have not figured out how to search Issuu for a specific phrase (if I search for "was very tea", it just returns books which have the wordsvery,was, andtea in them in unconnected places). I agree it'd make sense to move it below the noun even if it can be cited.- -sche(discuss)22:52, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Kind of hasty. It's not SoP. "Yell" on its own doesn't connote "rebuking", and "at" on its own doesn't mean "while rebuking", but "yell at" together does connote rebuking and can't connote anything else. Also see these results for the Google searches"in a whisper" AROUND(5) ("yelled at" OR "yelling at") and"yells at" AROUND(5) "without raising", although the first two aren't necessarily cinchers because there are also results for"yelled in a whisper" (even without "at").
but she knows it more as the place where she gets yelled at — in a whisper — every week for an hour.[58]
ELIAS CRINGED AS HIS MOTHER STOOD, YELLING AT HIM in a whisper from the other side of the kitchen table. “You are grounded, do you hear me?”[59]
Sometimes a parent "yells" at their kids without raising his/her voice. Is there a better [French] translation than crier or hurler?[60]
OK, I've changed my mind and 'unfailed' this. Possibly still SOP though, as I can also find 'yell without raising his/her voice', even without 'at'. --Overlordnat1 (talk)11:41, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I never ended up going quote-hunting, but something else I was thinking of was phrases like "they sent us an email yelling at us". I can't personally extract a literal interpretation of "yell" from that (e.g. to me the email in that sentence could be a professional scolding with entirely reserved language), whereas if I saw someone write "stop yelling" w/o "at" I'd assume that they were responding to an impassioned message, e.g. one with expletives and/or all caps. If "yell at" in the literal sense is indistinguishable from SOP "yell + at", but the former has its own figurative extension that doesn't apply to the latter, it might support that the former is its own lemma. Worth digging for quotes to be sure.Still, when you think about it (talk)16:47, 13 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
AFAICT, any kind of language that "They sent another email yelling at us to to get our reports in on time." can denote, "They sent another email yelling about how we had to get our reports in on time." can also denote (i.e. the meaning resides inyell).- -sche(discuss)01:16, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Even the books I can find which refer to laniaries as a place where animals are killed...still mean the teeth, and are discussing how well other animals like stoats kill with their teeth.- -sche(discuss)20:18, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "Expressing the same thing with different words." The term clearly exists, mostly refering to symbols, not words. So rfdef...Vilipender (talk)21:26, 13 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago8 comments4 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "An unlikely word that a crossword solver constructs from the wordplay and crossing letters only to discover that it actually exists in the dictionary." —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/12:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I’ve certainly come across ‘jorum’ on your excellent site and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t used in the same way by at least some commenters on the Times blog too but that would require wading through hours and hours of comments (it’s not on the Glossary page[61]).Overlordnat1 (talk)00:10, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think we still need this to be verified in the usual way. Inclusion in a glossary or dictionary is not sufficient verification. —Sgconlaw (talk)04:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, the derivation is obvious; I meant to say the etymologysection needs citations. Specific facts like "Los Angeles", "ashamed", and "mail" would need to be cited if this were Wikipedia. —W.andrea (talk)13:10, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
You are right. Perhaps simply eliminating some of those words would help.
Relatedly, but not importantly, I wonder whether the existence of theGraybar Electric Company, a major distributor of electrical equipment throughout the US since 1920, made the name more prominent than similar alternatives.DCDuring (talk)20:18, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Too rare I think. Just a couple of examples in a Web search, which seem to refer specifically to an employer's prejudice against potential employees who don't live in the desired area: "Employers can be sexist, racist, ageist, locationist etc as well" (Quora), "Locationist, ageist, racist. What's fair and what isn't?" (Instagram).2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E509:6B03:1FA8:8FA808:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
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Adding tagged-but-not-listed RFV for our second adjectival sense ofanachronistic (‘behind the times’ or ‘Conservative’). It is clearly meant to be the adjective corresponding to our second sense ofanachronism when applied to a person rather than a place.Overlordnat1 (talk)12:00, 18 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense Having a colour tinged with purple, yellow, and grey. It seems very specific, but I acknowledge that verifying a quotation of a colour may be a tricky undertaking --90.174.2.5307:21, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps you should invest in a subscription to the OED, which contains multiple attestations of this and several other words you have tagged.Zacwill (talk)22:58, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
In this specific case, unlike that one, "de-" has its usual meaning. And this is still missing a third unhyphenated cite for the transitive sense to be technically complete (but I wouldn't have RfVed in the current state)* Pppery *it has begun...21:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I added what I could find on Usenet. While the entry is still missing a third transitive unhyphenated cite, both forms seem widespread online.Einstein2 (talk)23:27, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Photography sense. It appears as a musical term, maybe defined as a "melody type"? Any photographic evidence only appears in glossaries and the like. --85.48.184.9005:52, 25 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I could only find one use of the photography sense. Curiously it is in a very recent text:[63]
I added the only cite I could find where this is clearly printed as one word.This has a slimmer space betweenhere andamongst than other words, but clearly more of a space than is present between othere+a pairs such as "repeating" further down the page, so it is arguable.- -sche(discuss)23:07, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
The original quote in context is clearly just the usual "movement of water" sense (there's definitely no sense of confluence here - something flows to a place, but there's no combination of multiple flows): "Wherefore Nature, which many times is happily contayned, and refrained by some Bands of Fortune, beganne to take place in the King; carrying (as with a strongTide) his Affections and Thoughts unto the gathering and heaping up of Treasure." That said, "tide + waterfall" pre-1850 did find a couple of useful looking hits:
1806, Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev,Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the North-east of Siberia, the Frozen Ocean, and the North-east Sea, page49:
On the 29th of August we were obliged to stem thetide below a waterfall, which extended two fathoms, and in which both banks were filled with pointed projecting stones. It cost us no small trouble to drag our canoes against the stream betwixt these stones.
1824, Amos LOVE, “Lines Written at a Waterfall”, inThe Poetical Works of the Late Amos Love, Esq.[Edited by R. J. R.], page99:
Trace we now the torrenttide/Tow'rd yon dark steep's craggy side ; At the dread verge one moment stays its flight , Then flashing headlong on the light
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Rfv-sense "(linguistics) Grammatically ambiguous." how distinct is this from the first sense, and how securely citeable is it as specialized linguistics terminology?ragweed theatertalk,user21:44, 27 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
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"A man (in NNSE)." On the web, I only seehe-man meaning "a virile/macho man", andshe-man meaning some counterpart thereto (an effeminate man?), not this. This is as much an RFV of the singular as the plural, currently given as "he mans".- -sche(discuss)20:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
OED has a quote in the 15th century and another in the 17th. depending on our delimitations of Middle English the first quote might be too early. note that if this failed it perhaps could be included as an alt form s.v.trifallow, which is much more securely attestedragweed theatertalk,user15:29, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
In particular, the RFV comment was questioning the definition: “seems like an alt form ofgonotrophic”—or, I would add, oftrophogenic. Iadded some cites, but although some mention bloodmeal, they might also be consistent with meaninggonotrophic ortrophogenic. The entry was created by SemperBlotto, who was perhaps just guessing. Figuring out the actual definition (gonotrophic? trophogenic?) might require specialized knowledge or resources. (@Chuck Entz, what do you make of it?)- -sche(discuss)17:57, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I see some mentions (not sure if any uses) of the alt form "kreatic" which the entry formerly mentioned; TTO deleted that form as having failed RFV but I can't find any actual discussion of it.- -sche(discuss)03:39, 29 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
There are many useless mentions, but the closest thing touses I can find forkreatic arethese two borderline cites. IMO 1840 is technically a use; 1889 I'm unsure about: my instinct is it's a mention, but if I imagine alonger string, like "what he termed 'plastic tubes of creatic mush from the guts factory'", I'd have no trouble acceptingthat asusingcreatic. It's moot since there's no third cite. Along the way I found more books than I expected spellingpankreatic with ak.- -sche(discuss)09:05, 1 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Rfv-sense: "(heraldry) Such a helm when placed above a shield on a coat of arms." I don't think that this exists separate from sense 1. In theory, if someone said "bishops bear mitres as helmets" that could be this, but in fact books say bishops don't use helmets (they use mitres instead). This may be a leftover from when weformerly had a bunch of "hawk: 1. a bird. 2. this same bird, when it appears on a coat of arms." senses.- -sche(discuss)05:46, 30 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
retorted meaning "interlaced" is very odd-- i can't really read blazons, but is it possible that this actually means "bent backwards, recurved" s.v.retort?ragweed theatertalk,user15:48, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
RFV-failed; I can't find anything, even in books which call various "church fathers" mystagogues, which isn't better explained as sense 1.- -sche(discuss)19:10, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Wright'sEDD has this but his only cite is Scottish (so we'd have to determine whether it's Scots or English, which might vary by edition of the text, since theEDD quotes it as "it is a fairy brewing that is na good in the newing", but some books report the line in more Scots-like forms like "it is a sairy brewing that is na gude in the newing" and other books quote it a fully English form as "...that is not good in the newing" or "...that's no good..."). Jamieson doesn't take that cite to mean "yeast, barm" in any case, glossing it as "i.e., when it is new".- -sche(discuss)16:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I can't find other uses, but there is a place near Wolmet (Woolmet),Niddry /Niddries, which gets scannoed as this, andboundaries andsecondaries get scannoed as this, and it exists as a name ("Project leader Rosemary Nidary"), all of which make it hard to search. Some editions of or books quoting Evelyn have this in the plural and others have it in the singular, but those are of course not independent uses. (Other rare words from Evelyn arerupellary, which I just barely cited, andvolary.)- -sche(discuss)16:27, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
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Dubious sense is "(slang, by extension) To leave aromanticrelationship." I am aware ofBrexit as a humorous substitution forexit generally, a broader sense, but I have never encountered a specifically romantic meaning, nor can I turn up any such examples by searching the web, which is where I would most expect to see them.166.181.80.13508:30, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "To eat noisily, as with one's mouth open." Not in any dictionaries I have checked, even historical, nor can I find any supporting quotations.166.181.80.13521:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The OED claims that this is a hapax legomenon, and when I track it down, even its one appearance looks like a mention, not a use:
1670,Thomas Blount (lexicographer),Glossographia: or a Dictionary Interpreting the Hard Words of Whatſoever Language, now uſed In our refined Engliſh Tongue, With Etymologies, Definitions, and Hiſtorical Obſervations on the ſame, Alſo the terms of Divinity, Law, Phyſick, Mathematicks, War, Muſic, and other Arts and Sciences explicated[64], page452:
Latest comment:2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "embarrassed." Sounds plausible, but after hours of searching, I cannot find it in any modern or historical dictionary, nor can I locate any attestations.166.181.80.13515:58, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cited, including from sources distinguishing the lower- and uppercase forms. The lowercase form seems to have died out before the 20th century. The uppercase form remains in currency as a genus.
I have also turned up two other attestable senses, but I do not have time just now to add them with proper citations. Look for them soon.166.181.80.13522:37, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The wordtribal here probably is in the historical sense of "phylogenic" (as opposed to "ontogenic"), a sense formerly used under thetheory of recapitulation, but which we seem not to have at its entry. When I get a chance, I'll see if I can make a pass over that whole cluster of terms.166.181.86.16501:40, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-This term was made up based on the fact that physical abusers never stop abusing their victims in a romantic relationship. The abuse never ends just the way the term 'infinity' means never ending.Chinwe911 (talk)23:07, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Moved from RFD:
Rfd-sense: stem cell. Is this really such a stock metaphor that it needs its own sense?This, that and the other (talk) 07:50, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
Keep or send toRFV. If the term really is used this way (outside of explanations of the metaphor), we should have a sense for it. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 01:39, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
Keep/RFV - clearly idiomatic if real. --King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:43, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
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The only quote in the entry is from a dictionary of early Scots, and the Google Books hits seem to be all scannos except for text in languages like German, Dutch and Spanish (and one sci-fi book that uses its own made-up word for some kind of virtual reality display).Chuck Entz (talk)04:34, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I found one clear use, "villages dotted here and there besprinkling the verded slopes like jewels" in Kentucky in the early 1910s. There is also a handwritten usehere which could beverded (as Google OCRs it) or could be something else.- -sche(discuss)16:16, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Delete: I don't see why an internal company code (as this appears to be) would be useful as either an entry for Wiktionary, or Wikipedia for that matter. For example, if a supermarket had codes for various products, why would it be useful to have entries for, say,C109235 (Coca Cola) orO973218 (Oreo cookies)?. —Sgconlaw (talk)17:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Doesn't look promising to me. I can't find any use other than the one thatWebster's cites:
1648, Thomas Fuller, “The Favourite” (chapter I), inThe Holy State, The Second Edition enlarged, Book IV, page234:
Indeed, ſome difficulty of acceſſe and conference begets a reverence towards them in common people (who will ſuſpect the ware not good if cheap to come by) and therefore he values himſelf in making them to wait : Yet he loves not toover-linger any in an afflicting hope, but ſpeedily diſpatcheth the fears or deſires of his expecting Clients.
Okay, from the entry history they must mean an interpersonal interaction, as between a child and an adult. (I don't see how the entry creator can genuinely call themselves a native English speaker in their Babel box, by the way. The writing style is curiously reminiscent of our profanity-obsessed user with no concept of Standard English.)This, that and the other (talk)06:25, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cited, though with a few concerns. First, it seems to be a Parisian measure almost never used in English except when translating Frenchpalette of the same sense. So one could maybe argue that it is just a foreign term expressed in then-current orthography rather than a proper learned borrowing. On the other hand, a number of old dictionaries count it as English. Second, as a broader concern, we have all of the senses imported from Webster lumped under a catch-all etymology with no details. I'm going to break this one out, but I don't know where the other senses belong.166.181.86.16506:57, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps getting off topic, but while I am here, do we know what sense ofpallet accounts for this kind of usage?
1827 October 24, James Webster, Caleb B. Matthews, Isacc Remington, “Analecta”, inThe Medical Recorder of Original Papers and Intelligence in Medicine and Surgery, volume XII, sourced from Johnson's Journal for April 1827, M. Piorry'sPleximetre, page187:
M. Piorry has announced that, by means of a smallpallet of ivory placed on any part of the abdomen or thorax, he has been enable to turn percussion to a much better account than has yet been done; the sound emitted by the portions thus covered by the ivorypallet, being much clearer and more indicative of the actual state of the parts underneath, than when these parts are stricken by the fingers in the usual way.
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "A native or resident of the American state of Pennsylvania." I would expect uppercase likeJayhawk orHoosier, but in fact a quick search didn't find me anything in either case, except references to literal keystone stones in buildings in the state (lowercase) and a state sports franchise (uppercase).- -sche(discuss)04:35, 11 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
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With quotations but tagged yesterday by92.184.102.122 with the edit summary “Appears to be just a submersible's brand name. It should thus be classified under proper names in my opinion. Antonomasia needs to be confirmed otherwise.”, not listed.J3133 (talk)05:17, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've combined this sense and "paludinal", which don't seem distinct, aspaludinal seems to have the same range of meanings as this. I added several more cites.- -sche(discuss)14:08, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
My gut thinks of "orchidaceous" as more like a particular flavor of "exotic," and the examples I found seem to agree better with that idea than with "ostentatious" or "showy". Therefore, I have proposed a revision to the contested definition. Assuming the revision is okay,cited.166.181.86.16507:08, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cited for Middle English, but I'm rather doubtful that we'll find any uses post-Lydgate. I wonder if the entry atpantle should beenm too? I will wait for consensus before moving anything though.166.181.86.16513:07, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
As mentioned at the Tea room, both of these were added by an account blocked for making things up, who removed senses in order to add them. I have no problem restoring the removed stuff, but I would rather we go through the verification process for the added senses, just to be safe.Chuck Entz (talk)03:27, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
TheEDD has this as "The lever or beam to which the horse is yoked in a threshing-machine or a colliery gin.Nhb. ‘Double start gin,’ one with two yokes or levers. ‘Single start gin,’ one with a single pole. When the beam is overhead the yokes which depend are called starts. When the horse is yoked in front (not under), then the beam itself is called the start.Nhb.,Dur. Nicholson Coal Tr. Gl. (1888)." google books:horse threshing OR colliery "the starts" finds me things likethis,this andthis, so it seems citeable.- -sche(discuss)08:05, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
A time to go to the dentist. Yeh, this is the punchline of a joke - "what's the best time to go to the dentist?", and it should be tagged as such. Maybe this is a RFD discussion...Vilipender (talk)08:07, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense 2: "Ahome phone with integral picture frame." This isn't clear (the picture frame is obviously some kind of digital feature, not a traditional artist's frame), but anyway it seems to be a brand name, as in "NIB GE PhotoPhone Digital Picture Frame Dect 6.0 Cordless Phone 27956FE1".2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:7951:BADB:CD17:636614:46, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Move to RFD ordelete: doesn't seem like a phrasal verb, more likemelt + a preposition suitable to that context. Already covered atmelt, sense 2: "To dissolve, disperse, vanish". —Sgconlaw (talk)20:31, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
OED has the much more specific definition "Designating a part of the body believed to be the source of harmful humours. Frequently used as postmodifier." and has three quotes all from the 17th century (one of them is the same one as the one we had). i've added two more quotes from OED's sources. this should be verified nowragweed theatertalk,user16:19, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Looking for verification that this means specifically "to make the sign of the cross; cross oneself" and not generally just "[[bless]] [[oneself]]" (which would of course be SOP). —Mahāgaja ·talk20:21, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Move to RFD (and delete), or justdelete: this is already dealt with in sense 5 ofbless: "(Christianity) To make the sign of the cross upon, so as to sanctify". One can bless not just oneself, but a priest can bless his parishioners, etc. That entry contains the quotation "[T]he archbishop vsing certeine praiers, blessed the king". —Sgconlaw (talk)20:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I doubt that the collocation has a definite slang sense; the term can refer to anyone who might be referred to with the slang termbitch and is in some way associated with a kitchen. ‑‑Lambiam16:16, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago4 comments4 people in discussion
super-rare maths term, probably meaning "divisible by 3", which, I assume, has another word. Like even is to 2 like ... is to 3.Vilipender (talk)16:33, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
inNew World of English Words glossed as "any Number that divides another into three equal Parts, without any Remainder", so not even "divisible by 3" but something like "4 is tripartient to 12"? in any case, this word might not be citable in this particular sense, but there are quite a number of hits on Google books (among the sea of dictionaries) of genuine use of this word, which all seem to use this word pretty much equivalently totripartite. we can probably have this nonmath sense citedragweed theatertalk,user20:58, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The mathematical definition makes little sense. It implies thatevery natural number, 1, 2, 3, and so on, is tripartient. For example, 20250519 (today is 2015-05-19) divides 60451557 into three equal parts without leaving a remainder. It is like definingbelettered as “said of any word that contains one or more letters”. ‑‑Lambiam16:44, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Good catch. I have taken a stab at adding a sense. (I wonder of "ellipsis of mental institution" should be merged into the new broader sense.)- -sche(discuss)04:32, 20 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
It should be merged as an inline etymology, we have discussed atother occasions, e.g. “originally ellipsis ofmental institution.”
I still wonder whether there is any term in Central Europa endowed with the same connotations; the definitions of eitherburrito test andinstitution fail to handle transcultural matters: Why wouldn't you be allowed to microwave a burrito at 3 AM unless sentenced to prison orcommitment due to committing a crime in a state of legal inculpability, or equivalently demonstrating your being a danger to society?
It probably translates withAnstalt, euphemistic since the nineteenth century, without the connotations only in respect to the burrito test. Burrito is an American dish, to be blunt, you forget theUS label. Anyways the cross-language comparison supports your added sense, many people would not have caught that sense ofAnstalt either.Fay Freak (talk)15:25, 20 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Adjective: "Related by blood or marriage, akin. Generally used inkin to." I don't think this passes the typical tests for adjectivity ("how kin is he?", "a kin woman", etc.). Saying "Bob is kin to me" is like saying "Bob is father to John", which is a noun.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:74DB:73E4:8706:16F610:58, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Since the weak plural of Middle Englishhere(“haircloth”) was obsolescent by the time spellings inhair- begin to appear, I consider the existence of MEhairen(“haircloths”) dubious (The University of MichiganCorpus of Middle English Prose and Verse records no attestations ofhairen in any sense, though it is far from exhaustive).Hazarasp (parlement ·werkis)
here is a picture. My guess is that it refers generally to some kind of moveable set or prop used in parades, pageants, and other outdoor spectacles, though here it is said to refer specifically to an arch of triumph.Chuck Entz (talk)
Thank you for providing an explanation for your revert. Now that I know what the problem is I took a look and, evidently, my initial impression was wrong. I've removed the entry. -Butwhatdoiknow (talk)23:08, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
this sense in OED is marked as specifically "of language or literary style"; OED has five whole cites of itragweed theatertalk,user20:21, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
"Boss" in the humorous sense of "wife" seems to be quite far a reach from the connotations of "boss" as a demanding figure. I have never encountered such attestations at all, and the example sentence provided in that entry would make more sense to me if it said: "I'll have to run it by the wife."
It’s a subsense of sense 2 that definitely exists IRL, I often hear customers say: “I’ll take a receipt, the boss might want to return it” and normally, when this happens, it’s a man talking about what might happen when he shows the item to his wife (rather than a woman referring to her husband or a person referring to their actual boss).Overlordnat1 (talk)04:39, 26 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Did this form actually survive into modern English? The OED implies that it was displaced byhight during the ME period. It does list one instance ofhotten from 1651 ("Aldersgate is hotten so from one that Aldrich hight"), but this is likely to be an isolated use: it comes from acomic play and is uttered by a character who speaks entirely in Chaucerian English.Zacwill (talk)12:51, 25 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
August 22, 2007: a Wikipedia account is registered and creates this page as its only edit. The same day that page gets transwikied here. August 28, 2007, it's deleted on WP. October 12, 2007, the Internet Archive captures its first view of a new website based on this acronym- an email-forwarding service for website owners. Coincidence?Chuck Entz (talk)02:22, 26 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
this is a sense that afaik is obsolete: Spenser has inThe Faerie Queen "both do strive their fearfulness to feign." the example sentence given at the moment parses to me as the exact opposite of what it seems to try to conveyragweed theatertalk,user11:33, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
the same person also addedcolores as a plural in thecolor entry, apparently under the assumption that this reflects the Latin pluralcolōrēs (since they also addedomina foromens and*integri forintegers). but of course this rather reflects a regular English plural before the deletion of thee in-es (unless there was any documentation of ME/ɛː/ in the final syllable), and if this is to be added as an archaic plural, then surely thousands of other entries must have the same, since just about every countable weak noun that existed back in ME will have had a plural form spelled with-es at some pointragweed theatertalk,user12:05, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't know about the lexical side of it, but the plant is edible and harmless (I've eaten it myself) andpigweed is a related species- so named because pigs eat it. About the only way it could cause harm to swine would be through obesity from eating too much...Chuck Entz (talk)04:40, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
This, although a dictionary, is technically a use (the dictionary isusingpertransient in the course of defining another word; it's neither a mention nor is it a made-up usex). But that's all I've found so far.- -sche(discuss)08:09, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cited, but the definition might need tweaking. Several of the cites specify that it is the apex which is pertusate, so defining "pertusate" as "pierced at the apex" feels awkward; maybe "(especially of an apex) pierced" or something...? Else a "pertusate apex" is a "an apex which is pierced at the apex".- -sche(discuss)20:25, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense added today: “The period of darkness in each twenty-four hours; a night.” Also requesting verification of the plurals,noctes,noxes, andnoces.J3133 (talk)03:41, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I created this a decade ago after encountering it somewhere, but upon searching now, I don't think it's used enough (even on the web) to meet CFI.- -sche(discuss)01:16, 29 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it would be encountered in catalogues of arms, not merely defined in heraldic treatises. The problem there is that very few of these are online, though I know of one that might be. It's like searching copyright and trademark files: they may use a term occasionally, even regularly, but only a tiny fraction of them are widely distributed.P Aculeius (talk)03:00, 29 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
While researching this, I noticed that the uses I found were all under the spelling "annuletty" (sometimes also mentioning "annulettée"), not "annulletty", which might be a variant spelling. In case that's not the issue here, this is what I found:
I thoughtPapworth's Ordinary might have some examples, but under "annulet" it just gives one instance "semy of annulets". This could be because, as the introduction explains, it rewords blazons to fit a set style. The arms, attributed to "Yvain", might refer to the Arthurian knight, rather than a historical family of that name, as I see his arms depicted with annulets.
This source, though a glossary, gives an examplein use: "argent, a cross annuletty sable", attributed to Westley, and again on page 11 of the same book, "rings were attached to thecross annuletty ", also a usage example (in both cases, this seems to have to do with a play on the word "waist" for "Westley").Here we have a similar figure described in a book on coinage, referring to "a cross pommée or annuletty". The term is then defined, but only after being used, so a usage example IMO.Here is another usage in the context of a coin, but without a definition. Other catalogues of coins are also coming up on Google Books.
I expect there are other heraldic examples; if I understand what the introduction toPapworth says, the scarcity of examples therein isn't necessarily due to the scarcity of arms with a field or part of a field annuletty, but because arms are organized according to the principal charge, and so a lion on a field annuletty might appear under "lion" but not "annulet".P Aculeius (talk)03:35, 29 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think we have more citeshere, and though they are almost always definitions of the term, they're not all dictionaries. A lot of the cites use phrases likethey were called phassacates by the ancient Greeks, often with a list of other archaic terms. I just wonder if these examples pass the use-mention distinction.—Soap—14:50, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
RFV of the noun sense "A bad situation; a fiasco." (This sense might need to be moved to ety 1 if real.) I tried searching for phrases like "a real fugazi" and fugazi + fiasco, and didn't find anything.- -sche(discuss)03:51, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree it fits better under the first etymology, but are we really asserting that these two homophones appeared in similar social circles in the same decade and aren't even related, let alone identical? It would help me believe this coincidence if the pronunciations didn't align .... one of our quotes for the second sense implies it rhymes withcrazy .... I might bring this up at the Tea Room (or maybe RFV/E, but we've probably got all the info we'll ever get) since it goes outside the scope of this RFV.—Soap—14:18, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion
I'm slightly unsure if the definition as written is fully correct; otherwise this seems like a SOP of nonstandard + method.Svārtava (tɕ)06:47, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense (taxonomy) atribe. This is a vast oversimplification. The term seems to be outdated, and never really gained much popularity or much clarity in its heyday. Possibly it is a quasi-synonym ofphylum, too. Or just a Latin or Greek term. --85.48.184.10419:53, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense:ulcera as the plural ofulcer (vs the plural ofulcus). While a lot of the plurals this user added have been wrong, this one is plausible enough that I feel it worth bringing here rather than reverting. So far, while Ican findulcera in medical texts, it seems to always be the plural ofulcus, or part of longer Latin phrases, or a scanno ofulcera-tion across a line break; I haven't managed to find a book that consistently usesulcera in the plural andulcer—rather thanulcus—in the singular. (The closest I've found are books that use all ofulcer,ulcers,ulcus andulcera, likethis.)- -sche(discuss)15:39, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Two of the birds aregrebes; there are enough cites to support a (combined) sense "grebe". I also found two cites for "stormy petrel", if someone can find a third.- -sche(discuss)05:05, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
OK, I've cited "grebe", "the pied-bill grebe specifically", and "storm petrel", but more cites use the hyphenated spelling than the spaced spelling, so perhapswater-witch should be the lemma.- -sche(discuss)19:42, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I added a second cite from Johnstone, and what may or may not be a third cite, from Blackwood's magazine: "This scandal of Roman society was not, undoubtedly, a pure product, from the vernile scurrility of which we hear so much in Roman writers"; someone would need to check that this is not by De Quincey. The word also occurshere, although that text borders on gibberish.- -sche(discuss)22:04, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
No uses and few mentions found at Google Books using "whiteside duck|Bucephala|Anas" and "whiteside duck|goldeneye -illinois". Mentioned as a term used in Westmoreland and, possibly Ireland for certain ducks. Entries appear in Century 1911 and MW 1913. OED?DCDuring (talk)00:50, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not in OED. It is in EDD, although tough to find - it's underwhite adj/sb3/v2 sense 3 ("Comb. in the names of birds, fishes, &c.") as "(26)-side, (a) the golden-eye,Clangula glaucion, esp. the young bird; (b) see (7)" where (7) is "-eyed poker, the tufted duck,Fuligula cristata". (26) (a) lists 4 uses in Cumbria and 1 each in Northern Ireland and Westmoreland (but sadly, as is so often the case for EDD, no actual quotes are provided) and (26) (b) lists 1 use in Northern Ireland. (Curiously, EDD lists acontributor called J. Whiteside who was from Westmoreland.)This, that and the other (talk)02:16, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense: thrift shop
I'm not American, so I genuinely don't know: can "goodwill" in lower case be used generically to mean any thrift shop? I thought it was just a brand name.Smurrayinchester (talk)14:40, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
There are numerous instances of "goodwills/Goodwills and thrift stores" (usually capitalized), suggesting that many maintain a distinction. Goodwill Industries International ($6.1 billion in 2018 revenue) seems to control the use of the name as well as most for-profit entities control theirs.DCDuring (talk)15:58, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Rfv-sense "a word used when the speaker knows they should say something but don't know what it should be". BGC hits are all for the village as far as I can see.BigDom06:49, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks -sche, I was looking at this one earlier and thinking "I could cite that, but I don't have time to cite every single thing WF brings up". (And I have a fuck of a lot of time, I am self-employed.) Let us not underestimate the damage of the over-RFVer when people don't bother to fulfil them.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:E554:283:652D:79BD22:51, 4 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
AtWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yankee Town, Indiana, it is said that this never existed except as a name on USGS topo maps, unlikeYankeetown, Indiana. There's also apparently at least one other place in Indiana that was formerly called Yankee Town, but this one is apparently just a spot in the middle of a farm that got mistakenly labeled as a town on maps. As such, it would seem to fail CFI's requirements for inclusion of place names.Chuck Entz (talk)04:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Verb, Sense 2. "To trick someone into viewing a picture of a blue lobster accompanied by an excerpt of Toccata and Fugue in D minor." Seems like a flash-in-the-pan internet meme.-insert valid name here- (talk)01:44, 6 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Almost all the thousand+ results on iWeb (including for spaced "joy con" "joy cons" and unspaced "joycon" "joycons") attest to widespread generic usage. Whether meet CFI idkHftf (talk)16:25, 26 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
2 senses - A home; a dwelling / A temporary mark or boundary. This is citeable as a pronunciation spelling/obsolete spelling of various other terms, like week, wake, like (childish), wick... but that's not my interest...OED has lots of Old/Middle English quotes.Woopingkoff (talk)17:45, 6 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This entry was tagged with{{rfdef}}, so I looked through Google Books for idiomatic meanings. While there are lots of purple turtles mentioned, they were just turtles that were purple.
This phrase is phonologically very unusual for English: two syllables built on syllabic liquids, both with the same initial stop: "p" in the first word and "t" in the second. Aside from a couple of onomatopoetic words,burble andgurgle, the pattern just doesn't exist. It sounds kind of silly, and the concept is unexpected, too, since most turtles are rather drab shades of green and brown. That means that this is used a lot in anything aimed at children, from examples in educational exercises to characters in cartoons and in advertising. It also shows up as a celebration of oddity in the name of a club and a few other places.
For this to pass, we need to find something that has a meaning of its own that doesn't derive solely from its parts. Sorry for the long explanation, but I needed to explain the rather striking pattern behind all the false positives.Chuck Entz (talk)04:16, 7 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I found posts on several social media sites (Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Imgur) that all use the same image. A 6 Junepost on Tumblr is the earliest version of it I can find. It looks to me as though someone is "trying to make fetch happen" with a decent amount of success after just a few days. But the word does not seem to be attested in English aside from that attempt.Cnilep (talk)05:21, 10 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant toWT:DEROGATORY. It may bespeedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by22 June 2025.
This request should have been posted at RFV. In any case, it seems (regrettably) that the sense has two quotations and only requires one additional qualifying quotation. —Sgconlaw (talk)05:01, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
The sense has no real cites. The two cites currently provided are to right-wing websites; per the vote on online cites we'd have to approve them in this discussion in order to use them (and at least for my part, I wouldn't)..- -sche(discuss)05:30, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
For what reason? Just because the websites are biased is no lexicographic reason to reject them. We have all kinds of bigoted Usenet posts as evidence for various terms on here.
Still, from my part I'd want to see more than three online uses to approve the inclusion of this sense. What's more, the two cites in the entry were from thesame day, so this would be a hot sense.This, that and the other (talk)05:51, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
OK, let’s see if anyone comes up with three satisfactory quotations spanning at least a year. I didn’t notice the two existing quotations had the same date. —Sgconlaw (talk)12:56, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've added two more quotes (though at least one of them is from a "right-wing website", which-sche seems to think is disqualifying). Please note thathot words are exempt from the "spanning at least a year" criterion.Zacwill (talk)13:06, 9 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it’s a pair of words put together to express racial animus, I see why the author would mention it in relation to her book about a totally different, established definition of black fatigue that actually exists and has a physical and mental component. Still isn’t popular by any means.Jaydenwithay (talk)17:21, 10 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Jaydenwithay,-sche,This, that and the other,Zacwill: arguably this was not a "speedy deletion" but supposedly in line withWT:DEROGATORY. However, I'm not sure closing the discussion on that basis was correct as therewere quotations in the entry supporting the derogatory sense. The issue was whether those quotations were sufficient to satisfyWT:CFI. A discussion on that issue had started above, and I don't think it had properly concluded before Jaydenwithay declared the request failed. Anyway, if editors want to continue the discussion about the sufficiency of the quotations, they are free to do so and request for recreation of the now-deleted sense. —Sgconlaw (talk)21:56, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I listed the RFV as failed because it has undoubtedly failed.WT:CFI clearly explained that the sense must have 3 sources spanning the last YEAR. It couldn’t pass muster within two weeks, so I deleted the sense. As I repeatedly explained toZacwill, it must meet that requirement because it is NOT a hot sense - it is not “very popular” by any means (no matter how much you may be attached to the term). The fact that no one bothered to contest that over two weeks isn’t my problem.Jaydenwithay (talk)22:21, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree that this has been prematurely failed and that the hot word policy has been misinterpreted. I have no great attachment to this unpleasant sense and can’t be bothered getting into an edit war but I’ve now created ʽCitationsːBlack fatigueʼ and added the challenged sense there. It can be readded to the main page when (not ‘if’) someone uses the phrase online in a year’s time, simply by adding a contemporary citation.Overlordnat1 (talk)23:16, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Why would it be appropriate to add a failed sense and its inadequate quotations to the Citations page of a term that has one (1) true sense? That's not what that page is for.Jaydenwithay (talk)23:28, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Jaydenwithay: that's precisely what the Citations page is for: to hold citations that aren't used in the main page. It's not that uncommon for terms or senses that fail due to a lack of citations to be restored later when citations are found- at which time the citations on the Citation page come in handy. If you read through the deletion closings on the RFV pages, you will often find the phrase "citations moved to the Citations page", so this isn't anything new.Chuck Entz (talk)00:37, 29 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
That may well be the case. Is there a way to indicate that the failed sense is not on equal footing with the established, legitimate sense and is only on the Citiations page because some person, somewhere,mightuse it in a year's time?Jaydenwithay (talk)01:36, 1 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
You’re incorrect. Seehere,here, andhere. A hot word must be “very popular” / “widely used” AND “likely to remain in usage”. The failed sense fails on both counts. Again, you people had two weeks to come up with something, and obviously could not, which is why the sense is failed.Jaydenwithay (talk)23:16, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Jaydenwithay: For the future, while I've been one of the most vocal editors against senses like these (one of the folks who pushed forWT:DEROGATORY), it is important to note that the only page that isbinding policy isWT:CFI. The Appendix, category, and template pages arenot policy pages and would not apply here. Per the hot word policy solely, this term would pass, BUT since the cites that it had are not from durably-archived pages, as stated in CFI, it would not pass.AG202 (talk)15:06, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Looked in a few places and found nothing, except that the first result in GBooks for me isDanny Katz: "... Sugarglider, the canteen lady with thesugargliderarm-fat." Just a one-off metaphorical use of the marsupial, I'd say. Katz's writing is filled with these sorts of inventive metaphors.This, that and the other (talk)12:00, 13 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Anotherbingo wings synonym. I can only find mentions (or maybe one or two mention-y uses of the type "those bingo wings (or nan flaps, if you prefer) are..."). It's possible that these people have picked it up from us, since it's been listed as a synonym in thebingo wings entry for 20 years!This, that and the other (talk)00:05, 14 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Can we find instances that distinguish this from the generic reference to a (racist or poor) person from the (deep) South? Eg, use in reference to a black or hispanic police officer in Florida, an urban police officer in Florida. Is it used of police officers outside of Florida?DCDuring (talk)17:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:23 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense "a black South African". As I understand it, the termBantu has never been used for black South Africans generally, but only for those who actually belong toBantu-speaking groups (making this sense identical to sense #1).Zacwill (talk)00:21, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This is either a newly emerging hot word, or someone on TikTok trying tomake fetch happen. I will leave the determination to others more adept with social media attestation to determine which. Also, I think there may be a couple of other completely unrelated senses out there, but I'm not sure they meet CFI.Chuck Entz (talk)06:23, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
RFV sense of the use ofgender as a euphemism forsex—in the sense "sexual intercourse" I assume, since euphemistic use ofgender to mean the "category" sense ofsex would be hard and/or silly to distinguish from non-euphemistic use of that sense. (The sense had been entered as a "filter avoidance spelling", but that's clearly wrong, since it's a whole different word with its own pronunciation.) It's very plausible (there is a joke "Sex and gender are the same thing? That's funny, I don't recall having gender with your mom last night."), butthe only 'relevant' book hit forhaving gender with that I see is a made-up example of something the speaker is saying people don't say, so I'm inclined to thinkthat cite is not usable as a citation of theuse of this sense.- -sche(discuss)17:41, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
There are three hits when I did an advanced Google search for ‘I wanna gender you up’, one of them said ‘gender bomb’ for ‘sex bomb’ too but I doubt that any such jocular sex/gender references will be properly attestable.Overlordnat1 (talk)11:08, 17 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:22 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I can't find any actual words that use 'macr-' instead of 'macro-' when starting with a vowel. There are tons of false positives, so I might have missed one, but I don't see it.Deacon Vorbis (talk)22:47, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:19 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This is cited from a secondary source. The originalJacobite's Journal article has "emvowel"; a few 19thC texts made this mistake: 1855 Frederick LawrenceThe life of Henry Fielding; 1858 Alexander AndrewsThe History of British Journalism; 1887 H.R. BourneEnglish newspapers. But it is merely the same mistake repeated.-Sonofcawdrey (talk)07:46, 19 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
When searching for quotations ofVTubing, these forms were used in oneVice article, hence I did not create them, but Netizen3102 did last month without verifying, using this one article. They do not seem in general use (excludingtextspeak capitalization), also taking into account that another quotedVice article usesVTuber andVTubing.J3133 (talk)12:41, 20 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is obv stupid (is "fuck" capitalised because it/he/she is an ancient Greek god... ahem...) I think this actually opens more of a question, like (top of my head) somebody might create "oreo" because it's Oreo uncapitalised. I had the pleasure of commenting on this nonsense in my dissertation ("Capitalisation on the Internet is often absent or arbitrary, with a 'lower-case default mentality' [Crystal, 2012, pp. 90-92]"). We can always say "sometimes people don't cap!". So what. That's not really an alt form, that's just laziness. God bless, eqqy. But this one is really interesting because I don't think I was ever aware of the ancient Romans or Greeks capitalising "Fuck" as the name of a god. Ha ha. Perhaps this will be the stupid RFV/RFD where we finally make a rule.2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:1D1B:AB3B:282E:BA1808:54, 22 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
So, pseudo-Equinox, would that mean your real identity is David Crystal of OP Shakespeare fame? I was under the impression you were around 10 years older than me rather than 40 years older but perhaps I misremembered? 🧐Overlordnat1 (talk)06:55, 24 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Overlordnat1: I assumed it meant a reference to Crystal, rather than being Crystal; the text itself links on Google Scholar to the disseration “Code, mixing”, which does not seem to appear in Crystal’s work.J3133 (talk)11:48, 4 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Just in dictionaries? A name by Couerbe (Jean-Pierre Couerbe?) to "The substance of the cells that enclose the white of birds' eggs." Apparently later calledoonin. There is, I assume, a 21st century term for this. shell membrane? inner membrane?Worm spail (talk)20:26, 20 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:17 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense of the adjective sense: "(journalism, of a publisher) A member of the mass media, especially one with corporate sponsors and owners." Given how many of the user's other edits have been disimprovements (and edit-warring, both here and on WP), I was tempted to just undo the addition. Format the label properly and define it in a way that suits the part of speech if kept.- -sche(discuss)20:21, 21 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
This has citations, but there's no indication that they're referring to the same thing as the paragraph-long mass of doubletalk posing as a definition (whatever that may be).Chuck Entz (talk)05:47, 22 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
They were not even citations, more like a bibliography for this term the creator is trying to promote and 'background information' on it. —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/08:55, 22 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rfv-sense The International Phonetic Alphabet /ɾ/ character LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK, used to represent an alveolar tap.Worm spail (talk)23:17, 24 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hard to preisely define I suppose, but very easy to find attestations. Are you rfving only the spaced form? Most other people posting to rfd are able to at least provide a more meaningful starting point for our understanding than just "weird shit".Hftf (talk)16:21, 26 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I assume WF was referring to the phrase senses, since there's nothing particularly weird about the adjective alt form sense. Can we find attestations of "hippity hoppity"used alone to mean "hippity hoppity get off my property" or "hippity hoppity X is property"?This, that and the other (talk)23:15, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
A total of one Google hit. The Wikipedia article linked uses the wording "shorter than Mal Meninga's political career", which gets a total of five. —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/07:38, 28 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
This isn't RFD; keep and delete votes are not going to help. What is being "requested" here is evidence of use (WT:ATTEST). But I agree with Sgconlaw and would vote delete at RFD if this miraculously passed RFV. This is a cultural reference, not a set simile.This, that and the other (talk)03:48, 30 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion
This entry, or one or more of its senses, has been nominated as derogatory pursuant toWT:DEROGATORY. It may bespeedily deleted if it does not have at least three quotations meeting the attestation requirements within two weeks of the nomination date, that is, by16 July 2025.
RFV-senses related to its derogatory usages in internet slang. I'm suspicious of if this term is A. cited as such and B. if it should actually be a separate sense. I suspect that there may be usages related to "any Israeli" (but there's an argument that there's significant overlap with sense 1), but the expanded definition is questionable. The only quote provided is actually a mention and not a use, and it wascreated by a user with few edits and thenfurther expanded upon by an IP. I'd be hard-pressed to find credible usages that can't be hand-waved away by people stating that they believe that the addressee is a Zionist (sense 1). If it does exist, I also don't believe that it would've started in 2023, but that's a separate issue. CC: @-scheAG202 (talk)15:00, 3 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Middle English; in the etymology ofcomrade since it wasadded by Dan Polansky in 2008 (< late {{ME.}} {{term|comered}}), with the edit summary “+etymology from Century 1911; +RT”. TheOED,Etymonline, andMerriam-Webster all state it was first attested in the 16th century; theMED does not have an entry. The referencedCentury Dictionary states, “Early mod. E.comerade,camarade (alsocamarado,camrado, after Sp. Pg.), < late ME.comered[…]”, but I am requesting verification as it might in fact not be attested in Middle English.J3133 (talk)04:08, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Sense 2: "software that disrupts the activity ofviruses etc. that try toblock the activity of acomputer". In my experience there are not many viruses that try to block activity: more often they cause damage by deleting files. I can't seem to find this word used in a software context (except possibly in relation to ad blockers, quite a different thing).2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:5D6:19D8:A6C5:35CB20:03, 5 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
Definition of cetenization and page created are based on the usage and spelling of the term on page 21 of the academic journal article athttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.107, feel free to verify. Definition is highly specific as I am not aware of it being used outside of specific context described, or prior to 2023, please add or expand as merited, especially if aware of other context(s) in which the word is in use.
I haven't yet found it in running English text. I found nothing in Books forcalumpangs. There are many hits forCalumpang, the place and the river, including attributive use thereof and some hits for the term in italics. If attested it would be nice to know whether the derivation flowed to or from the toponym or from an other, common source.DCDuring (talk)16:52, 7 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is definitely used in that sense. But I belief that we are unlikely to be able to show that it is truly an adjective, meeting the tests. We probably should have a usex for the corresponding sense of the noun showing attributive use, eg, "unicorn startup" (founder, company, status). Less use about talented employees.DCDuring (talk)21:11, 7 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
The linked 1881 citation is so full of scannos that I can't locate the quoted portion, but I don't see how this supposed cited text could be anoun, or match the given definition: "Overagent, the heat of a candle, the spirit will fly up..."2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:9848:FEF4:B25:3C6E21:42, 8 July 2025 (UTC)Reply
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Support accepting the Reddit quotations asrejerk and its abbreviation/rj are actually pretty widespread across a variety of Reddit communities. Admittedly, the term is pretty much never used outside Reddit, so I would understand if others decide to delete it. Also, thank you for adding the other sense!Ioaxxere (talk)13:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
Category:Jewish newspapers published in the United States on Wikipedia.Wikipedia. WP articles about these newspapers do not always state in what language they are written, but, unless stated otherwise, one might assume they were written in English.DCDuring (talk)15:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)Reply