A place to ask for help on finding quotations or other information about particular words. The Tea room is named to accompany theBeer parlour.
For questions about the general Wiktionary policies, use the Beer parlour; for technical questions, use theGrease pit; for questions about etymologies, use theEtymology scriptorium. For questions about specific content, you're in the right place.
If it exists outside of one friendgroup / street gang and AI hallucinations. Because only then we havelexicalization beyondidiolect. This one does not.
I misunderstood your title before opening the present page: the mostpopular pages I made, by hit counts, are the ones I personally cared the least about. The best pages are plant names that are never clicked.Fay Freak (talk)18:34, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Read CFI. You need enough usage examples spanning enough time (and be aware of the use-mention distinction) not used with an inside group/single person.Vininn126 (talk)19:18, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
How do you know about the currency and meaning of the word? You have to do a reality check. Quotations are a method to manifest it to other dictionary users and editors so it is devoid of suspicion.Fay Freak (talk)20:03, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
i know that you have to not just put "stepteen-in-law" in its title and you didn't put anything in it, that will get speedy deleted, put a meaning onto it, and if you want, you can put quotations in itNail123Real (talk)14:31, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago9 comments4 people in discussion
I changed the first sense to use{{&lit}}, as it appears to be sum-of-parts. Assuming this is uncontroversial (which it very well may not be), we would surely remove the translations (all of which wouldn't satisfyWT:THUB) associated with this sense, right?—Polomo ⟨ oi! ⟩ ·20:11, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't know. At least it is good for SEO.
I have the suspicion that in some tropical island languages there are particular terms satisfying WT:THUB, even if the occurrence of shark attacks themselves be mythological.Fay Freak (talk)20:37, 1 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't follow the logic of that removal. Maybe I am missing something? No matter whether any of those translations that were there referred to the fig sense or the lit sense, a THUB can exist for them to point to. The fig ones would be grouped under a sense-marker and the lit ones would be grouped under a sense-marker, and some of the items would fall under both.Quercus solaris (talk)03:49, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aha. Thanks for that. I hadn't read those in a long while and had forgotten how stringent they are (or seem, to me). I will have to sit and think about why they exist and what is bulletproof enough to get past them.Quercus solaris (talk)04:03, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
1966, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts,Reports, page208:
For what can he have done with all that money taken upon me which I have accepted, besides 100l. sterling there taken the 10th January of Samual de Fisher which I must protest, since he cannot have mispent normistraded already so much ?
Ismispent a Wiktionary editor's typo, an accurate transcription of a misspelling in the quoted source, an accurate transcription of a rare or outdated alternate spelling, or something else?
While this is adjectival use of pronouns, it does not make them adjectives. It is a use of pronouns asadjuncts to a noun, similarly to thenoun adjuncts in
This isn’t a city problem; it’s a suburb problem.
You can do this with almost any word class:
This shouldn’t be a “how” question but a “when” question.
This doesn’t look like a fix-it attitude; it’s more a slash-and-burn approach.
Notice that pronouns have cases, unlike nouns, but it is notyour andtheir that are used: that is why such uses are linguistically outstanding.87.218.84.9717:47, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
In that quoted position, anything at all can be used. Grammar doesn't come into it. This is a "we haven't got a word for this in English, but that doesn't matter" problem. If a pronoun is the quoted part, we use the object form because that is the default form: it is what we always use in every position, in normal English, except for explicit subjects and possessives.Hiztegilari (talk)18:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with your remark, especially when text is highlighted (here, with quotation marks). But I want to reiterate my point when dealing specifically with pronouns. Maybe its instead resorted to by non native speakers as a lingua-franca characteristic?87.218.84.9719:08, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it is normal colloquial speech. What's more, I was not surprised to find it in the wild with the pronouns in the nominative: 'Homelessness Is a “We” Problem, Not a “They” Problem'.DCDuring (talk)22:58, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I have come to a concern that I am not actually sure whether,even among the traditionalist cohort, the word 'gender' is actually particularly often used as a synonym for the wordsex (sense 2), rather than the social sense that would be 'assumed' there to arise from the sex. The quotations from Lady Wortley Montagu (1723) and Mary Giles et al. (2004) are not particularly helpful in that regard. Dickens (1849) and the Mass Effect quotations and the medication (#:) example do look to use it in that sense.
I would think of putting current sense 3 above sense 2 (and, additionally, put the current obsolete sense 1 below even the linguistic senses and hardware sense. Hell I would do it right now if writing this post wasn't much less mental than looking at the wikitext).Wirecruncher (talk)15:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think sense 2 ofsex should be deleted as a kind of reverse causality. The category is not “based on sexuality or gender roles”, the concept of sexuality is from mid-19th-century biologism, wherefromsex in the sense of jigajig was clipped, and ultimately the mention thereof is redundant to the reproductive roles mentioned in the sense 1, and the concept ofgender as you think and polity society uses to assume nowadays is even a century later than this; and nobody formerly or presently could assume that in an organism forming societies there is no cultural baggage coming with the turf of reproductive roles determined by sperm lottery, so there is noseparate category. The understanding of gender as synonymous to biologistsex has become obsolete sorely fast indeed; the quote from science-fiction, prone to any kind of arbitrary language abuse, does not subtract from the observation.
As a sorting from the most basic senses on, the current order ofgender makes sense, and thereby serves explanation of those circumstances I have pointed out but briefly.Fay Freak (talk)09:59, 3 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
There's an error withUser:Wonderfool's Babel. "Esti usuariu yeunfalante nativu d'asturianu" is badly written - there's space missing... should be "Esti usuariu ye un falante nativu d'asturianu." How do we fix this?Vealhurl (talk)22:17, 2 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I admire your immense work as it is an enormous task and highly helpful. I am not in favor of censorship of any topic. I am also not in favor of derogatory terms which propagate feelings of dissent and harsh reminders of conflict and discrimination. I strongly suggest that offensive terms be labeled as such immediately such as in parentheses and a disclaimer directly behind the word wherever it is used. Your etymology for the word "gle" with a meaning of farm contains links to lists with words labeled as offensive racial terms.2601:601:907E:5B30:8D7A:136:34F1:540E19:45, 4 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Dear IP user, as far as I am aware, those are calledreduced relative clauses, more specificallyparticipal phrases: the present participle of a verb used as "that verb(s)" (e.g. "in the months that follow"); past participles can also be used similarly.
Interestingly, this was also discussed recently onWT:Discord just a few days ago.
PS: The way they've so far refused to replyat all to most of the threads ontheir talk page is less than 5% likely to be an accident of incompetence. It is instead more than 95% likely to be explained by their being an intentionally malevolent creep. It is 100% likely to be either one of those, the other, or some creepy combination of them.Quercus solaris (talk)05:19, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is apparently one of those areas where you can ask any two taxonomists and get three opinions. There are, indeed, some sources that are quite clear that Gray Whales are in theBalaenopteridae and that there's no such family as theEschrichtiidae. There are also sources that disagree. A quick look finds Wikispecies saying Balaenopteridae, [WoRMs] accepting Eschrichtiidae, and Wikipedia giving both opinions- in an article about the Eschrichtiidae. It might be a good idea to add a disclaimer like "(in some classifications)", but I don't think it's a good idea to just remove any mention of the family. Of course, while I am definitely a mammal, I'm not a mammologist- so I could be wrong...Chuck Entz (talk)06:03, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The point for keeping obsolete and is that now-thought-erroneous taxa they have been, are, and perhaps will be in use. To try to extirpate now-thought-erroneous taxa is a sign of an illiberal, immature mind unaware that we are not strongly prescriptivist, even in taxonomy. Our prescriptivism is limited to the hypernyms and hyponyms of the taxa and sometimes we show multiple sets of these, usually where the shift from one to the other is uncertain, recent, or in progress.
From browsing Google Books, it looks like it's a sort ofbaton made out ofblack locust wood, which is extremely hard and dense. Not much about their appearance or how they're made. I saw a reference to one that was 18 inches long (a little less than half a meter), but I have no clue if that was typical. Apparently they were so commonplace that no one bothered with a description. I suppose you could look at pictures of New York policemen of the era and see what items they have in their belts.Chuck Entz (talk)21:37, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Here is a picture of several "police clubs and billets", made of locust, "rosewood, ebony and other fancy woods", such as ironwood or cocoa! The catalogue pictures make it look that the business end was textured on some models. Locust looks like the cheapest of the listed materials. The locust models included 26" straight and 22" and 24" with turned handles.DCDuring (talk)23:28, 5 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I doubt that there is any other MWE, besideslocust club involving the "wood" sense that would be strictly entry-worthy, though there are many items made of the strong, rot-resistant (even in contact with soil) hardwood.Locust Clubs ("policemen's social clubs") are made of members;locust billy andlocust stick are more or less synonymous withlocust club. The use of the term for policemen's social clubs definitely suggests that it is a 'thing'. The effort to get such social clubs to change their name suggests that non-police see it similarly. Thelocust club would probably have been strongly reminiscent of theblackthornshillelagh to the many policemen of Irish descent in eastern North America in the 19th and 20th centuries.DCDuring (talk)13:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If it were my dictionary, I'd delete it on sight; but RfV seems appropriate as only we and UD have it among OneLook references, with three different definitions.DCDuring (talk)16:01, 6 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think Collins COBUILD's definition fits that of my idiolect: "A gut reaction is a reaction that you have immediately and strongly, without thinking about something or being aware of your reasons."
Further, to me it is always an evaluation, not an action. But one can find "gut reaction is|was|be|being to [VERB]", usually immediately and unthinkingly.
Though people often say 'initial gut reaction', I read that as 'initial, gut reaction' as people don't say 'later gut reaction'. [delayed gut reaction does come up in the context ofIBS, for example.]
The phrase just means someone who’s both liberal and elite, it’s the contradictions between ‘socially liberal’ and ‘economically liberal’ on the one hand and the fact that the financial elite and intellectual elite don’t necessarily overlap that leads to contradictions and hypocrisy, perceived or otherwise. It’s essentially a meaningless phrase that the best of us (those who speak and write precisely) don’t use.Overlordnat1 (talk)01:06, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
From which the natural conclusion is that it shouldn't even be included in Wiktionary, because the best people don't use the term.DCDuring (talk)01:46, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
"A pejorative and politically charged label used to criticize educated, wealthy, and powerful people [asserted to be|perceived as] out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens."DCDuring (talk)01:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I received a text containing the following:
"We are upgrading your network within the next week. You may experience a temporary disruption[…] [W]ork mayshift out as much as two weeks."
The use stopped me cold for a couple of minutes because my idiolect does not includeshift + [ADV] with a temporal meaning.
Is this a common use ofshift? Is it included in or a temporal extension of definitions like "to change place or position" (MWOnline) or "To change position; to move." (en.wikt)? Can a scheduled event be shiftedin/back/forward as well asout? Other adverbs?DCDuring (talk)22:10, 8 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
i don't recall hearing the phraseshift out before, but i don't think i would find it strange enough to notice or remember if i did. Without consulting any sources, my gut reaction is thatshift out would be the sum of its parts:shift as inmove orchange ("Can we move the party to Sunday?" "Can I change my appointment to Friday?" "Can we shift things around with this carpooling schedule?"), andout as in(farther) away, or something like "We're 10 minutes out" meaning "ETA 10 minutes". My first thought ofshift back wasgoing back to a previous schedule, undoing some rescheduling, which could mean earlieror later, backward or forward in time. Then again, peoplepush back a meeting, for example, and that (always?) meanspostpone.Shift forward feels a bit awkward but potentially comprehensible (not synonymous withmoving forward orgoing forward but similarly forward in time);shift in seems unnatural and maybe incomprehensible (bring it in might be better for wanting something to happen sooner, or at least wanting two things to happen with less time between them).
All that said, the text you quoted is unclear to me if they're warning you thatcompletion of the upgrade might be two weeks later than initially estimated, or they might notstart work until two weeks later than planned.
I think we have the right sense forout already. I'm not so sure aboutshift#Verb, for which the closest definition is "To change position; to move.", which seems very spatial to me. I've never thought that a spatial-type verb (or other PoS) could automatically take on temporal meanings, though the evolution is certainly possible and somewhat frequent. Spatial things work in 3Ds, time only the 4thD, so spatial verbs that have a common one-dimensional usage should be the ones that take on temporal usage most easily. I'm not sure which way ashift forward is, temporally: earlier or later?
If a meeting getsmoved up, that means it occurs earlier. If a meeting getsshifted up (using the "move" part of the above sense ofshift), I don't know what it would mean. IOW, our most relevant definition ofshift doesn't really cover temporal use as currently worded, without requiring gymnastics from our normal users. Picture a schedule calendarDCDuring (talk)00:54, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The etymology section of인공지능 says the word came from 人工知能 and its hanja is 人工知能, howeverWikipedia states that the hanja is 人工智能. The term人工智能 is the commonly used term in China to refer to AI, whereas人工知能 is used in Japan. It makes more sense that Korean would take the Chinese term instead of the Japanese, so can someone double check this and make sure it is correct.IanDaBest (talk)10:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not to get off topic, but Wiktionary has and welcomes editors of different genders/sexes/orientations, not just "sirs", no sir! Here's wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. --96.244.228.20822:12, 10 October 2025 (UTC) We now return to your irregular unscheduled discussion...Reply
You mean as in:
"Where oh where has my little dog gone?" or "Where oh where has my baby girl gone? The Lord took her away from me."
"I wonder, wonderwho, oh, who, who wrote the book of love?"
"When you're tempted, always stop and think,What, oh, what would Jesus do?"?
I don't understand your point, ie, the question in your opening comment.
AFAICT, the construction in poetry and songs involves no less emphasis than it does in ordinary discourse. Admittedly, sometimes the demands of prosody seem more of an issue. I draw your attention the quotation under the first definition atwhy oh why, but in all of the examples, emphasis seems to be supplied by the construction.
Whether the "definitions" are correct and the entry meets WT:CFI are other questions to be addressed. Lomgman's DCE, the only OneLook reference to have an entry, has "used to show that you are very sorry or angry about something". Our second "UK" definition doesn't even seem to be supported by the quotations in entry, besides using a derogatory term in the definiens.DCDuring (talk)23:05, 9 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If it is attestable, we might keep an entry for it. Or cooler heads might prevail andwhy oh why might be deleted on the grounds that this reduplication does change the meaning of the constituent terms.DCDuring (talk)14:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring, did you mis-type that?cooler heads might prevail andwhy oh why might be deleted sounds like you want the page gone, butreduplication does change the meaning sounds like a reason the page should stay. It reads to me like you're saying youwant the page gone on the grounds thatthe page should stay. i'm on the fence, leaning towards keep, but i won't complain if you want to clarify your position. Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. --96.244.228.20822:12, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If the only change in meaning (broadly construed) is intensification for this class of reduplication, then it is arguably part of the 'grammar' of English and not to be treated lexically, ie, as a set of duplicative entries.DCDuring (talk)22:25, 10 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Dear Sirs/Madams:
We can see the tag "(in the plural)" inassiduity for the meaning "attentive behaviour", but the entry ofpant does not show such a tag but instead the entry ofpants is created with the label "(plural only)".
Personally, my view is that if a particular word only has a sense in the plural, then the definition should be at the plural form and not at the singular form. We should only use “chiefly/often in the plural” at the singular entry. —Sgconlaw (talk)06:36, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
IMO we should 'soft-redirect' people when we have a word defined in the singular (with other definitions besides{{singular of|its plural}}), but put a particular sense at the plural. Someone who has enough grasp of English to be using en.Wiktionary to look up English definitions will grasp-s plurals, and will quickly grasp that we usually put all the definitions of words in the singular... so if they see "he read some messages" and "I went to buy some messages" and they want to know what those sentences mean, I think they'll look atmessage, and when find the first one explained there, IMO there needs to be something telling them that an additional definition is hiding atmessages, because it would not normally make sense to look there (most plurals just tell you to go back to the singular). Atmessage thereis such a note, that I wrote using{{n-g}}, but we should maybe make a template for it a laTemplate:used in phrasal verbs andTemplate:only used in.- -sche(discuss)07:12, 12 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Can someone find a quotation of some sort and add this? I'm fairly certain I've seen "I could fuck up a cheeseburger right about now" or a similar usage.Insaneguy1083 (talk)18:04, 11 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Various subsequent uses of the word, like those quoted in our entry, occurred aloud or were read aloud in news media, on Youtube and in social media videos. (But someone could diligently check whether the pronunciations we list are the most common ones, and whether we're missing any common ones...)- -sche(discuss)07:34, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago6 comments2 people in discussion
One is a noun borrowed fromLatinēmittentem, the accusative masculine/feminine singular active present participle of the verbēmitto(“to emit”); the other is a nonlemma: the singular present participle of the equivalent Italian verbemettere.
Can I link those two pages to each other with a{{doublet|it|...}} in their Etymology sections, or is that not allowed becauseemettente is a nonlemma?
If it is allowed, should I also add something like{{surf|it|emettere|-ente}} as filler toemettente#Etymology, or can I add an etymology section with just{{doublet|it|emittente}}.?
@Emanuele6 Hey! :) I would say that they technically are doublets, but given that they share the same meaning and, at least in the 19th c., the same usage, maybe calling them doublets is not the most informative label. In theory the difference lies inemettente having the possibility of working as a full participle with direct objects e.g.istituto emettente biglietti, although it is not hard to findemittente biglietti in 19th c. books, and it is similarly easy finding pure adjectival uses ofemettente (which I added there as quotations) in the works of those same authors. Maybe it would be fairer to treat them as alternative forms? In any case,emettente is no inheritance (unstressed initiale- cannot survive as such), it is as much a learned borrowing asemittente is, crossed with the inheritedmettere for conjugation purposes.Catonif (talk)09:35, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the reply, and the edit! Yes, you are right; it is an inflected form, so it does not make sense to say it is inherited from Latin ifemettere is not inherited.Emanuele6 (talk)12:19, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would say that they technically are doublets, but given that they share the same meaning
@Catonif Well, actually, the reason why I thought it would be appropriate was because they have different meanings: for the use of this word as a (feminine gender) noun to mean station/channel in e.g.emittente radiofonica,emittente televisiva; if you notice, the noun definition in[[emittente]] has had af headword from even before I touched it, so I assumed that was the meaning it was in reference to; I have just changed the definition to make it more clear.
It was not in reference to the mfbysense noun you would get nominalising the adjective or participle, even though, perhaps (speculation), this sense is feminine because it is originally anellipsis of«una stazioneemittente».
@Emanuele6 Right, it is a relevant remark, but I believe they don't have to share every meaning, altforms can be sense-specific, and even moreso PoS-specific. One could definitely argue that in theory the two terms fulfill the requirements to be doublets, though I fail to be convinced that in practice such relationship would be best described with that label. The etymological paths of the two forms are not distinct as much as the ones of the words we usually call doublets, and their distribution being arbitrary in economical books from the late 19th c., condition fueled by the phonological proximity, doesn't help. Radio broadcasting began in the 20th c. when thei-form had by then become the prevalent form as an adjective, which allowed it to become substantivised and hence fully crystallised in its form and unbothered by any oscillation arisen due to conjugation. Alongside these considerations I also remind that we are lexicographers before being linguists, which means getting our hands dirty and when needed getting out of the theoretical bubble. This isn't an exact science, and what counts as a doublet is an amusing thought exercise that Wiktionary likes to toy around, but which no serious linguist I am aware of ever really cared about, meaning I won't oppose or revert if you choose tobe bold and edit the entries following your preferred approach.Catonif (talk)18:59, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago14 comments8 people in discussion
Hey, can you tell me if the multi-sentence quotes forcovfefe are used in a way consistent withWiktionary:Copyright and U.S. law? I asked ChatGPT and got the following answer:
Me:
how about this one? 2018, Najah Mahir, “Preface”, in The Ransom that Lies Demand: We the People and “Covfefe”, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Dorrance Publishing Co, →ISBN, pages xv and xx: President Trump, I was not being delusional in calling him by the name in which he tweets out insults through a covfefe movement, as you will come to learn towards the end the use of this word, which no reasonable language can justify its meaning except to take each letter apart and turn them into our present indwelling shame that this president has brought upon the United States of America. […] For now, we look for truth, hope, and light, or some form of hope within these truths, and not covfefe, which is here taunting us to stay silent until calamity becomes America’s portion.
ChatGPT:
Thanks for the detailed example. Let’s carefully analyze it:
Source date: 2018 — very recent, so definitely copyrighted.
Length of quote: Multiple sentences, nearly a full paragraph. This is a large portion of a modern work, which significantly increases copyright risk.
Content type: Political commentary/literary writing — highly creative content, so it is strongly protected by copyright.
Attribution: Proper citation with author, title, publisher, pages, and ISBN — good scholarly practice, but citation alone does not make it safe for Wiktionary.
Copyright risk: Very high. Directly quoting multiple sentences from a modern copyrighted book is not allowed on Wiktionary because all text must be freely licensed (CC BY-SA).
Safe alternatives:
Paraphrase: Condense the idea in your own words to illustrate “covfefe” in context:“The word ‘covfefe’ has been used to describe nonsensical or confusing statements, especially on social media.”
Original usage sentence: Create a short, simple sentence using the word.
Public domain examples: None exist for modern terms like “covfefe,” so paraphrasing or original examples is the safest.
✅ Summary: Quoting this directly is not safe. For modern creative works, you should never post multiple sentences verbatim on Wiktionary.
This would not just be a problem for other people, I was also wondering if my multi-sentence quotes onWang'an are okay with copyright/fair use? I think the two multi-sentence quotes may be too long for fair use. Please let me know, I want to refine my understanding. --Geographyinitiative🎵 (talk)00:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
We've never had problems with copyright. Don't worry about it, Geoggy. If someone comes knocking saying "hey WT, your quotes of my work are too long", we'll hide them. Wonderfool has added entire books onto Citations pages WT, authors don't care (well, probably they don't care - we are just a shitty website...)Vealhurl (talk)00:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
This shows thaat ChatGPT knows nothing about WT - "For modern creative works, you should never post multiple sentences verbatim on Wiktionary." is bullshit.Vealhurl (talk)00:13, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have asked the Commons:Village pump/Copyright at Wikimedia Commons to come over and see how they think about Wiktionary's copyright rules:[1] You know, even if you're right about this, I am noticing that I have completely failed on at least one thing. Per the draftWiktionary:Copyrights#Contributors'_rights_and_obligations, I am supposed to be doing this: "If you use part of a copyrighted work under "fair use", or if you obtain special permission to use a copyrighted work from the copyright holder, you must note that fact (along with names and dates) on the history page or talk page of the article." Wouldn't it be cool to add a parameter toTemplate:quote-book where we are asked to specify the nature of the use- public domain, fair use, permission from author, free use, etc. I'd like to see that. Wikimedia Commons has an extremely sophisticated copyright verification system, I'd like to merge that into Wiktionary'sTemplate:quote-book where I just make it clear as I possibly can what the copyright status of the quotes are. It wouldn't be required. I just want to have an idea of what the use is under the law. --Geographyinitiative🎵 (talk)00:18, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
You post an adequate amount of your word-hit to show usage, inasmuch as meaning hinges on context. This is ex lege allowed—fair use orright to quote depending on how your legal system calls it—and can also mean a whole tweet or whole poem or whole image,balancing out copyright because of your legitimate interest in voicing yourself, and from this alone no argument of copyright violation can be made. Parameters and “copyright regimes” here make naught more compliant than it already is.
It would only be problematic if you import lengthy copyrighted works in a fashion that would exploit them, replace them as superfluous; this is why images (I know you are concerned about maps containing toponyms) quoted and entered according to this right to quote on Wikipedia are not made accessible via Commons and are not provided in the resolution you would most amenably consume. I could imagine this happen with dialectological atlantes, however, more than with your random maps, which would be quite effortful, and so no real-life situation on Wiktionary where an editor runs risks of violating copyright—the more so as wrong advice makes him anxious about it.Fay Freak (talk)23:56, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hi from the Wikimedia Commons village pump. I might be able to help, but keep in mind that Commons primarily deals with media rather than text, and that Commonsforbids fair use.
There is a concept in copyright law calledthreshold of originality (TOO), which states that some things are too simple to be copyright and thus are public domain, no fair use needed. However, this threshold varies very wildly by jurisdiction, but I'll use US jurisdiction here.
There is no bright line based on the number of sentences quoted. Legally, copyright in the United States is limited by the principle offair use but this defense is intentionally vague. ChatGPT, as Vealhurl said, is producing bullshit here. As you noted,Wiktionary:Copyrights is a draft, not a community-adopted policy.Wiktionary:Non-free content criteria explicitly says that "quot[ing] copyrighted works to prove the existence and use of terms in various languages" should not be treated equivalently to "the use of other non-free content".Wiktionary:Quotations#Copyright is also relevant. Quoting the single sentence in which a word occurs is a just a good rule of thumb. I know of no good reason to treat this as a rigidly binding policy.--Urszag (talk)00:31, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, here's the response:
Excellent — this is a great case study in how different communities interpret copyright and fair use when it comes to Wiktionary citations. Let’s unpack the arguments one by one and then craft a balanced, accurate reply you could post on-wiki.
🔍 Argument Summary and Assessment1. Geographyinitiative’s concern
You’re asking whether multi-sentence quotes (like your covfefe example) are consistent with Wiktionary:Copyright and U.S. law.
Assessment:
You’re right to be cautious: U.S. copyright law does protect creative expression in modern books.
Wiktionary uses the CC BY-SA license, which means in principle, any text on the site must be freely redistributable.
Fair use is an exception, not a license — you can quote under it, but you can’t relicense the text as CC BY-SA.
So technically, direct multi-sentence quotes of copyrighted works are legally fine under fair use, but incompatible with Wiktionary’s open-license framework. That tension is real, not imaginary.
✅ You’re reasoning from policy, not paranoia.
2. Vealhurl’s response
“We’ve never had problems with copyright… authors don’t care… ChatGPT’s advice is bullshit.”
Assessment:
This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal or policy one.“We’ve never been sued” ≠ “It’s legally safe.”
It’s true that Wiktionary has operated for decades without copyright disputes — but that’s luck and low visibility, not a guarantee.
The “bullshit” remark misunderstands the distinction between legal permissibility (fair use) and license compatibility (CC BY-SA). ChatGPT was speaking about the latter.
⚠️ Valid in practice, weak in principle.
3. Fay Freak’s argument
“It’s fair use or right to quote… only problematic if you import large parts that replace the work.”
Assessment:
This is a European-style “quotation right” argument, and it’s roughly correct in spirit: short excerpts used for commentary or evidence are lawful.
However, the reasoning doesn’t address the CC-BY-SA relicensing issue: even if fair use covers the quote, Wiktionary’s license still requires all included text to be freely reusable.
Fay Freak is right that quoting a few sentences for linguistic evidence is not a practical legal risk — but legally speaking, it’s still non-free content under Wikimedia’s licensing terms.
✅ Good legal sense, incomplete with respect to Wikimedia licensing.
4. HyperAnd (Commons participant)
Introduces threshold of originality (TOO) and differences between Commons and Wiktionary.
Assessment:
Very accurate explanation of TOO — some short factual text simply isn’t copyrightable.
But your multi-sentence literary or journalistic quotes are above the threshold, so TOO doesn’t apply.
It’s also correct that Commons forbids fair use, but Wiktionary allows it to a limited extent.
✅ Accurate and relevant clarification.
5. Urszag’s argument
“There’s no bright line for fair use; ChatGPT’s statement is too rigid. Wiktionary:Copyrights is only a draft.”
Assessment:
Correct: there’s no bright-line rule about sentence length. Fair use is case-by-case.
Also correct that Wiktionary:Copyrights is not binding policy.
However, saying “ChatGPT’s statement is bullshit” ignores that its caution aligns with Wikimedia Legal’s general guidance: they strongly prefer minimal excerpts and discourage quoting beyond necessity.
✅ Procedurally right about Wiktionary’s practice; legally incomplete about licensing implications.
⚖️ Overall BalanceIssueLegal RealityWiktionary PracticeRiskMulti-sentence literary quotesLikely fair use under U.S. lawCommon and rarely challengedLow legal riskCC-BY-SA compatibilityNot compatible (cannot be relicensed)Often overlookedMedium license riskEnforcement likelihoodVery lowPractically noneLow practical riskBest practiceKeep quotes as short as necessary, prefer older/public-domain works, and cite clearly——
This concern with our licensing is irrelevant. The resulting work, containing the quotes, can be relicensed. The licences do not refer to the quotes in isolation; no legally educated reader of the terms can surmise a requirement that all included text must be reusable under the licence terms: we have no power over the copyright status of the quotes, and this does not entail that we aspire to only employ licence-compatible content: even if they are protected due to reaching the threshold of originality, we are protected against claims by virtue of fair use respectively right to quote, just like anyone who publishes his content with all rights reserved. It’s not like creating free software: exchange of views and ideas, by default, levers itself within the non-free world.Fay Freak (talk)09:54, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The point is to check whether we are doing what we need to concerning copyright. Also, the point is to absolutely hammer the issue down, because if I said the same words, it would be less than ignored. I've already pointed out part of the draft Wiktionary:Copyright that no one follows. Here's the next installment, which I like:
Excellent — here’s a sharper, more persuasive version that directly engages Fay Freak’s argument while grounding your reply in Wikimedia precedent and U.S. copyright law:
I see where you’re coming from, and I agree with much of your reasoning — particularly the point that Wiktionary’s CC BY-SA license applies to our compilation as a whole, not to every quoted line within it. The license doesn’t purport to relicense third-party copyrighted material that is included under fair use; this is consistent with how Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects handle quotations.
However, where I think your argument slightly overstates the case is in suggesting that licensing concerns are irrelevant. They’re not irrelevant — they’re orthogonal. Legally, we can rely on fair use (or right to quote, in other jurisdictions) to include brief excerpts for purposes of illustration or linguistic analysis. But from the standpoint of license transparency and downstream reuse, Wikimedia projects have long recognized the importance of marking or distinguishing content that is not freely licensed.
For example, Wikipedia and Wikisource both explicitly flag non-free content, even when its inclusion is legally permissible. This isn’t about doubting fair use — it’s about ensuring that reusers don’t mistakenly assume that everything in the database is freely reusable under CC BY-SA. That distinction matters for data dumps, mirrors, and derivative projects that automatically republish Wiktionary content.
So I’d frame it this way:
✅ Legally: We’re protected under fair use/right to quote, and your description of that doctrine is correct.
⚖️ Licensing transparency: Still valuable. It’s good practice (and in line with Wikimedia’s general approach) to clearly identify when something is under fair use or otherwise not freely licensed, even if this doesn’t affect our own ability to quote it.
That’s why I support ideas like adding a “copyright basis” parameter to{{quote-book}}. It wouldn’t restrict anyone — it would just make the copyright reasoning visible and auditable. It helps us stay clear, not just compliant.
This is not because of some rule; the reason you don't post AI is that AI never ever has facts. It is 100% gossip. (Technically it may contain a fact here and there, but it has no idea how to recognize a fact, so they don't count.TooManyFingers (talk)06:33, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
-atic is two unrelated things, and we're mixing them up
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
the categoryCategory:English_terms_suffixed_with_-atic consists almost entirely of Greek words likeproblematic which are actually of the formproblema(t)-ic, with the familiar-ic suffix used after-ma. this has nothing to do with the Latinate suffix-atic which is composed of-ate +-ic. either we should split the etymology or remove the Greek -atic suffix and its category because i dont think its a real suffix. note that it almost always occurs after /m/ ... this is a misdivision on our part.—Soap—03:03, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I noticed that*wīsōną includes Old Englishwīsan as a descendant (presumably meaning "to show" or something very similar), but that page doesn't have that as a word. Looking at the page history,*wīsōną linked to the alternate formwīsian until recently, but that was moved to being a descendant of*wīsijaną instead. I can find OEwīsan in the sense of "to show" in some online dictionaries, but not all. It also appears in the etymology section ofwīsa.
I'm not quite confident enough to add it myself, but I suspect it's probably correct to add an entry for OEwīsan in addition to the derived forms already listed there. Can anyone with actual OE knowledge take a look and confirm that?Tungolen (talk)19:48, 13 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have created a definition for Turkish "tansiyonu çıkmak" (to have one's blood pressure rise). I categorized it as a phrasal verb. But in this case, "tansiyon" (blood pressure), must take a possessive suffix to indicate whose blood pressure is rising. (Tansiyonum çıktı/My blood pressure went up; Tansiyonları çıktı/Their blood pressure went up etc). But there are also similar verbs without that reqirement such as "eve çıkmak", regardless who did the action. I would like to point out this difference on the page but I am not sure how to do it.ToprakM (talk)09:07, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago2 comments1 person in discussion
The wordscarboxydotroph andcarboxydotrophy might've been given the wrong definitions in this Wiktionary. Usually, words with the suffix "-troph(y)" relates to the form of consumption of energy and food, yet the definition provided by these entries simply stated merely "tolerate a high concentration of carbon monoxide" – as if the word was "carboxydotolerant".CheckNineEight (talk)12:08, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Anyway, here's at least one source where the usage of the word(s) implies that it's not merely about tolerating carbon monoxide, and moreso to do with metabolizing it:
Latest comment:1 month ago5 comments2 people in discussion
(NotifyingRuakh,Qehath,Mnemosientje,Isaacmayer9,Sartma):: Arabicالْيَسَع(“Elisha”) is automatically transliteratedal-yasaʕ with a hyphen suggesting it begins with the definite article. Does it? Personal names usually don't, and in Biblical Hebrewאֱלִישָׁע(ʾĔlîšāʿ) the "el" is part of the name. If this is true in Arabic as well, is there any way to suppress the hyphen in the automatic transliteration? —Mahāgaja ·talk12:18, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Necessarily it is the article, otherwise it would start withأ(ʔ), notا. Names don't just start with alif waṣl, it is a closed class and also takes kasra in cases other than the article. More onw:de:Wasla. But for mythological figures the article makes sense.Fay Freak (talk)16:12, 14 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The Arabic Wikipedia has two articles on Elisha:اليسع forElisha in Islam andأليشع forElisha (I guess in the context of Judaism and Christianity). The articleاليسع says that his Hebrew name isإليشع which I assume isʔilyašaʕ since the little hamza thing is at the bottom rather than the top, so there's an inconsistency between articles there. Are there any other prophets in Islam whose Arabic name takes the definite article? —Mahāgaja ·talk10:20, 15 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
You know that names can just take the article, right? Like, of the same pattern,Al-Assad, who is otherways ascribeddivine abilities. That's not only because we know whatأَسَد(ʔasad) means. A name can stay while the meaning got lost.
There is no inconsistency if they make a learned borrowing to provide a Northwest Semitic/Judaeo-Christian rather than Arabic/Islamic story, you have a doublet. Occasionally we create such doublets if we care enough, →سَمَوْأَل(samawʔal).Fay Freak (talk)20:34, 15 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've accepted thatالْيَسَع(al-yasaʕ) contains the definite article synchronically, but I do think it's historically a rebracketing (or a folk etymology ifيَسَع(yasaʕ) means something), since it comes from a Hebrew name whose first syllable sounds similar to the Arabic definite article but isn't. The inconsistency I mentioned is betweenأليشع withʔal- andإليشع withʔil- for the transliteration of the Hebrew name in the Judeo-Christian context. I suppose both forms could exist. —Mahāgaja ·talk20:53, 15 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Paper dictionaries don't usually have separate entries for plurals, but we do, both for regular plurals likecats anddogs and irregular plurals likeoxen andchildren. Because we have separate entries for plurals, there's no need to put the pronunciations of plural forms on the entries for the singular forms. —Mahāgaja ·talk21:49, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Note the distinction between (1) plural forms that are orthographically identical to their singular counterparts (which one might describe as being wholly homographic with the singular form or having azero morph difference from it) and (2) those that are inflected differently. It is only the former class that needs to give the plural pron at the selfsame entry as the singular pron.Quercus solaris (talk)01:49, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I, too, agree that prons belong in the pron section. My comment had nothing to do with usage notes. It was about which entry the pron exists in. So the "so" in response to it did not follow from it at all.Quercus solaris (talk)22:56, 18 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I feel it is acceptable to put the pronunciation of irregular plurals on both the entry page for the singular lemma and on the page for the plural form. —Sgconlaw (talk)17:36, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
we say that-ole and-ol are both from the same etymological root but that typically are used to distinguish between two different molecules of the same base, so i wouldn't bet on anything here. also noting the molecule(s) in question are very different fromresveratrol, which i'd have expected to be similar .... but perhaps chemical compounds need only have a few atoms in common to share such similar names.—Soap—15:16, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
SeeVeratrum "Derived terms" (or Descendants?) for some of the chemical terms used to discuss chemicals derived from plants of this genus. I would not suggest that they are synonyms even if they have the same atomic formulas. Structure matters. Apparently plant chemists will use different terms for "the same thing" in crystal form and amorphous form.DCDuring (talk)22:13, 16 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago4 comments3 people in discussion
On the page for the word "iam", the Classical Latin pronunciation includes the character "ã", which does not appear on the Latin pronunciation page or the IPA page. Does anyone know what it indicates?
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a combining tilde above (◌̃) indicates that the sound below it is nasalized.
Wikipedia’s IPA key for Latin is somewhat out-of-step with our transcriptions, as the latter have been revised as of late. The nasalization of vowels is, however, mentioned in the articleLatin phonology and orthography, and it is a matter of general academic consensus.Nicodene (talk)02:06, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
For making links: When you know that a page exists on the English Wiktionary, and you're writing on the English Wiktionary, then putting double square brackets around the title of the page automatically creates a link.
You may also see a button that looks like chain links; clicking that button will give you a little window in which you can type some "Text" (what you want the reader to see) and the "Link" (the name of the page they should be sent to when they click).
The same is true when writing on English Wikipedia and referring to an English Wikipedia page, and I assume it's the same on other languages' respective sites.TooManyFingers (talk)06:09, 17 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'd say sense 4 is first and foremost a strong intensifier (including in a positive sense). Neither creepiness nor uncanniness is necessary implied. I think the "in an overbearing way" is just a side effect of it being pretty intense in degree, akin to "incredibly". You could technically interpret the quote to be "uncannily friendly", because being too friendly can feel uncanny and weird, but it's not limited to that - "unheimlich kompliziert", "unheimlich wehtun", "unheimlich hoch", etc, none of which would work for that sense.
Yes, for a sense ofdo that isn't dialectally restricted, adding a usex thatis restricted to the colloquial register of one national dialect—and which reads as ungrammatical Yoda-speak to other people—without any indication of this restriction, was incorrect; it's possible that if you had qualified it as "UK, colloquial" or similar (the way one of the usexes below is qualified as "nonstandard"), it might have been left alone or brought to the Tea Room for discussion, but people might still have preferred to remove it or replace it with a pan-dialectal usex; as it is, I can understand why Deacon Vorbis (who removed it) and I concluded "it's wrong as presented → it's wrong".- -sche(discuss)03:21, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
@-sche Gotcha. What about the following wh-tag, deleted by Vorbis too for being "awkward", which at least Brits have no objection to either:
Two of the examples of the usage in question seem awkward or wrong. How about:
Awkward:She likes her cappuccino, Mary does. instead ofLikes her cappuccino, Mary does. (UK, colloquial). Perhaps we could lose the qualifier with that change.
Wrong:Your remarks piqued my curiosity, asthey did my mom's. instead ofYour remarks piqued my curiosity, as it did my mom's too. (which still seems awkward).
@DCDuring 2.Your remarks piqued my curiosity,as did my mom's; that is, my mom's remarks piqued my curiosity too.Do refers back to the whole verbal phrase, with subject inversion afteras?JMGN (talk)15:52, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I thought about that kind of reformulation, but I wasn't sure that it exemplified the (non-gloss) definition. Hence my concern about the clarity of the definitions.DCDuring (talk)16:10, 20 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Derived terms with unclear part-of-speech etymology
I believe that there is a Wiktionarian consensus that such links should point either to #English (by default, it being where you land if no other anchor target is specified) or to #Etymology_N (where N = 1, 2, 3, etc), rather than to a #POS, with the logic being that the user can trace directly from etym to etym that way (from X → [hyperlink] → from Y → [hyperlink] → from Z, etc). I sympathize with the impulse to link straight to the #POS (and I have probably done that myself a few times, before I thought better of it), but landing at #English or at #Etymology_N has a desirability in its own way, too. And after all, the POSs that belong to Etymology_N all come from Etymology_N, so there is nothing misleading about the link target/landing.Quercus solaris (talk)03:45, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:29 days ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, in濫#Japanese, the templatetemplate:ja-toyo-depre is used with argument乱, leading to the text "In modern Japanese, 濫 is mostly replaced by 乱, due to the deprecation of non-tōyō kanji caused by the Japanese script reform." However, 濫 actually was a Toyo Kanji too (w:Tōyō_kanji#List_of_the_1,850_tōyō_kanji), so this explanation seems like it cannot be right? Should this be removed? It is true that it usage is mostly synonymous though, and 乱, in contrast to 濫 is also aw:Kyoiku Kanji, so some kind of link would be good to retain.Oberon II (talk)09:09, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Pinging @Eirikr,Lugria to take a look. If there is not a better template (and if there are not enough entries like this to make a template for), one option would be to just remove the template and type out "by hand" whatever is accurate.- -sche(discuss)15:32, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Actually I found this instance by looking at the output of some script I wrote parsing a wiktionary dump from 2025-09-20. At that date, this seems to have been the only example of any Toyo Kanji using this template (even among Joyo Kanji, it only occurs for two that were added with the latest 2010 extension).Oberon II (talk)19:42, 19 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If no-one responds in a few more days, I suggest you just replace the template with whatever alternative wording you think is better, or some other manner of linking to乱.- -sche(discuss)16:50, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure I'm happy with the result, but I went ahead andreplaced that instance of{{ja-toyo-depre}}, since濫(ran) could not have been replaced due to not being a Tōyō kanji, as it actually was one of the Tōyō kanji.
Thank you, I did not know the termdaiyōji. According to that glossary entry " a kanji in the jōyō kanji or tōyō kanji list that is used to replace another kanji not in the list", it would still be technically wrong since both Kanji are in both list.
However I now checked the Japanese entries and whilewikt:ja:濫 does not mention 乱 at all,wikt:ja:乱 does indeed mention 濫 as Daiyōji. It also provides this interesting explanation in section 書き換え (Rewriting/Replacement in Writing):
I.e. "Used as Daiyōji for 「濫」「爛」「瀾」.「濫」 was included in the Tōyō Kanji but because it was brought up as a candidate for being removed, it ended up becoming replaced by 「乱」. Still, in the end it was not removed and at present it is included in the Jōyō Kanji."Oberon II (talk)05:43, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
If I'm understandingw:ja:常用漢字 correctly, it looks like濫 was not originally included in the Jōyō lists, and was later restored in the 1979 update.
Also, I don't think our glossary entry for "daiyōji" is correct -- I'd learned that the narrow sense of代用字(daiyōji) referred to those characters used to replace those that were excluded from the Jōyō, not the Tōyō. See also theDigital Daijisen andNihon Kokugo entries for longer synonym代用漢字(daiyō kanji) overat Kotobank. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig18:54, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago5 comments3 people in discussion
Greetings fellow editors!
Any idea what this word/term means? Are any of you able to locate any extra cites? Especially in its singular form? It was red-linked for many years (under the derived terms for time) and no editor, including myself, could locate anything pertinent.
It's not a single unit. If you substitute "on weekends" for "nights", you'll see that it's just sentences ending in "time", with "nights" specifying what time frame is involved. You could likewise say "he works nights, she works days, so they only get together on weekends". Thus "for some time nights" is really "for some time" + "nights" (i.e. assigned to the night shift), and the others refer to time spent at night as opposed to during the day.Chuck Entz (talk)06:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
1.3 "(intransitive) To become denser or more crowded with objects.As we penetrated further, the forest closed around us."
4. "(chiefly figurative) To come or gather around; to enclose.The depth closed me round about."
I would expect these to be positioned closer together, at least, but I wonder if (more than merely moving them closer together) they should be merged: is there a transitivity distinction, or merely a word-order (and datedness) distinction, between "it closed around me"-type usage and "it closed me around"-type usage?- -sche(discuss)16:53, 21 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Maybe different people perceive and pronounce the length differently in this word, and this information could be integrated into the article (the change was made by a native speaker, but the dictionary gives a different accent).Imz (talk)20:03, 22 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I believe that en.wiktionary.org is missing the English technical term "noun prefix" in the field of grammar.Apparently the term "noun prefix" means a grammar category similar to an adjective but syntactically expressed as a noun followed immediately by a hyphen.I have found this construct inhttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nutritional for the German translation "Ernährungs-".Kind regards93.195.48.24319:35, 24 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the subscript, like the parentheses in the Merriam-Webster, mean the first /t/ is optional. We should probably put it in parentheses too. —Mahāgaja ·talk09:45, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago3 comments3 people in discussion
balance sheet currently has one definition, for the map, and should have a second one for the territory. Strictly speaking, even the given example runs into this issue ("Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets" is not the same use as in "This balance sheet is riddled with errors"), though its not totally wrong. The problem is more obvious in sentences like"There’s no guarantee the world’s biggest monetary balance sheet will buy...",obviously "balance sheet" in this context means the underlying stuff represented on a balance sheet (in this case cash).Mach61 (talk)07:02, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The territory is surely transferred. If you have a formulation and add such a quote it will look fine. It is not quite necessary though if you are acquainted with the purpose of the map, and it can also be seen as a peripheral sense: there are facts reflected in the map.Fay Freak (talk)12:05, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The figurative sense will have to be worded rather vaguely to cover the range of uses. It often seems to refer to the unquantified pros and cons of something. As to "map" and "territory", IMO it's maps all the way down.DCDuring (talk)16:42, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, surely it's not definitionally required to be a bedroom, if it's definitionally used for storing boxes rather than a bed! Ngrams suggestsbox room is more common, so I have merged the entries to there. Please improve further if needed.- -sche(discuss)00:18, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:28 days ago8 comments5 people in discussion
I wonder whether the pronunciation should be just /tɹɪp/ or rather /tʃɹɪp/, /tɹɪp/. What do you think? I guess you could analyze it phonemically as /tʃɹɪp/37.47.105.2922:06, 25 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's been a bit of debate on the Internet about this.
Many English dialects have undergone a pronunciation shift in which the word-initial sequence [tɹ] has changed to [tʃɹ]. The same goes with [dɹ] and [dʒɹ].
How exactly this should be realized has been disputed.
On one end, there are some people who regard [tʃɹ] as a variant of /tɹ/, citing that [tɹ] is still a valid realization.
On another end, there are some people who regard [tʃr] an alternative word-initially, but not in other positions.
On yet another end, some people consider both realizations to be possible alternatives.
On a fourth end, some people consider the [tɹ] realization to be outdated, as just a relic of decades-old systems.
I conjecture that both [tɹ] and [tʃɹ] could be valid alternative pronunciations. Just like /ɛ/ and /iː/ in the first vowel of "economics".
Then there's "attribute", where the "t" and the "r" are supposedly either in separate syllables (as a noun), or a cluster (as a verb), though not everyone makes that distinction. @Mahagaja for a more informed opinion.Chuck Entz (talk)03:17, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would say it's phonemically/tɹɪp/, which some speakers realize[tɹ̥ɪp] and others realize[t͡ʃɹɪp]. There are probably even speakers who have free variation between the two even within their own idiolect. When my sister was about 4 and was just learning to write, she would spell words the way they sounded to her, e.g.jraf forgiraffe. She once wrotechree fortree and my mother asked her why, saying "But you don't pronounce it[t͡ʃɹiː]", to which my sister replied, "Daddy does!" And indeed, my father had the change to[t͡ʃɹ], but my mother didn't -- even though both were native speakers of American English, only 2 years apart in age, who grew up in the same city and had pretty much the same ethnic, socioeconomic, and educational background. Since I myself don't have the change, I would vehemently deny the fourth position above, that nonaffricated[tɹ̥] is "outdated". As for what Wiktionary should show, I say we're a dictionary, not an English phonetics textbook, and should therefore only show phonemic transcriptions, not narrow phonetic ones. So I would prefer us to show only/tɹɪp/ in the Pronunciation section oftrip. There can be a note atAP:English pronunciation mentioning that many speakers realize/tɹ/ and/dɹ/ as[t͡ʃɹ] and[d͡ʒɹ] respectively. But it's unnecessary, messy, and frankly unmaintainable for us to list the[t͡ʃɹ] and[d͡ʒɹ] variants in the entry for every single English word with one of the clusters in question. —Mahāgaja ·talk16:02, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Mahagaja. As far as I have heard, tɹ is still the usual pronunciation. Some people have tʃɹ (like the character inParks and Rec who said "litcherally"), and (as we've seen with other phonological changes) it seems that people who have a certain change often (though not always) perceive everyone else as saying it the way they do; this is why we have had various people over the years (Gilgamesh, ...) think that everyone pronounces some or all ofbowl,bull,(possi)ble and maybeboule as /bl̩/ (and conversely other people who think everyone merges them to one or another of the other members of that set), and it seems to be why some people think everyone says tʃɹ. FWIW, as of a database dump from a while ago, there were59 entries where the pagetitle is spelled withtr and the page content contains tʃɹ or t͡ʃɹ, often but not always (incorrectly) as if it were phonemic. I've tentatively revised most of these, includingtraduction,atrophic,Euastrum andextrude; I left cases where [t͡ʃɹ] was given in brackets, and also leftbeetroot as-is for now, although I suspect a trulyphonemic representation of MLE might look different in a number of ways.- -sche(discuss)20:17, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
In revising entries which had listed t͡ʃɹ as phonemic, I noticed that a few claimed it to be specifically a Southern US thing (the ones I saw were due to VGPaleontologist, whose talk page is informative), but this seems like a misunderstanding AFAICT, as other entries have it as an occasional non-subregion-specific occasional US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Jamaica thing.- -sche(discuss)21:16, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Rhymes:English/æntʃ says that "In some accents, words ending in/-ɑːntʃ/ are rhymes for words on this page". It is true that many (most?) words a pronounced /-æntʃ/ in the US are pronounced /-ɑːntʃ/ in the UK, but the fact that e.g.stanch claims to be pronounced both ways in the UK suggests to me that these are separate pronunciations. Maybe it would help if the note gave an example of an accent that actually merges(?) and rhymesRhymes:English/æn(tʃ) andRhymes:English/ɑːn(tʃ)...?- -sche(discuss)00:15, 26 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Later, we found out that even the name on Wiktionary was incorrect after writing our own program and checking against that. The only correct source we found was onSarah McCulloch's website, though it felt strange referencing that in the puzzle, so we stuck to the original source used to construct it.
I'm inclined to believe the Galactic Puzzlesetters but in any case I think we ought to have a proper source for the name, even if there is no reliable source that gets it right and we have to say something like "the amino acid sequence comes from this database and was converted to text with this python script". At the moment where we got our version of the name from is a bit of a mystery.twotwos (talk)12:15, 27 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:29 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
What is the historical orthography for the onyomi of帥? I think it should be described asすい(sui) in accordance to my dictionaries, but when I check examples of this character written in historical orthography onfurigana.info it appears to be written mostly asすい(sui), but asすゐ(suwi) a not-insignificant amount of times. Are these just non-etymological spellings in the vein of用ひる(mochihiru), or should this reading be classed in our vaguely defined "ancient reading" terminology? Currently we haveすゐ(suwi) as the historical orthography at元帥(gensui), butすい(sui) as the historical orthography at総帥(sōsui).Horse Battery (talk)03:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
At first blush, thesuwi combination seems unlikely for anon'yomi of a single character. Looking into it, none of the entries available via Kotobank or Weblio include any such すゐ kana spelling:
Latest comment:28 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
IMO repeating the pronunciation ofwhoosh on the alt spellingwhooosh is unnecessary, and unwise because they won't stay in sync (already, only one listed the Scottish pronunciation), so Imoved the pronunciation towhoosh, but am posting here in case anyone disagrees or has a better idea for how to handle this. Becausewoosh didn't give a pronunciation, I alsoredirectedwooosh's pronunciation towhoosh, but I can see a case forwhoosh andwoosh having different pronunciation sections: in theory onlywhoosh ever has /ʍ/ (for speakers without thewhine-wine merger), whereaswoosh should be /w/ for everyone.- -sche(discuss)18:32, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
What is the derivation? Is it a shortening ofalready? If so, it needs a separate etymology section or, at least, an explanation in the single etymology section.DCDuring (talk)13:28, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
@DCDuring I would think the use is sort of proleptic:
ready-sliced bread = "bread sliced to be ready" or, "bread made ready (by slicing)" (to be eaten, toasted, etc.).
If so it isn't evenadjectival adverbial, ready would here modify bread whereas in "already sliced", already qualifies the participle. Older example of ready as an adverb (Middle English other than in the comparative and superlative) are too old for it to be understood as an adverb, in my humble opinion.Saumache (talk)18:46, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
But it just seems to mean "already" in current semantics, at least on the only three expressions we have. Does, say, the OED have evidence of early use ofready as an adverb? Is there evidence ofalready-sliced etc.?DCDuring (talk)19:02, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, if bread is already sliced, it was sliced to be ready. No, they only have univerbations/compounds with nouns (ready-money, etc...). The last (I was wrong in saying Middle English, didn't see look well) attestation of the simple adverb on the website is "The Earth-born Race Could move, and walk, andready change their Place.", R. Blackmore, Creation VI, 1712.
The next, 1596: "He vnderstude al taknes perteineng to the flychtrady anuich.", J. Dalrymple, translation of J. Leslie, Historie of Scotland.Saumache (talk)19:19, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Those last two would be glossed as "readily", not "already", wouldn't they?
Early attestations of compounds in ready-x, mostly used attributively compared to modern English. Interesting is link 5, where it couldn't possibly mean already ("already assembled"? they wouldn't sell bullets in pieces, wouls they? I think the text supports my reading), cartridges were made ready for use or; but it is "ready made up" and seems pretty much established as repeated thrice, [there too]. In link 4 it more properly means "hood kept ready", "at hand", not "already made". For link 3, can be understood as already, but again cooked already ≈ cooked to be ready.
My bad, glossed as already are these two, last attested:
1594 "Behold, the houre is now at hand, Andready come assuredly.", R. Holland, Holie Hist.
a1600 (?c1535) "The victorie wasreddy thare awne, gif [etc.].", translation of H. Boece, Hist. Scotl.
Well ready-handed is a compound adjective we can liken to left-handed, one-armed and others, where handed is no participle, it just means "using/with a ready hand" as left-handed "using/with a left hand", the first adjective modifies the following as if left-hand-ed. I maintain that ready-cooked and company can be understood as "cooked (to be) ready" so, "already cooked"; the same construction inhard-boiled ("boiled (to be) hard" not "boiled hardly").Saumache (talk) 5:54, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
Latest comment:27 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
From my perspective the pronunciation of that word differ a lot. The one given now [krwaˈsã] seems to be the one similar to French, but you can often hear people saying 'krojsant', 'krosant', 'kłasant', 'kruasant', 'krasant', 'krułasant' and probably a few other versions too. Should we include those ones?37.47.74.322:23, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
The audio file provided sounds like stress is on the first syllable, and I can't hear much of a/w/ in it, so it's more like/ˈkrasã/ rather than/krwaˈsã/. —Mahāgaja ·talk22:38, 28 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
WSJP doesn't suggest stress, but otherwise agrees with what we have, I think. I hear in the audio on the second, but in real life I hear various pronunciations, especially krosant and krojsant, as IP has suggested. My IRL partner also pronounces it this way, as does a friend of mine.Vininn126 (talk)17:14, 29 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Being rare and being nonstandard are two different concepts, one doesn't follow from the other. So the question is, if the average native speaker saw this word, would they think to themselves "well that's technically wrong / not the proper way to write/speak"?PhoenicianLetters (talk)20:16, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
If it just means "humble" (or, as wordily worded, "Characterised or marked by humility or humbleness"), then yes, it seems to be a nonstandard way of expressing what would normally be expressed as "humble", "showing humility", etc. (But if, as-some suggests, it has a more 'intense' meaning than "humble", then the definition should reflect that.)- -sche(discuss)23:30, 1 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
humblesome is not simply "humble" - if it were, it probably wouldn't exist - people would just say "humble". But it does exist, and therefore it has a distinction whichhumble lacks or imperfectly conveys. Likehumblish, there is a nuance tohumblesome; it is more precise. It's not just "humble" (lowly), it's "characteristically humble" (like something or someone who's "humble"), and therein lies the nuance. It's not areplacement forhumble. Since it is distinct, it cannot be a [nonstandard] term of another term. Nonstandard would refer to a word likemountain lobster usedinstead of the usual "crawfish". If perhaps there were a dialect or jargon somewhere that usedhumblesome as a replacement term forhumble in all instances (andforschewedhumble), then I would tend to consider that to be nonstandard.Leasnam (talk)19:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
After looking at other piscinas, I'm not so sure- they all seem to be alcoves like this one. I can't tell if the appearance of a passageway extending behind the wall toward the left is just an optical illusion.Chuck Entz (talk)21:30, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Some dictionaries say it's a defective verb, some register the forms(eu) pairo,(que eu) paira etc. Currently, Wiktionary only has this verb as defective, so should someone add the mentioned forms and label them accordingly?OweOwnAwe (talk)20:14, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Pronunciation section of the Chinese entry shows the Pinyin "bòhé" and clicking "more" in the section shows the toneless final syllable variant "bòhe". However, the examples in the Noun section of the Chinese entry use "bóhé". The links in that Noun section lead to pages whose entries' Pinyin are shown as "hújiāobòhé" (without the toneless final syllable variant at all) and "māobòhe" (without "māobòhé" at all) respectively. Which Pinyin are right?Intolerable situation (talk)23:30, 31 October 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:22 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello,
There are words in the Wiktionary that can't be found anywhere else. I think for example to slowlier. They are generally labelled as rare. What are the rationales for such words to be added to the dictionary ? And are there any reliable resources justifying such a move ? Kind regards.Si84m (talk)05:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:22 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
What do people think aboutthis? I would expect e.g. sense 6 ofsay ("To suppose"), which seems to function identically tosuppose, to have the same transitivity asit, which would mean that sense ofsay is "transitive, intransitive" (ifour entry onsuppose is correct), rather than solely "intransitive" (as the IP has it)or solely "transitive" (as it was before).- -sche(discuss)08:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Given that the quote can be replaced by pronouns like "it", "that", or "nothing" (and that the verb can be rephrased into the passive then), surely the entry should at least include "transitive"?
And while quotes might be analyzed as complements instead of objects, I think we need some way to indicate that "say" requires that complement, you can't just say "He said", barring colloquial ellipsis.PhoenicianLetters (talk)09:04, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree. The alleged syntactic analysis given by the IP in their edit summary is flawed. It says "its subsequent prepositional phrase" — but which phrase is that, exactly (allegedly)? This person apparently thinks that "which" is apreposition? In short, this IP was confidently wrong. The OED entry for "say"(v) at I.1.a (subsuming I.1.a.i and I.1.a.ii) states "transitive".Quercus solaris (talk)23:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I infer that both of the decorated stones that are preventing the sloped stone moldings from sliding down are keystones and therebycrossettes.DCDuring (talk)17:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Judging from the gap between the one on the right and its neighbor, it looks to be less effective as a keystone, but a keystone nonetheless.DCDuring (talk)17:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:20 days ago4 comments4 people in discussion
(NotifyingFay Freak,Brutal Russian,Benwing2,Lambiam,Mnemosientje,Nicodene,Sartma,Al-Muqanna,SinaSabet28,Theknightwho,Imbricitor): The moduleModule:la-correlatives, which creates a table of Latin words for things like "this, that, who, where" and so on, has recently been subject to enthusiastic expansion, which seems to be still ongoing. In my opinion, this expansion has been a little misguided and has resulted in an already unwieldy, oversized table getting even more awkward to navigate. It is wide enough to require scrolling even on a computer screen, and tall enough to fill the entire page.
I also feel the table is cluttered and probably has too many obscure terms that make it harder to see and process the frequent and useful terms. For example, while terms such asquāquamtenus may be pleasing in terms of filling gaps in the table, this word seems to be rare to the point that I couldn't find any examples (hence, I added it to RFV). Other terms are attested but very rare, such asutiquam: I guess it makes sense to include these, with a marker, in cases where the gap might otherwise cause confusion, but in cases where an entire row is rare, such asquantūrus, I think we should strongly consider omitting that row.
I've tried to discuss this a couple of times on the talk page ofUser_talk:Redeemed_Angle_Dust, but the discussions petered out and it seems my raising the topic there didn't really slow the rate of new additions.
Therefore, I'm posting here since I'd like to get some fresh eyes to provide input on which columns and rows are really useful, and which ones might not deserve to be in this table. Once this is decided, I think it would be good for the table to be stabilized in that format, rather than being subject to perpetual increase. @Redeemed Angle Dust, I want to say that columns and rows removed from the module's table could still be included at the appendixAppendix:Latin correlatives, so it isn't like they would necessarily be entirely deleted from Wiktionary if they are taken out of the module.
I've been thinking about whether there are more large-scale reorganizations that could be done to split the module into several smaller tables, like splitting the demonstrative/deictic system from the interrogative/indefinite/relative system, but I'm not sure if that would be a good direction to go in. Any thoughts are appreciated.Urszag (talk)18:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the best thing we can do is divide everything, not just the columns but the rows as well. It was an idea I already had, but I thought it was a bit radical.
While browsing Logeion, I discovered that, for example, dual correlatives are much larger than we imagined, including correlatives of alternation, place, origin, direction, path, among others. Therefore, I thought it would be better to create a separate module including all the duals. The same could be done with the size correlative, which would include extend and intensity correlatives as well as their diminutives, and also one for quality correlatives, including their two comparatives.
I think this would be the best thing to do rather than simply summarizing the module, because the problem would obviously remain. The module has many empty cells; for example, the statements don't have any duals and don't contain anything besides the quantity correlatives. It's a whole wasted empty space that could be avoided if we sliced the module into smaller modules, while we could leave a unified table in the appendix.Redeemed Angle Dust (talk)19:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The size is definitely harmful to the table being read at all. Content can be kept if the default only shows a selection, which apparently requires a parameter for the editor to control which one in any entry, and the user can request to unhide the rest.Fay Freak (talk)20:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Redeemed Angle Dust You need to be more responsive and take the comments made by @Urszag and others seriously, otherwise I will remove many of your contributions and lock the module so you can't contribute to it any more. This reminds me of the fiasco withModule:number list/data/en, with various new editors adding rare or unattestable English number-like terms, thereby bloating the full table atModule:number list/data/en and the individual per-number tables at each mainspace number. IMO only attestable and reasonably common (or at least not rare) terms should go into a table like this. There's little point in including extremely rare terms into such a table. At most, such terms,if attestable, if they fill out an existing gap, could be put in square brackets to indicate that they are rare, but new rows or columns should not be created containing primarily rare terms.Benwing2 (talk)00:33, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:21 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
About half the other dictionaries define this like WT, facing towards the axis. The others have the opposite, facing away from the axis. What is right, or is somehow in botany "facing towards" the same as "facing away from"??? The picture doesn't help me, it states the flower has 3 antiochus and 3posticous stamens...90.160.107.4407:31, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aneilema aequinoctiale flowerThere is no doubt thatanticous means “on the anterior side” andposticus “on the posterior side”. So the question is, which side is anterior and which side is posterior (to a botanist)?
If it helps, the flower ofAneilema is describedhere as having “flowers with threeanticous, fertile stamens and three (or two)posticous staminodes, bracteoles usually cup-shaped”. ‑‑Lambiam12:44, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Added indiff, which is by an Irish IP at least. PingingUser:FishandChipper andUser:Moilleadóir because your userpages imply you speak or know speakers of Irish English: how isOceania pronounced in Irish English? Is it ever /ˌoʊʃiˈænə/? Are there other pronunciations?(Separate issue, at the moment this is the only Irish English pronunciation listed, which means there's no need for the label to say "also" like it does.)- -sche(discuss)18:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn’t be surprised ifsomeone pronounces it that way, but I couldn’t tell you anything much about Irish English pronunciation anyway. ☸Moilleadóir☎04:58, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
A pronunciation ending in/ˈænə/ certainly exists, and not only in Ireland; I would be surprised if it is completely universal in any particular locale, though, given its unintuitive correspondence to the spelling.--Urszag (talk)22:34, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Indeed! Thanks for finding an actual example. I've been saying it out loud for myself but unable to imagine anyone pronouncing it without the second/i/.
Why do you think it's pronounced that way? It's not likePennsylvania andRomania become/ˌpɛn.sɪlˈveɪ.nə/ and/ɹʊˈmeɪ.nə/. Is it a dissimilatory effect from the first/i/? Or perhaps an analogical one from co-occurence beside the likes ofAsia/ˈeɪ.ʒə/, as in the video? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk)11:53, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aha, I hadn't even realized that /-nə/ was the part giving anyone pause. I do hear both /-njə/ and /-nə/ commonly enough (IRL and on Youglish) that I'll add them as US pronunciations, and they could probably also be added as alt UK pronunciations, as you say. Examples, from various accents, are1,2.3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 (stumbling),12; those are from the first 60 Youglish hits (only a couple of which are the same speaker multiple times: most are different speakers), so /-nə/ represents 12/60 or 20% of the pronunciations I sampled, 5/60 (~8%) were people pronouncing other words or using weird one-off pronunciations (often haltingly, seemingly unfamiliar with the word), and the remaining ~72% of speakers pronounced either /ni.ə/ or /njə/. Perhaps various factors have contributed, like dissimilation from the earlier /i/ + the validity of /-ænə/, /-ɑ(ː)nə/ as a word ending (Americana etc)...?- -sche(discuss)16:34, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think it is the same sense “to cause to be” as in “Imade myself comfortable”,[3] “make it better”,[4] and “we want tomake you happy”.[5] Curiously, I could not find this rather common sense among the list of 37 senses we give for the verbmake. One listed sense appears to be a special case of the more general sense “to cause to be”:
Our definition 8 ("To cause to be") covers it, but concealed under aditransitive label. The usage example "made him woozy" shows the adjective complement usage. The case where the complement is an adjective should probably be carved out under atransitive label with that usage example. MWOnline has, under a transitive label: "to cause to be or become".DCDuring (talk)13:39, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I scanned the list for “(trans", which is why I missed this entry labeled “(ditrans...“. I wonder ifditransitive is the right label. When the complement is a noun phrase, one can substititeturn ... into for the verb, turning the usexScotch willmake you a man intoScotch willturn youinto a man. ‑‑Lambiam17:49, 5 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I support entering well-attestedpronunciation spellings, but whereduz it end,tho? Dwee go ahead and enter them all? The bar set byWT:CFI will filter out the flotsam, fortunately. Joo ever search the GBS corpus to see how many attestations exist there forjoo that aren't themselves just dictionary-of-slang entries? I just took a look there and concluded that the population is anemic enough that I can't be arsed with further hunting and filtering for it. Anyone who cares enough to enter any particular one should bother to do a whole-ass job of it, supplying three or more high-quality citations when creating the entry. Butdollars to donuts few people will bother to try to enter them if they have to actually shift their ass a bit to make it stick. Which is nice, because in this particular class of cases, human laziness will work in favor of WT's quality instead of against it.Quercus solaris (talk)22:30, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It can work either independently (joo do your homework yet?) or in combination (couldjoo do me a favor?). But I won't bother to enter eitherjoo or-joo into Wiktionary, though, because to my eye they are on the wrong side of a threshold regarding "Kwee please not do this for every pron-spell in existence?" (i.e., only a most important and widely used handful are worth entering). Admittedly anyone who wanted to work hard enough on citation assembly could get various ones to passWT:CFI, because lots of rare things are attested at least thrice in a well-documented language such as English. Anyone is welcome to do that work if they want, but for me it's not worth doing, personally, except for a few important ones, such aswuz,cuz,tho, for example.Quercus solaris (talk)14:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
My gut says no, because emically English doesn't include digraphs in its alphabet. Thus, for example, if you look at the entry forth at #English orth- at #English, there are no senses entered there pointing to /θ/ and /ð/, and if you look at the entry forch at #English, there are no senses entered there pointing to /t͡ʃ/ and /k/. Same withrh,tch,gh,dj, and others. A few of these strings (but not most) have a sense at #Translingual that covers the digraph use. For example, seech at #Translingual, which says (as of this writing), "A digraph from c and h, considered an individual letter in some languages." Bottom line, this is an interesting topic, but as for any action that could be taken, I would argue that the only opportunity seen here is that various digraphs could all have coverage of their digraph use posted at #Translingual, and it would tend to follow that pattern of "A digraph from [letter] and [letter], considered an individual letter in some languages." To me the most interesting (nontrivial) thing about it all is the emic-versus-etic difference.Quercus solaris (talk)15:52, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 days ago8 comments5 people in discussion
As a sentence that illustrates the good use of the word carcass, "The forest was covered in dog carcass" is not only nonsensical but also ungrammatical. Surely we can do better than that.David Ingerson (talk)03:22, 6 November 2025 (UTC)David IngersonReply
A bad choice of example, silly, but neither nonsensical nor ungrammatical. I picture an extremely large number of parts of dog carcasses, sufficient to cover the forest or, at least, the forest floor.DCDuring (talk)16:38, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed: it is grammaticallypossible, and semantically sensible, for nearly any count noun to be used in an unusual noncount way, such as "there was a bad wreck on the highway, and now there is a bunch of used Toyota smeared all over the pavement"; but the point is well taken, though, that usexes are supposed to illustrate use that is not acorner case, generally speaking (i.e., allowing for some smallish number of unusual but advised exceptions). So David Ingerson's and Chuck Entz's larger point was valid (i.e., that the former usex was not a desirable usex for a dictionary) even though it isn't true that it was nonsensical and ungrammatical (in fairness, it isn't either of those; but it is conspicuously unusual, being an exception to typical usage, which is why it isn't needed and isn't desirable when standing in the spot where a good typical use example ought to be, instead). And any user who habitually either fails to detect those facts themself or purposely flouts them isbad news.Quercus solaris (talk)19:49, 6 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Points well taken. I should have known that when dealing with word nerds (I'm just a word enthusiast) I should take extreme care to choose my words extra carefully. Thanks for being responsive and making the change.David Ingerson (talk)07:20, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:11 days ago7 comments4 people in discussion
An IPremoveddoona = "do not", arguing the books are written by Americans and that it doesn't exist in Scottish English. That seems to be correct; at least, I can't find any examples ofdoona in theDSL orEDD, as contrasted with the amply attesteddinna. However, the word is so commonly attested in this sense in non-Scottish works imitating Scottish English that I think its absence from a true Scotsman's speech is actually an argument for keeping it and explaining the situation. I've tentatively restored the section and added an explanatory{{n-g}}, taking some inspiration fromze = "French/Germanthe" (andve haf vays of making you talk), but I welcome other opinions, better wording, etc. In general, we probably need to go through the Scottish English category (like the AAVE category...) to remove words which only exist in incorrect caricatures.- -sche(discuss)05:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm personally of the opinion that we shouldn't be givingany space to pseudo-Scots, given how much damage Wiki projects have already done to the online record of the Scots language. Per theScots entry guidelines:"Be very careful adding Scots terms. Much of what is passed off as Scots on the Internet is in fact a caricature of Scots written by people who don't speak the language." If it's not included in any Scots or Scottish English dictionaries, and has only been used by American authors with no grasp on either, then I don't see any reason to include it. I'd support removing it. --Grnrchst (talk)15:04, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
This amounts to censorship and is not much more than "we shouldn't have this term because I don't like it". There are quotes showing the term is used. If it's not used in actual Scots or Scottish English, that can be pointed out in the definition or the usage notes. —SURJECTION/ T/ C/ L/15:49, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The term isn't "used" though, it doesn't even exist outside of some poorly-written American romance novels (one of which is self-published) from the mid-2000s. I don't appreciate being accused of "censorship" just because I'm wary about us continuing the proliferation of pseudo-Scots. I just don't think arguments for inclusion have made a particularly good case, given the evidence for it is so low-quality. --Grnrchst (talk)16:07, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would argue that keeping the entry does substantially more to combat pseudo-Scots than removing the entry would do; indeed, removing the entry lets pseudo-Scots spread without challenge.Doona is not being presented as Scots (compare e.g.dinnae, which is presented as Scots with a big ==Scots== header at the top and, for users who have the 'flags' gadget turned on, a Scottish flag);doona is presented as English, a language in which itis used (the way any number of other terms are mistakenly used, e.g.for all intensive purposes), and the definition then helpfully informs readers that the word is not Scots or Scottish English. In my view,this combats the proliferation of pseudo-Scots, whereas removing the word means people read it in novels that do also use other (real) Scots / Scottish English words likedinnae, and are thus left to assumedoona too likedinnae is real Scots or Scottish English, if we were to remove the entry and not tell them any different. Better to have an informative entry for the word, I think.- -sche(discuss)17:23, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for giving this perspective, I think it's brought me around more towards keeping it, so long as we very clearly flag that this is the product of American writers with no grasp on Scots or Scottish English. I'm not convinced the current wording goes hard enough, but it's definitely better with this explanation than it was previously. --Grnrchst (talk)17:31, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
That quote comes across as merely imperfect ESL, nonidiomatic.Quercus solaris (talk) 15:55, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Update: In response to a question asked in an edit summary: The quote as presented above is not the same thing as when someone says "there is no way that X [is or could be] true" and someone else retorts, "there is *SO* a way that X [is or could be] true." Person A: "There's no way!" Person B: "There is *SO* a way!" or "There is *TOO*!" In contrast, the quote above, as presented, is only a flawed ESL approximation of those constructions, albeit plenty comprehensible. It issolecistic albeit successfully communicative.Quercus solaris (talk)18:47, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:13 days ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, Is Chinese重 (zhòng) term also means "hard", for example因重擊造成的瘀傷 ("Bruises caused by ahard hit") and its derivative重擊／重击 (zhòngjī) term also means "hard hit" and "to whack", for example因重擊造成的深藍色或深紫色瘀傷 ("Dark blue or dark purple bruises caused by ahard hit")? PleaseYuliadhi (talk)11:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Yuliadhi, I already replied to your querylast month, which you laterdeleted without comment, and apparently without even reading it.
I think重, both as standalone重 (zhòng) and in the compound重擊／重击 (zhòngjī), could be interpreted as meaning "heavy". Consider the semantics of English phraseheavyblow. In both languages, in this context, the modifier implies "heavy, severe, with great force". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig22:37, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:15 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Greetings, I'm a native speaker ofPattani Malay and i would like to create entries on that language. The thing is I also worked on setting the orthography of the languagehere, yet nobody use this yet since it's neither official nor widely used. So I want to apply the orthography when comes to create new lemmas, could I?Mirlim (talk)12:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
To be added, terms have to be "attested" somewhere, either used in newspapers, journals, books, etc, or (if Patani Malay counts as aWT:LDL, unlike "standard" Malay which is aWT:WDL) at least used in a reliable (non-Wiki) dictionary. If certain spellings are only used on another Wikimedia project, then no, they can't be used: they need to gain some traction in the "real" world first.- -sche(discuss)16:08, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 days ago5 comments4 people in discussion
The king has beenpleased by letters patent under the great seal of the realm dated 3 November 2025 to declare that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor shall no longer be entitled to hold and enjoy the style, title or attribute of ‘royal highness’ and the titular dignity of ‘prince’.
What's the meaning ofpleased here? "Satisfied" by letters patent (that is, authorised by letters?) Or is he "pleased … to declare", which is a weird sentence structure, and doesn't make sense?Jberkel16:14, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is unusual, but still grammatical (AFAICT), sentence structure, saying that he has been pleased to declare—by letters patent—that AMW is no longer a prince. At Google Books, I can find examples of monarchs using this phrasing since at least the15- and1600s. I suspect they feel that retaining the odd structure makes the announcement seem more formal, situating it in a long and ancient tradition of such announcements.- -sche(discuss)16:44, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
See the last sense atpleasure, as in,According to the king's good pleasure... (see entry for further examples). It has more to do with volition/choice than desire/contentment. I think that's what the second sense ofplease is getting at, but it's clearer in thepleasure entry.Andrew Sheedy (talk)23:18, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've always thought that this use ofplease asserts (as in this case) or acknowledges (in the case of, say, an attorney addressing a judge in court) the absolute discretionary power of a monarch or a court.DCDuring (talk)23:57, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aha, so this basically reaffirms that the king "does as he pleases" = has full control/authority over this particular act, and it is done via the letters, great seal etc. Thanks.Jberkel00:31, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:17 days ago2 comments1 person in discussion
The zh/data/ltc-pron module has no data for 鬨, however according to the datahere, it should be something corresponding to the Baxter transcription "huwngH". I don't think the data for this module is freely editable, so I just thought I should mention it here in case someone can add it.Samot2 (talk)17:34, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Update: I realized there are a ton of characters missing MC data like this, so it's not really worth requesting that they all be added.Samot2 (talk)18:25, 8 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm going to delete those, because I tried to find citations supporting them and came up empty. If anyone can prove me wrong, then feel free to restore them, with citations. They were added on 2024-06-30 by onePagginelli, but I wonder if Pagginelli was confused about EN versus ES, via EFL. I see that various Merriam-Webster dictionaries (e.g., Webster 1911 s.v.solano^ and MW OWL s.v.solano^) agree that English has naturalized that Spanish name of that wind, but what Pagginelli's edit asserts is that some English speakers have calqued that word rather than using it as a loanword, and my attempts to find attestations to support that assertion are not finding any. Thus,WT:BOLD. Again, If anyone can prove me wrong, then feel free to restore them, with citations.Quercus solaris (talk)18:29, 9 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:15 days ago8 comments4 people in discussion
I moved the derived terms that were fromthorpe (a variant ofthorp(“village”), “now chiefly in placenames” per the entry) and not the placenameThorpe itself tothorpe.
@Donnanz restored the terms with the edit summary, “the transfers to satisfy a POV were less than helpful, restored those removed”.
I undid this edit, writing, “This is not my ‘point of view’ [as] this is not how we list derived terms: [e.g.] places with ‘River’ are listed at ‘river’, not the placename ‘River’.”J3133 (talk)17:42, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that makes sense.Thorpe with the initial capital is defined as either a surname or specific placenames. Thus, it is not the word from which place names ending in-thorpe are derived. —Sgconlaw (talk)18:17, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
While they are not "Derived terms", AFAICT thesecould correctly be listed inThorpe as "Related terms". But because there are so many, it would be good not to duplicate them in both places (Thorpe andthorpe) ... one entry or the other should probably just have a "see [other entry]" pointer. I have tentatively put the pointer inThorpe, leaving the list atthorpe. If there are objections to this, undo my edit and we can all discuss further.- -sche(discuss)18:28, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Let's get something straight. I did not remove the transfers tothorpe. I added them back toThorpe, for the simple reason that users would expect to find them there, and becausethorpe is obsolete, unlikeriver. J3133 has merely grabbed thelow-hanging fruit, ignoring many others such asNunthorpe, and there are many more which don't have entries yet: those with Thorpe as the first part are listed atList of United Kingdom locations: Thi-Thw#Tho. And that doesn't include those with Thorpe as the second part. It is a very common component in English place names.DonnanZ (talk)19:39, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Donnanz: Derived terms are listed at the word they derive from (thorpe in this case, as Sgconlaw has also stated above), regardless of obsoleteness. Also, I moved these because they were the ones you or others listed, not because I was ignoring others.J3133 (talk)06:57, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:15 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I think "(when conjugated as attributing or attributed) IPA(key): /əˈtɹɪb.(j)ət/" does not belong inattribute in this form. I believe the "correct" thing is to provide pronunciations atattributed andattributing. (If some note were to be kept atattribute, it should specify the actual pronunciations of those other forms, rather than a sort of "back-formed" pronunciation of infinitiveattribute that AFAICT isn't used.)- -sche(discuss)21:29, 10 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:14 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Howdy! Regarding the sensepresence, stay, I was unable to find quotes that best fitpresence. However,PIV associatespresence with this quote: "dum 5 1/2 jaroj de mia estado en universitato". I believestay would be more applicable, so I merged the senses for now. To be clear, I understand thatpresence refers to the state of being present whilestay refers to the period of time being present at some place. I request for a more experienced speaker to determine if they should be separated or kept merged. If kept, I additionally request to add a glossed definition that covers both glosses.TranqyPoo (talk)20:50, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:14 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
"Aflyhandle on the driver's air brake cuts out the proportional application and allows the locomotive to move even if the train pipe vacuum is broken." This appeared in the Railway Magazine, April 1958, page 267. Apart from that, I know nothing about it. There's no entry forfly handle either.DonnanZ (talk)22:37, 11 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
So far, I've only managed to find one other train-related (rather than fishing-pole-related) quote:
1861,The Friend of the people, page123:
[…] the train. About the middle compartment of each carriage, but especially over the guard's box, must be a small sheave, or capstan, on a vertical axle, one end of which must pass down through the roof, and be furnished with a fly-handle below it, for the convenience of turning.
I also found this, which (in the context of presses instead of trains) seems to identify fly handles with treadles:
2005, Mary Jo Maynes, Birgitte Søland, Christina Benninghaus,Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750-1960, Indiana University Press,→ISBN, page87:
[…] in press work. Operated by fly handles or treadles, presses were "used for cutting out, shaping, or fitting together thin metal" and other materials to make buttons, jewelry, clasps, fastenings," in fact an endless variety of miscellaneous useful or[…]
Andthis has pictures of door handles it calls fly handles. Together with the treadle quote, it gives the impression that a fly handle may be a handle that can be pressed down, rather than turned like a knob...?
I have both types of door handle in this house. So it could be a lever-type handle with a spring in the mechanism, that returns to its usual position after operation.DonnanZ (talk)10:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Sometimes a word is used, not just in poetry, in a way that calls on several definitions. To me the meaning would seem to be covered by definitions 2 and/or 4, influenced by 8. Why would it not be?DCDuring (talk)14:00, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:13 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Being a software guy I don't really know this phrase: see the Talk page regarding how it was changed from Adjective to Noun. But are there really three separate senses, all without plurals? Can there be two "system pulls"? Can some hardware dork improve the entry? Best wishes, software dork.~2025-33037-05 (talk)21:46, 12 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
There is a piece that they are missing in order to be accurate, which is "fr:" added toplanche inside the template call. Without that they arealmost right but not quite. The only problem is that English doesn't use the wordplanche to mean anything other than the gymnastics stance (i.e., any rare niche technical jargon senses, if they exist, not counting for the purpose). So the surface analysisin English is not quiteplanche + suffix, even though many English speakers (those with sufficient acquaintance with word roots) can easilysee the surface analysis (even when they can't speak French fluently) and even though the suffix itself is certainly one that is used in English. What they are seeing is in fact the surface analysisfrom French as itshines through the transparency of the cognation. That said, if "fr:" is added, it becomes accurate. I will add that.Quercus solaris (talk)16:03, 13 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:12 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
To my knowledge, this is always preceded by an "s" and can be formed only of words ending ins, e.g.elvistellä,jeesustella. Also, these don't have consonant gradation and their stem is just-tele- instead of-ttele- mentioned in the head. I wonder if it should be moved to-stella entirely - many etymologies would need to be fixed if we so decide. --Mölli-Möllerö (talk)11:03, 14 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree the citations in the entry don't support the rest of the details beyond "kill, assassinate"; indeed, they (and others I can find online) seem to outright contradict "especially a politically prominent figure", because they (often) use it of non-notable people; I also don't detect any suggestion in them that the killing needs to be recorded. Even online the term seems to be uncommon and might fail entirely if RFVed, BTW.- -sche(discuss)08:07, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:9 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Hello, could someone have a look at these entries? I'm not sure of current definitions. Do these phrases mean 'very', 'pleasantly' or 'completely'? Also, I'm pretty certain that 'lovely and' is a British phrase~2025-34020-15 (talk)16:47, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Everything that's given at the current definitions ofgood and andnice and, as of this writing, is not wrong. There is some potential to add to what's there. Meanings conveyed by these constructions include "very", "plenty" (adv), "pleasantly", and "adequately", depending on which term and which particular use instance, and it is true that "thoroughly" could be added too. From "thoroughly" it is not a stretch semantically over to "completely" and "wholly", so there's a fair argument that those are not wrong to add, even though these termsmore often than not don't denote "completely" or "wholly" or "maximally". I agree thatlovely and in a sense synonymous withnice and is not something that AmE does.Quercus solaris (talk)23:40, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
One characteristic of note is thatgood and can be used with a following adjective of either positive or negative valence, whereasnice and (and presumablylovely and) are normally only used with positive-valence adjectives.
Latest comment:17 hours ago3 comments2 people in discussion
hello! so i noticed recently, that for the old english sprǣdan the ipa notation is spræː.dɑn which as far as i understand it would imply sprǣddan as the spelling, rather. is this a mistake of some sort or do i not fully understand this?1PintOfLint (talk)23:13, 16 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
@1PintOfLint ˈspræː.dɑn represents the syllable /ˈspræː/ followed by the syllable /dɑn/: there is no geminate "dd" here. It contains /æ/ (the vowel quality spelled "æ") followed by /ː/ (the vowel length marker) followed by /./ (the syllable break marker) followed by /d/ (the consonant spelled "d"). Were you not familiar with the use of the period to separate syllables? That is optional and some people prefer to omit syllabification in transcriptions.--Urszag (talk)04:51, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:7 days ago9 comments4 people in discussion
I think they are used in similar way in British English (instead of sitting and standing), so shouldn't they have similar definitions? Also, aren't they present participles rather than adjectives?~2025-34337-55 (talk)19:42, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
[after edit conflict]: OED would agree with DCDuring's assessment above ("passives of transitive"). Here is what I was about to say: The formssat andstood are neverpresent participles (which end in-ing). It is true that BrE can use the past participle (ending in-ed,-d, or-t) in a certain way, conveying a certain meaning, for which AmE uses only the present participle (ending in-ing). It is in sentences such as "I'm standing here before you because X" versus "I'm stood here before you because X", or "there was a guy standing on the corner smoking" versus "there was a bloke stood on the corner smoking", or "there's a guy sitting in the corner laughing" versus "there's a bloke sat in the corner laughing". I just looked at OED, AHD, and MWU to see how they address and handle such usage, and to my eye, none of them do full justice to it. OED's metalanguage for it at I.5.g — "transitive (in passive)" — is decent (regarding that grammatical assessment, compare, for example, "I am painted into a corner"), but the question is precisely how each authority decides whether to call a certain use of a participle a verbal use versus an adjectival use. The relevant page range inCamGEL 2002 is 76-83. Quote from page 79: "In the light of this distinction between participial adjectives and participle forms of verbs we can clarify the nature of the functional resemblance between participle and adjective that forms the basis for the general definition. In examples like [9] it is not a matter of the wordwritten itself having a function like that of an adjective, but ofwritten being head of an expression whose function is like that of an expression headed by an adjective, i.e. of an AdjP. The functional resemblance is at the level not of words but of larger constituents[…] At the level of words, verbs and adjectives differ significantly with respect to the dependents they take."Quercus solaris (talk)23:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I meant present participle (I am stood = I am standing), but on second thoughts, maybe we shouldn't label it as present participle on account of morphology – all other present participle ends in ...ing
That being said, I still think these entries need an improvement. We label 'sat' as an adjective but we don't label 'stood' as an adjective. Why is that?~2025-34465-37 (talk)07:34, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agreed. No doubt the main part of the answer to "why" is simply that the entries were worked on by different people at different times. The next layer of the answer is that people have differing notions regarding part-of-speech definitions forpast participle functioning as verb form versuspast participle functioning asparticipial adjective. At the moment I'm inclined to tweak thestood entry so as to make it handle the phenomenon in the same way that thesat entry currently does. I might do that soon if no objections occur here.Quercus solaris (talk)15:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I object. I don't thinksat orstood meet the relevant adjective tests to distinguish them from use as component of passive: comparability, gradability, distinct meaning, use with copulas other thanbe.DCDuring (talk)16:42, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. Can't argue with those. This means, then, that the reverse is true: the adj POS atsat should be removed, and then someone should sit with both entries,stood andsat, and make sure that the [notionally] 'transitive' passive sense is covered at the verb POS as well as it can be, in that someone's informed judgment. I might possibly do that, but I doubt thatthe spirit will move me to do it. Feel free, anyone who seeks consistency on it. What I mean by "[notionally] 'transitive'" is the following: it is notionally transitive even though theagent isusually the self:I'm sat in the corner becauseI have sat myself down in the corner (that is,I have sat my ass down in the corner, wheremy ass is a synecdochicalpatient representing my whole self and is thus in fact a pronominal form, although WT isn't allowed to call it that, per previous decisions from users who don'tget that aspect). The agency is thus usually closer to both intransitive and reflexive in nature (essence) than to transitive, although one can be sat or stood in the corner via someone else's agency too, though (e.g., that of a disciplinarian or jailer).Quercus solaris (talk)17:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, per the theory above,sat still (at the moment) needs its adj POS section removed. (Thus, I'll remove it in a moment,boldy.) I'm fine with the current verb POS and its usexes, although the usex that illustrates this "transitive passive" usage should be labeled as both "informal" and "chiefly UK/Commonwealth", because AmE doesn't do it; those AmE speakers who do it are consciously employing UK/Commonwealth usage when they do it. (Thus, I'll add the geolectal label in a moment.) I'm OK with the usage notes as they currently are (and they do have good parallelism with each other); admittedly there's no clean way to add further explanation there that WT's main audiences would benefit from.Quercus solaris (talk)18:36, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:8 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The pronunciation of the wordចក្រភព(cakkraʼphup) was modified by @RalvahKaset who I am not sure I trust. The original pronunciation was given by @Sitaron - self-identified native speaker.
Both are inactive since 2022.
Inhttp://sealang.net/khmer/ it seems to me that in many instances is more reliable than Headley97, Headley77 gives /cakraʔpʰup/, Headley97 gives /cak pʰup/. I think Headley97 shows simplificiation of the pronunciation.
I think of leaving respellings ច័ក-ក្រៈ-ភប់ /caʔ.kraʔ.pʰup/ + ច័ក-ក្រ់-ភប់ /caʔ.krɑ.pʰup/, the latter per native speaker + /ច័ក ភព់/ /caʔ ˈpʰup/ per Headley97.
The closest would be "situated toward or at the front of something", in a figurative sense. These are things that are right up front where you can see/taste/smell them, not obscured by anything else.Chuck Entz (talk)07:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't see anything that quite covers the usage in those citations. At first I thought it was the same sense as in expressions likefashion-forward (in 5 other serious OneLook dictionaries),tech-forward,future-forward,design-forward, in which it seems to mean "at the forefront of a trend or a field". It also reminded me offacing in[customer-]facing ("in direct contact with [customers]").
It seems to me to mean something like "especially prominent or emphasized", which is not obviously in any of our definitions offorward, either adjective or adverb.DCDuring (talk)14:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
That's my sense, too (that none of our current senses clearly cover it), but I wanted to check I wasn't missing something. Dictionary.com has a sense for this, "standing out from others"; their usexes show that they consider that sense to cover both standalone use ("sage is an herb with a strong, forward flavor") and use in combinations ("fashion-forward celebrities"). IMO their definition is not great; I like your wording better, and have tentatively added it along with more cites, but I'm unsure if it makes sense to have just one sense, or two: whatforward means when it stands alone ("sage is an herb with a forward flavour") and what it means in combinations ("this is a gin with a citrus-forward flavour") seem similar, but I'm not sure whether they're identical. What do you think?- -sche(discuss)19:10, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think they are so close that it is not worth separating them, though it would not be wrong to do so.
But I don't thinkfashion-forward (which may have been the first wide-spread use in this sense) and the others fall under the same sense offorward. One could substitute-trendy for-forward in those, except for the pejorative connotation oftrendy. (Future-forward seems like a marketing-type pleonasm.)DCDuring (talk)20:19, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I think the difference is that being "fashion-forward" is being ahead of the common herd as everyone moves in the direction of newness and stylishness, with the fashion-forward leading the way. With "citrus-forward flavor", it's more stationary: the citrus is more prominant, as if metaphorically in a position closer to the one perceiving it.Chuck Entz (talk)09:41, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Agree that they're aspects of the same underlying whole. But there is a part-of-speech difference between the aspects. Noun sense 11 at nounmind is truly a noun sense (e.g., one of the usexes there is "They are the “tars” who give mind to the spreading sail"). It's the same noun as in "pay no mind to those jerks". Themind inmind you is a verb in the imperative mood. Theyou is the subject expressed after the command form. It is grammatically parallel withhear ye ("listen up, you!"). Compare "mind that you don't get home too late" (verb in imperative mood).Quercus solaris (talk)15:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
D'oh! Sorry about that. Yes, I agree. Quite right.Quercus solaris (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2025 (UTC) BTW: Verb sense 11 is the same critter as verb sense 1, just used syntactically in a certain way. Whether that means that verb sense 11 is redundant to verb sense 1 will depend on who is asked.Quercus solaris (talk)15:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Just spotted this in a book - person is having a dream about playing in a Scrabble tournament. “Then my mother appears and startscoffeehousing.”Anyone seen this one before? Synonym ofkibitz?JulieKahan (talk)18:08, 19 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 days ago19 comments4 people in discussion
Is 'adjective' the right part of speech for this? (I mean, arguably it's not really a word on its own at all, just a part of certain longer terms like "baker's half-dozen" that are formed in imitation of "baker's dozen", but because the combinations it's attested in are not always themselves thrice-attested, it's arguably better to try to havesomething that explains them than to leave them unexplained.)- -sche(discuss)03:53, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, it seems odd to call the genitive/possessive inflection of a noun an "adjective", and this isn't done for others, such asdevil's (nor should it be). To me it is better deleted than not.Quercus solaris (talk)04:37, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Baker's, like any possessive, serves as a determinative function in general, but the entry's definition is not determinative, so adjective may be the best we can do.
BTW 1, the adjective definition is insufficiently specific. The citations show that it's (rare) use is with a definition like "a little bit more than". Even "An Imperial ton or long ton is abaker's ton." seems to me wrong using the US ton (12% more), but good using the metric ton (1.6% more).
Isn't the &lit possessive form of the noun a ===Noun==={{head|en|noun form}}, not a determiner? We appear to handle apostropheless possessive forms of nouns as noun forms, both in English (e.g.kinges) and in Middle and Old English and other languages (e.g.cynges).- -sche(discuss)21:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Relevant to my original question, I see we havepeople's (andtoday's) as an adjective, but... that too feels a little odd to me: could you say "the republic was democratic and people's" or "this republic is more people's than that one, but this other one is the people'sest of them all"?- -sche(discuss)06:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
But then, if it is (or at least, is homographic to) a noun form (the possessive form ofpeople) and can only be used in ways nouns can be, not in adjectival ways, should we not call it a noun form?- -sche(discuss)07:49, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have put "baker-'s" at the "noun form"{{&lit}} "definition". Would such an inflection line for all nouns that use possessives be satisfactory? At least it clearly gives a learner something to click on, admittedly unconventional in appearance.DCDuring (talk)15:20, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
"that is not how it is written", and that is a problem because ....?
"we do not separate other headwords into parts": unless there is some separation indicated by a space or hyphen/dash. Why not add apostrophe to the list?DCDuring (talk)17:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Re the meaning ofpeople's andpeople being different: so? The meanings ofmessage andmessages are also different; sometimes things which originate as different forms of one word/part of speech have different meanings but are still the same part of speech; I'm not proposing to remove the definitions, just wondering if it might be more accurate to have 'noun' as the part of speech.- -sche(discuss)18:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm sorry that I didn't make clear what I was talking about. I was referring to various definitions offered atpeople's which are not quite parsable as any definition atpeople + 's, whatever the etymological connection. I don't see whypeople's, when used to mean something distinct from the possessive ofpeople, has to be considered a noun when it behaves so little like a noun. AFAICT, it can't normally be a subject of verbs or object/complement of verbs or prepositions; be modified it by determiners; or have either countability/uncountability as a property. It also cannot form a possessive! We find it easy to call a homograph of a noun an adjective when it has a distinct meaning in attributive use. This seems analogous to me.DCDuring (talk)00:13, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Is there another way of reminding language learners of the ordinary possessive use of such nouns? Do we think that an inflection-line link to-'s (without even a space preceding it) is sufficient? Would a preceding space be sufficient for enough users?DCDuring (talk)15:13, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago6 comments4 people in discussion
I remember someone created the page vidoeMisspelling of Video, But somebody removed it without a having a clean up requesting and why they removed it I mean it's actually this word rarely misspelled when they type vidoe on messenger. What do you think?フィリピン人 (talk)12:44, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
We include misspellings, likepharoah, that result from someone misremembering how a word is spelled. This is different fromtypos, where someone has the right spelling in mind but their finger slips.jlwoodwa (talk)22:02, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
is it very confusing that 兎馬 and 驢 can be both means donkey and also the Japanese section says 驢(Hyōgai kanji)
This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text rfdef. I'm not sure if it just translate as donkey so I'm gonna add it anywayフィリピン人 (talk)14:09, 20 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:5 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Does the archaic label make sense for this term? There's modern examples of at least the phrase 何ちゅう; the first example in the NKD is from 1905, and I thinkthis video from 2025 uses the term 何ちゅう as well. Or should 何ちゅう be considered separate from the original contraction ofという asちゅう?Horse Battery (talk)02:14, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Should be we add memorable quotes from Filipino movie titles like Isang bala ka lang!, Ako ang huhusga, Hindi ka ng sisikat ng Araw and Kapag puno na ang salop?フィリピン人 (talk)13:15, 21 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:4 days ago6 comments5 people in discussion
These words have a similar meaning: "begin to be", but I'd like to distinguish them from each other better.
1. become - More formal than get. Often with permanent states. Followed by adjectives and nouns
2. get - More informal than become and often with emotions, temporary states, adjectives that looks as past participle and comparatives. Followed by adjectives or an object + adjectives
3. turn - I'd like to merge the meaning 2.1 and 4 and indicate it's more formal than go and often used with colors, clear sudden changes, weather and ages. Followed by adjectives, nouns or and object + adjective.
4. go - I'd like to merge the meaning 10.1 and 11 and indicate it's often used with colors and negative states and that it's more informal than turn. Followed by adjectives
5. come - Mostly used in set phrases and certain collocations. Also, I'd like to delete the example "He was a dream come true.". It doesn't seem correct to me and also "come true" is a fixed phrase, so it would be better to just leave a link tocome true under the definition
Get andturn have both transitive and intransitive usage in the sense(s) you may mean to change.
As to advice: I'd pick something simpler to start, preferably an open group such as nouns, adjectives, or manner adverbs. Or try cleaning up entries that others have found worth adding toWT:RFC (cleanup),WT:RFV (verification/attestation),WT:RFD??? (deletion), orWiktionary:Todo/Lists. Finding citations for less common definitions of common words is both valuable and challenging. Or focus on something of intrinsic interest to you. We lack many terms from traditional industries and crafts.
OP: I feel your pain, regarding the urge to codify theconnotative differences, but I will just share thecalibrating point (from experience) that you can't explicitly codifyall the facts about thesynonymizer'sdiscrimination (as the thesaurusmakers call it) andparasynonymy into Wiktionary's definitions without turning Wiktionary into something that is not as useful to the chief classes of its target users. You could try writing a unified paragraph of discrimination (for this set that you've expressed interest in) and put it as a single usage note atbecome, but I just need to warn you (from experience) that if your result is more than 3 lines, someone else will just delete it anyway, because something-something-shut-up-egghead-poindexter-handwave-etc. In fairness, they're not entirely wrong. Learning which aspects to live without (because others are enough) is a journey, and managing to scratch some of the itches of that type (i.e., the discrimination-explication urge) pretty well (well enough) while nonethelessremaining concise as hell is a pleasurein itself when it happens. Cheers to your own discoveries along that line. In the meantime, Iremain,Quercus solaris (talk)06:13, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I decided to be bold and just make some changes. I wouldn't be surprised if they needed some improvement but I believe they enteies are more informative now~2025-35508-18 (talk)10:39, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
We define this as "(childish) The condition of splitting something in order to share it." Atgoogle books:"go splitsies on" I can find plenty of uses (mostly referring to splitting the cost of something) which do not seem childish to me. I have tentatively changed the label to "childish or informal", but am mentioning this here in case anyone has better ideas for the label or for the definition, or disagrees with my analysis.- -sche(discuss)19:10, 22 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Deleted back in 2011 for being SoP. However, it seems like this term is chiefly used to mean "perpendicularline segment bisector" rather than any bisector (of an angle, figure, etc.) that is perpendicular.HyperAnd (talk)01:41, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I would agree, it doesn't really refer to any "bisector" which is "perpendicular", but specifically to one of a line segment, so it has a particular meaning. Moreover, even if it were just interpreted as its face-value meaning, it is a specific technical reference / term of art, so it should be present in my opinion for these two reasons.Kiril kovachev (talk・contribs)03:20, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you both and would also like to point out that there may be a justification for recreating this entry for translation purposes, perhaps as a translation hub. Selecting ‘all’ rather than ‘main’ when doing a search here for ‘perpendicular bisector’ produces several hits for words in other languages with ‘perpendicular bisector’ as a definition which are currently either unlinked or linked separately to ‘perpendicular’ and ‘bisector’. Thanks for bringing this up, you made me realise that I foolishly defined ‘inverse Pythagorean theorem’ in terms of ‘perpendicular bisectors’ instead of ‘altitudes’. I’ve thus improved that definition and added a new sense at our ‘altitude’ entry.Overlordnat1 (talk)08:05, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:2 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
We define this as "a factory where drinks are bottled", but don't there exist facilities for nonfood liquids such as Javel water?PUC –11:54, 23 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
No doubt, although usually when people say "bottling plant" they mean a beverage-bottling plant. To my eye the best way to handle this instance of that common natural-language theme (i.e., "when I say X, I mean X of type 1 unless otherwise specified or contextually evident") is via a second sense. I'll go do thatboldy.Quercus solaris (talk)00:41, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Our definition includes aversion to "LGBTQ people in general". As I said on the Talk page: "Doesn't seem right. I have never seen transphobia called "homophobia" for instance. It should at least be split into a separate sense, since the synonyms don't match, as things stand." I also just checked Merriam-Webster and they donot expand their definition beyond gay people.~2025-35917-66 (talk)09:53, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
As of this writing, I see that the defs athomophobia are split into two senses, which in my view is unassailable: changing it would not improve it. Changing it to a single sense of the type of "X; usually, X with Y" or "X; often, X with Y" would not be an improvement (it would not be wrong, but the syns beneath it would then need qualifiers grouping them into groups); and deleting the second sense while leaving the first sense as-is would not be an improvement either: it would be introducing an error. Etymonic meaning is not the sole component of meaning, whereas coinstantiation plays an important role semantically in producing idiomatic meaning. For example, in this case, the challenge is that in many cultures (those withoutemic conceptions ofthird genders), many people with homophobia hate anyone who's gay or trans or nonbinary, because they lump them all together, with the attitude that they're all "perverts". For example, in the country where I grew up, while I was growing up (US,of a certain age), there was more or less no such thing as (i.e., zero or near-zero) people who were respectful of trans people and didn't mind their existence but meanwhile hated gay people. And that's why the wordqueer in itsslur sense covered absolutelyeveryone who in the 21st century would later be called LGBTQIA. (The LGBT- series of terms didn't exist when I was growing up.) Even today I doubt there are many such people in my country (i.e., homophobicstricto sensu but not transphobic); if you can find one, you'll have found an uncommon and idiosyncratic exception. Now, granted, the other polarity is different: there are quite a few people who are transphobic even though they're not homophobic; but that doesn't work in the opposite polarity (i.e., doesn't exist IRL [zero or near-zero], versus hypothetically). From this viewpoint, the strict etymonic definition of homophobia (sense 1, gayphobia) when considered in the absence of transphobia, as contrasted with sense 2 (LGBTphobia), is the definition of the beliefs of a hypothetical person who in my country doesn't exist outside of some rare one-in-a-million unicorn. That doesn't mean that sense 1 should be deleted (no). But it's a fact aboutreferents that exist IRL and the words that people use to refer to them (regardless of whether anyone thinks that they ought not to), which is a crucial theme in lexicography. Regarding the whole point about "homophobic but not transphobic" being a near-nonexistent unicorn in many cultures: the situation could be different in a culture that has athird gender emically. For example, if someone in South Asia acknowledges a societal role forhijra but hates gay people.Quercus solaris (talk)16:55, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago6 comments4 people in discussion
What do we think of this kind of entry: created with no content (justrfdef slot for a definition) and only legitimate because of a rare, non-standard alt form that passes COALMINE (in this case "blackgirl")? The creator seems keen to create these:lime blossom is another.~2025-35917-66 (talk)18:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Right on the bleeding edge of abusingWT:COALMINE but in a way that's difficult to fight because of slippery slope. My gut says don't fight it, just live with it, whenever the particular solid compoundat hand (in the given case) is rare but passesWT:CFI because of three or more durable attestations that are not credibly construable as being inherently/indisputably/always an orthographic error. There is a credible argument that, regarding compound nouns in English and the orthographic potential for coexisting open and solid forms (where the latter are alternative spellings versus misspellings), borderline cases, where the solid form is not credibly construable as being always an orthographic error, are not a violation ofWT:SoP. They are the cases that live a hair's breadth from the frontier but have both feet on the safe side of the line (by a millimeter). Even though someone who makes a point of surfing and fishing on the very edge of that wave will certainly cause annoyance, I don't think you can purge the borderline cases without an undue level of prescriptivism, chopping off some toes that weren't quite over the line. Who can declare thatlimeblossom isn't allowed to be a real word? And iflimeblossom gets in, thenlime blossom gets in too, as a conjoined twin.Quercus solaris (talk)18:40, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I agree regarding subliteracy/semiliteracy. There's a difference between (1)limeblossom and (2)blackman orgayman: those latter ones need usage labels identifying them as nonstandard, and even as slang. (When are they not slang in present-day use?) Looks like User:Sham124 is either intentionally trolling (probably) or obliviously surfing in the same spot that a troll would occupy (maybe). Maybe thesham part of their name is a thumb in our eye. Perhaps there is a place for declaring that Wiktionary will refuse to enter the open spelling in a certain rare subclass, where the solid compound is a rare nonstandard slang form only, in present-day use. That would be a reasonable and defensible rule, it seems to me at the moment. The open form then is viewed, in that subclass, as "an SoP whose COALMINE treatment is an abuse of a technicality, and just because it exists doesn't mean WT is obligated to enter it." I think this approach would sufferlime blossom to live but would kick out these others.Quercus solaris (talk)19:03, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is just as much an abuse of{{rfdef}} as ofWT:COALMINE, IMO. Perhaps speedy deletion of instance of simultaneous abuse of those two rules would waste less contributor time. Or deleting when entries don't come with citations + definition. Something like what we do with derogatory terms also might work.DCDuring (talk)19:48, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Given the lack of definition, and the apparent agreement above that this looks like trolling or abuse, I have deleted it as "no usable content given".- -sche(discuss)20:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:3 hours ago4 comments4 people in discussion
Seediff. Obviously it's not used inall subculture ever, so we need a more specific or better label. (Grey Worm talked like this in A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones.)- -sche(discuss)19:40, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've only seen this years ago in erotic BDSM fiction (lol), where the submissive is denied individuality and cannot say "I" or "me". I note that two of the citations were posted by users who wrote their names in lower case, so possibly flaunting their submissive status.~2025-35917-66 (talk)20:10, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
The quotes appear in the context of code comments unrelated to kink (or so it seems), so it feels weird to say this is solely a kink thing. Definitely close, tho.CitationsFreak (talk)13:25, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:1 day ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Isthis, listingdescription (andfashion) as synonyms ofclass = "group based on shared characteristics", correct? The relevant sense ofdescription is sense 3, "set of characteristics by which someone or something can be recognized:the zoo had no lions, tigers, or cats of any description". A "set of characteristics" issimilar to a "group based on characteristics", but is it thesame / synonymous? (The edit is by a user known for sometimes mistaking similar things as synonyms.)- -sche(discuss)20:43, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
This seems rather limited to the idiom "of some/any/every description". You can't say: "Biologists are still deciding which description to place the new fish into." Still, I'm not sure, as a thesaurus entry can cover quite a lot of ground: the words overlap in meaning but are never 100% identical.~2025-35917-66 (talk)20:48, 24 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment:18 hours ago6 comments4 people in discussion
Hi!
I am new here, I allowed myself to add audio file for嘴巴. i hope I haven't done anything wrong? I am in early stages of learning mandarin, can somebody more proficient that my check if it's 100% okay?
There is a misunderstanding. I did not RECORD the audio myself - instead, I had found the audio on Wikimedia Commons (by a native speaker, I suppose) and linked it to the entry in WD (because it was missing before).
I am 95% sure I found the right audio - but if tones would be different, I would be none the wiser, thus my plea for help by a more proficient speaker. To be 100% sure.
Latest comment:12 hours ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Which kind ofbow is this from? So-called as it's used to make archery bows? Or because it stoops? Perhaps it was seen from the bow of a ship.... Pronunciation would be nice too, like with all terms derived from heteronymsVealhurl (talk)11:56, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
If only there were some way to look up such information that were accessible to those who could contribute to these discussions. If only[…].
Wait! There is such a resource: Wikipedia! It has the following (and more!):
"Although its wood is commonly knotty and twisted, straight-grained Osage orange timber makes good bows, as used by Native Americans.[5] John Bradbury, a Scottish botanist who had traveled the interior United States extensively in the early 19th century, reported that a bow made of Osage timber could be traded for a horse and a blanket."DCDuring (talk)17:48, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
As an old guy, I still have the mental habit of saying to myself "I'll look that up when I get home. What book would have that?" or "It's right on the tip of my tongue.", instead of getting my phone out to get the answer right away.DCDuring (talk)21:28, 25 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
Tangentially related to this, I have calledbodark and homophone ofbois d'arc because it probably is or was among some speakers, Itherwise it never would have come to be a synonym ofbow-wood. Could someone givebois d'arc a proper pronunciation section with "both" pronunciations?DCDuring (talk)02:47, 26 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
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Done. Unhelpful image with a weird caption, seems done on purpose to make some kind of statement.—Polomo ⟨ oi! ⟩ ·18:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
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