Wiktionary:Tea room/2026/February

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← January 2026 · February 2026 · March 2026 → · (current)

---

Turkish gayzer

Ages ago, Turkish gayzer was given pronunciation [ɟajzeɾ]. Is ɟ correct or should it be ɡ as implied by the spelling? A century ago the first vowel was e. The front allophone of g could be correct. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:39, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

No, it's plainly wrong, fixing it now. Also, how was the first vowel formerly /e/? Was it at some point pronounced close to what it was in French as <jezer>? Wreaderick (talk) 08:40, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

-tthit

This showed up in Wiktionary:Todo/Lists/Derivation category does not match entry language under the heading In "Lower Tanana terms derived from X" but not in "Lower Tanana lemmas" or "Lower Tanana non-lemma forms". That's because the only part of speech is "directional", which isn't recognized in WT:EL as a valid POS header. I changed it to "particle", which is the Wiktionary POS equivalent of "???", then changed my mind and made it a suffix.

Like many agglutinative languages, this language has morphemes for just about anything you could imagine- and a number that you couldn't in your wildest dreams... I suspect this is something prosaic like an affix, a preposition or an adverb, but it takes a number of other morphemes to inflect in various ways. I would contend that the fact that it takes its own set of affixes doesn't preclude it from being one itself. It apparently goes after the main root, so it should be considered a suffix.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't also label it as a directional: {{head}} can take any number of numbered category parameters (|cat2=, |cat3=, etc.), so |cat2=directionals will put it in the correct category.

Does anyone have any better ideas? @Vergencescattered, who's been using this POS. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:31, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

"Directional" is a specific part of speech term used in several Athabaskan languages, so I do think it should be the head of speech for these entries. The term refers to "words that specify direction with regard to a frame of reference, such as a body of water" (Leer 1989, quoted in Vajda 2022). They're basically halfway between adverbs and postpositions.

In the Lower Tanana Dene Dictionary (LTDD), for example, Kari lists the parts of speech in Lower Tanana (excluding verbs) as "nouns, adverbs, and postpositions, and minor word categories such as adjectives, pronouns, directionals, numerals, and exclamations." (p. 631) While I suppose "minor word categories" could be interpreted to mean that directionals aren't a part of speech, they are explicitly placed on the same level as pronouns, adjectives, etc., which definitely are parts of speech. Additionally, in dictionary entries, when parts of speech are given, (dir.) is given for directionals, in contrast with (n.), (adj.), (v.pf.) [verbal prefix], and so on. Kari doesn't give a great explanation for directionals in the LTDD, but he gives a better one in his Ahtna dictionary, and the system is very similar. Basically, all directional words are made of a prefix + a "directional root" + a suffix. The root + suffix is the "directional." I don't think "root," "adverb," "particle," or "suffix," really capture the structure properly, so "directional" seems to be the most convenient way to handle it. I'm also just generally uncomfortable with changing parts of speech listed in academic sources, even if it seems strange to me.

I'll also note that Vajda (2022) uses the term to refer to directionals in the Yeniseian languages, and refers to them as a part of speech, but as that is an attempt to establish a genetic connection between Yeniseian and Na-Dene, it doesn't necessarily mean much about the term's general use. (Fortescue 2022, in the same book Mid-Holocene Language Connections between Asia and North America, also refers to "directionals," but only briefly, and I don't know that it's intended to refer to a part of speech.)

I would be interested if anyone knows if the same term is used for words like Hawaiian mauka, makai, which from what I understand are used similarly to the northern Athabaskan system, except with the ocean as a frame of reference instead of rivers. Vergencescattered (talk) 00:06, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Translingual

Is Translingual a language? Because it's many languages, sometimes even all languages, can it still be considered a language in itself? Oh, It's Me! So Cool! (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

It's a restricted-entry wastebasket. Taxonomic names is a "language" with Proper nouns and some postpositive modifiers, governed by simple morphological rules affecting certain names. CJKV characters are used across 4 languages, not necessarily with the same meaning. Some other characters, and abbreviations and symbols are used across languages. I don't see much beyond "translinguality" itself that unifies them. DCDuring (talk) 03:18, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

There's an aspect to it that translinguality comprises terms that not only are cognate across languages but moreover have identical character strings and invariant morphology. Thus, for example, if I tell you that f = ma or that E = mc² or that 2HCl + 2Na → 2NaCl + H₂, you can't tell which language I'm writing from within the reading frame of the italicized portion, because the differences between the written languages collapse to zero within that context. But I don't pretend to be a professional linguist who can defend the theoretical edifice of it. I'm just pointing out a practical aspect of it. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:18, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

傷

傷 (siuⁿ) means ‘too; excessively’ in Southern Min; the same for Fenhe region of Central Plains Mandarin. See Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects, Page 4887:

煮的時候傷長啦／煮的时候伤长啦 [Central Plains Mandarin]  ―  zhǔ de shíhòu shāng cháng la [Pinyin]  ―  boiled for too long

I wonder whether this exists elsewhere. 物灵 (talk) 09:13, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Montevideo

Sorry if I'm using this template wrong, I just noticed this wrong audio file. English/Montevideo General American pronunciation has wrong audio file ("congratolatory"). — This unsigned comment was added by ~2026-73883-9 (talk) at 19:14, 2 February 2026 (UTC).

• Fixed Vealhurl (talk) 21:29, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Taoism (pronunciation)

Certainly Daoism can be pronounced with /d/, but various dictionaries say Taoism too can be pronounced with /d/: Merriam-Webster lists /d-/ first (and /t-/ second), for the spelling with T-, and separately specifies how the spelling with D- is pronounced — so they're not just carelessly lumping the two words' data together, they're specifically saying the spelling T- can be pronounced with /d/. The OED too mentions both /t/ and /d/ as pronunciations of Taoism. Does this seem correct, does it jive with how you've heard this spelling pronounced? (I noticed this due to [1]. /d/ was removed as an option in diff.) - -sche (discuss) 07:52, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I feel that the accepted variability is correct, as it is influenced by the Wade-Giles–versus–Pinyin difference. So it is like the fact that Mao Tse-tung can be pronounced homophonously with Mao Zedong. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:50, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard this. I think a lot of people will hear a pronunciation and see a spelling and just put it down to the exoticness of foreign languages. We could perhaps make a case that when people say /daʊ/ they should write Dao, and that therefore Tao is an incorrect spelling of /daʊ/, rather than /daʊ/ being an incorrect pronunciation of Tao. I'm not sure such a distinction really matters, .... the question remains, though, whether we should consider this standard or nonstandard, and I don't have a strong opinion on that. —Soap— 23:30, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

if we keep both i should at least say that i think the /t/ pronunciation should come first. —Soap— 16:06, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. Keep both, and put T first. The D version shouldn't be labeled nonstandard because the only people who think it's "wrong" are those who misapprehend because they don't adequately understand the transliteration nuance regarding the Wade-Giles–versus–Pinyin difference. They think they're enforcing a "rule" that the letter T inherently cannot stand for any sound except /t/. But that's just a misapprehension, which they can understand and properly appreciate once it is pointed out to them (with examples) that T is often /t/, /d/, /ɾ/, /ʃ/, /ʔ/, or silent. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:04, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

although you say you agree with me you go on to say something i disagree with. however, i may be wrong. let me expand on my earlier post ....

i think the pronunciation should determine the spelling. anyone using voiced stops in Mandarin words is using the Pinyin recommended pronunciations, and therefore should use the Pinyin spellings, which here would be Dao. i realize, though, that a basic assumption i've never questioned before is that just as Pinyin recommends voiced stops for this series, the Wade-Giles transcription system recommends voiceless ones. i can't find an explicit pronunciation list for Wade-Giles, though. all i can say is that it's a very strong tendency. I've never heard Mao Tse-tung with voiced stops, for example. I'm sure that we could find people using Wade-Giles spelling with Pinyin pronunciation in informal contexts, but such contexts are very prone to hyperforeignisms, of which I could find many other examples. —Soap— 17:21, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Except actual voicing isn't involved: the UK and US standard varieties of English represent "voicing" of many stops with aspiration: /t/ is aspirated [tʰ] and /d/ is unaspirated [t]. Mandarin Chinese also has an opposition of aspirated vs. unaspirated stops. Many other European languages (mostly non-Germanic) don't use aspiration, but have actual voicing: /t/ is [t] and /d/ is [d].

Early romanization systems for Mandarin were influenced by the other European languages and have t for unaspirated and t' for aspirated, but Mandarin pinyin follows English and has t for aspirated [tʰ] and d for unaspirated [t].

English speakers who don't know Chinese tend to see the Wade-Giles t and mispronounce it as [tʰ] (Wade-Giles t'), but others pronounce it correcty as [t]. Both pronunciations have become established, though [tʰ] may be proscribed to some extent.

The problem is that the vast majority of English speakers know nothing about Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, so even very knowledgeable people don't base their pronunciation on it. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:22, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Hmm. OK. I would have interpreted spoken /d/ as a speaker using daoism and spoken /t/ as a speaker using taoism, but I'm fine with listing both pronunciations for both spellings. (Chuck, perhaps I have misunderstood what you are saying, but in my experience of both speech and linguistic literature, English initial /d-/ is normally voiced...?) I think pronunciations of pinyin d, b, etc as /d/, /b/, etc are spelling pronunciations, not attempts to reproduce any feature or distinction of spoken Chinese, because I note that even languages like Hindi which have phonemic /p/, /pʰ/, and /b/ and could reproduce the /p/-vs-/pʰ/ distinction Chinese makes, don't: even Hindi बीजिंग, "Borrowed from Chinese 北京 (Běijīng)", uses /b/. - -sche (discuss) 18:43, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

@-sche: whether the initial /d/ is phonetically voiced is irrelevant, since aspiration is used by native speakers to determine "voicing". If I go to the audio file at stout and start from right after the "s", I hear "doubt". There are, of course, English consonants with a voiced vs. voiceless distinction (e.g. /z/ vs. /s/), but those aren't oral stops. I believe that the pinyin "d" was most likely originally based on what English speakers would hear, since English is the largest Latin-script language with the same aspiration-based distinction on the stop series.

As for "spelling pronunciation", "English speakers who don't know Chinese tend to see the Wade-Giles t and mispronounce it as [tʰ]" seems like a pretty straightforward description of a spelling pronunciation. I didn't say why others pronunced the sound correctly- they just weren't using the English-based spelling pronunciation I described. At any rate, I was just trying to explain how the tao vs. dao spellings got started. More recently, the presence of both spellings has led to people using spelling pronunciations and people just repeating what they either hear or see specified in reference works. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:41, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

@-sche, Chuck Entz: Just chiming in with my two cents. I would put both /t/ and /d/ pronunciations only at Taoism; the former is a spelling pronunciation, while the latter is a more faithful representation of how 道 is pronounced in Mandarin. For Daoism, it is unlikely for people to read that with /t/, so I don't know if there is any strong reason for including the /t/ pronunciation other than if there are enough sources that say so.

(As for the phonetics of voicing in English, the literature is pretty clear that initial /d-/ is often phonetically not quite voiced (short lag VOT), but it can optionally be voiced. Phonologically, this is usually treated as a voicing contrast because in other environments, such as intervocalically, there is indeed voicing.) — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:34, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Missing pronunciations for Category:English acronyms

Of the 2,028 members of the category, 1,428 do not contain the word 'pronunciation'. The pronunciation is not obvious for many of these. One syllable or two? Some have pronunciations that are acronymic for synonymous terms. Others are mixes of acronyms and initialisms.

1. If we are going to build categories for some abbreviations based on pronunciations, don't we have some obligation to actually ascertain the pronunciations that justify category membership?
   1. Where will we get the evidence for a specific pronunciation?
   2. If we can't get evidence on a specific pronunciation and one possibility is that it is pronounced as an initialism, how should it be categorized? Bump them up the tree to Category:English shortenings? Or acknowledge our ignorance by having "not elsewhere categorized" at the many points in our category trees where our ignorance is manifest?
2. Should items that seem likely to have mixed acronym and initialism pronunciation be in both categories or in a new category. (We already have Category:English syllabic abbreviations as a subcategory of Category:English acronyms, which seems based on a similar sort of differentiation.)

I would not be surprised that items in Category:English initialisms had similar issues. DCDuring (talk) 21:23, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I commend the aspirations behind each of these questions. Regarding evidence, my immediate thought is that because thoroughly evidence-based assertions are going to be difficult to achieve widely (for many thousands of terms), there's going to be a durable dearth. (But heck, all of Wiktionary, and even all of dictionarydom, is not more than "the best we've got so far".) For the ones that people haggle over (e.g., nuh-uh! who sez?!), the wiki process by nature will adduce evidence for those ones first. (Lol, they say that if you want good answers from Reddit, just post a wrong answer that seems like it was earnest and then sit back and watch it reel in a better answer by adduction as people scratch the itch of annoyance by correcting it). As for anecdotal evidence (e.g., attested utterances in videos, or Dictionary-XYZ-sez-so) versus nonanecdotal evidence (linguistic research datasets), I doubt that we can even get the latter without original research. Regarding categorization, I am of the camp that says that a user should encounter the term via either avenue (either category) because neither answer is false. For example, HVAC is both an initialism and an acronym (in most senses of those terms, even the narrow ones) because /ˈeɪt͡ʃˌvæk/ and /ˌeɪt͡ʃ.vi.eɪˈsi/ are both common. Extant dualities are true even when categorization schemes wish they weren't; and good categorization schemes have methods for acknowledging them (instead of trying to deny them). Quercus solaris (talk)

What about the initialism-acronym mixes that have evidence of such pronunciation? Do we need a new category? I'm guessing that we have ~20-50 of them, but most (all?) without any pronunciation info. DCDuring (talk) 00:27, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be OK to have both "[Category:English initialisms]" and "[Category:English acronyms]" on the same page, or (for autocat) "{init of|en|foo} or {acronym of|en|foo}" at the def line, and then show both prons at the pron section. I agree that achieving pron info for the missing ones is a goal. I'm asking myself examples off the top of my head. HVAC and SQL are the ones I thought of first. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:32, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

51 percent

Talk:51 percent shows that this was deleted at RFD, so how come it exists now? ~2026-76191-8 (talk) 21:51, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

One def. was deleted: "# {{rfd-sense|en}} (government, proscribed) A majority." DCDuring (talk) 22:27, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Ah. The remaining def seems criticizable on the same grounds, IMO. ~2026-76191-8 (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree. RFD it? - -sche (discuss) 23:37, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

As someone pointed out in the RfD discussion, 51 percent is not necessary for a majority. IOW, 50.00001% or less would do. I think 51 percent is short for "a sufficient, but narrow majority". Since we usually assume are normal users are a little slow, this definition seems worth keeping using the misnomer principle. It is also a pejorative about democracy, as most votes in a democracy, say, for legislation, depend on majority. DCDuring (talk) 13:33, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I think this should go to RFD. I don't see how it is idiomatic of "a narrow or bare majority" as claimed. It seems to me that in the two quotations (and in other contexts), the writers mean to say "1% more than 50%" and not "a narrow majority" generally. If a writer meant to say "the resolution was defeated by a narrow majority", I don't think saying "the resolution was defeated by 51 percent" would make sense at all. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:55, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

If it is ever used that way to refer to passage of a vote where the total count of ayes and nays is not exactly divisible by 100, it is an arithmetic misnomer. I think it is used to refer to a bare or narrow majority or even to the tyranny of the majority in political rhetoric, not in actual vote tallying. DCDuring (talk) 15:35, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I have RFDed it: Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English#51 percent. - -sche (discuss) 20:58, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

relational adjective

Are we OK with a usage example that seems like a poorly written encyclopedia article and takes up 6-8 lines in a typical browser window? IMO, it does not really do a great job of explaining. There is no relevant English pedia article, explanation, or, indeed, much use of the term at WP. There is limited coverage in other dictionaries and there are many books about Romance and Slavic languages that use the term, so RfD and RfV can be dismissed out of hand. The English near-synonym classifying adjective seems quite SoP on its face, but might make sense as a THUB. In addition, unlike some other languages, English does not have inflectional or morphological markers that firmly distinguish relational from 'qualitative' adjectives. DCDuring (talk) 19:46, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

This feels like something for Appendix:Glossary, not the main space. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:25, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

(In fact, the glossary already has an entry for relational, which I find much easier to understand). Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:27, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I had a go at tidying it up. We could do with a template to put in "See also" that says something like "The entry for relational in Wiktionary's linguistic glossary" - do we have one already? This, that and the other (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Taoism (definition)

We have three separate definitions, but the citations don't appear to convey any particular distinctions AFAICT, and Wikipedia implies there is instead basically one sense, a belief that has elements of both mystical philosophy (our sense 1) and folk religion (our sense 2). Our sense 3 could, if correct, be distinct, but the only cite under it at the moment does not support / verify it AFAICT. - -sche (discuss) 22:56, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

It seems to me that in reality there is only one "dictionary meaning": Taoism refers to a whole strand of philosophical/religious thought based on certain teachings. There is a Wikipedia article, whose job it is to explain all the tangled variations in this thinking (including all the confused arguments about pronunciation). Once you start claiming that this bit of thought is somehow a different word meaning from that bit of thought, you realise that there is no end to it. Perhaps it might help to consider the question: "How many dictionary meanings are there of the phrase 'Western civilisation'?" Imaginatorium (talk) 07:05, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

The "see the following entry" chain among うち → 家 → 内 seems broken.

The entry for うち reports "(The following entry does not have a page created for it yet: 家.)" apparently because the appropriate section by pronunciation, the second etymology, also has a "see the following entry", which goes to 内 and is likewise broken, saying, "(The following entry does not have a page created for it yet: 内.)". In any case, it is odd for うち to send the user on a roundabout path that never really reaches the "home" sense. I would make a fix, but I am not sure what fix would be best, which is why I am instead asking here. ~2026-82163-5 (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Mistransliteration in English article for Jeju and Korean 가다

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Grease pit/2026/February#Mistransliteration in English article for Jeju and Korean 가다.

Special:Contributions/~2026-84599-4

Creating a ton of new subculture entries. They are clearly using AI in parts, and some entries are probably not dictionary material, since they refer to specific entities. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 09:58, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

A lot of these are the names of minor online groups. Like creating entries for a "software house" or netlabel that you made up with your friends. Out of scope. ~2026-86823-2 (talk) 10:02, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

I'll be bold and just remove some of them. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 10:49, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

しょくぱん and しょくパン

Both are defined as "loaf of bread, Pullman loaf, sandwich loaf, pain de mie, a slice". That final item "slice" seems out of place, since all the others are whole loaves. Is it correct? (In any case we should say "slice of bread" unless it also covers pizza, etc.) ~2026-86823-2 (talk) 10:40, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

In Japanese, パン (pan) just refers to bread, in any form: loaf, slice, chunk, etc.

The term 食パン (shokupan) refers to a specific type of bread, basically the ""Pullman loaf" style of white bread, even more specifically Japanese milk bread baked in the Pullman style, but again in any form: loaf, slice, chunk, etc.

I'll rework the 食パン (shokupan) entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:45, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

Done. Digging in, it's not always a Pullman loaf, but often. Anyway, have a look. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:14, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

twitter correction request

Sense 1: "(uncountable) The sound of a succession of chirps as uttered by birds." This should be both countable and uncountable. ~2026-86823-2 (talk) 19:09, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree that the countable sense doesn't not exist, so I edited the label. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

civis in English short for civilian clothes?

In the TV series My Favorite Martian (Ep. 2x27 "Uncle Baby") Tim o'Hara disguised himself as a nurse. Eventually his "Uncle Martin" said to him You better change back into your civis.

According to that civis appears to be a plural only word, short for civilian clothes. Somebody with more experience add it to the entry, please? DaveroDia (talk) 14:16, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

We already have an entry for civvies meaning civilian clothes. Is your quote above from an official transcript? JulieKahan (talk) 16:21, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

viable

I don't see a difference between senses 1 ("Able to live on its own (as for a newborn).") and 4 ("(biology) Able to live and develop."), nor between senses 2 ("Able to be done, possible, practicable, feasible.") and 3 ("Capable of working successfully."). PUC – 20:01, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Overall I agree. People can quibble that "to work at all" can sometimes be differentiated from "to work well", much like with a piston engine "running, but running like shit" versus "running like a top". Regarding the biology senses, the fetus-and-newborn sense (i.e., certain to die without umbilical cord or life support) is basically just a subsense or an "especially" coda to the biology sense. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:21, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Usually we are evidence-constrained in having more, longer, abd more specific definitions. DCDuring (talk) 22:55, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

There is no lack of uses of viable fetus, both in legal and in medical contexts; see also the Wikipedia article Fetal viability. Also, marginally viable newborn seems to be a term of art.

As to senses 2 and 3, the sense in which the term is used in the one quotation at 3 is IMO covered by the definition we have for sense 2. In the context of the quotation, the meaning is obviously "economically sustainable". I have not readily spotted evidence of a need for sense 3 as being separable from sense 2. (Another quibble with the definition at 3: my oven works quite well, so it is capable of working successfully, but it would be strange to call it a "viable oven". I also wonder if there is a one-word term for "capable of working unsuccessfully".)  ​‑‑Lambiam 12:54, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

"Successfully" seems too high a level of attainment for almost any application of the term, hardly a quibble. Continued mere existence merits zombie not viable as modifier. "Adequately" seems closer, as in 'viable competitor/candidate/substitute/strategy/family-dairy-farm/biomarker/bone/source/claim/option/business/state/economy/industry'.

Viable may need special senses for fetuses and newborns (possibly for preemies too), if only because of the legal usage and intense interest among reproducing humans and legislators.

"Capable of growing or developing" (revised version of 4) does not overlap much with "capable of living" (def. 1). I could also imagine a definition in the context of a population of organisms "capable of sustaining its numbers by reproduction"/"capable of transmitting its DNA beyond the expected lifespan of its members". That might be covered by "capable of growing or developing".

All senses are normally applied in a predictive setting (extending to irrealis?), so uncertainty is inherent in normal use. If a strategy fails, that does not mean it wasn't viable when it was selected or commenced. DCDuring (talk) 19:53, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

• Why don't people use the Tea Room templates? DCDuring (talk) 19:26, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

save someone's ass

Why so many senses? PUC – 21:13, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Because it's SOP, It applies to pretty much every sense of save that could take someone as an object. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:24, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Better now? Tollef Salemann (talk) 21:31, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

The expression is certainly used in situations where something other than one's life is involved, like reputation, career, job, freedom, success in a game, etc. DCDuring (talk) 23:17, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

The online Merriam–Webster has single definition for save one's/someone's ass: "to help oneself/someone else in an important way".^[2]  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:51, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

I think we can do better than MWOnline. "Oneself" is unnecessary. If I help someone set up their computer or coach them to win an Olympic medal, I'm not normally saving someone's ass, though I would be "helping them in an important way." There has to be a possible harm. One could 'save someone's ass' by doing something that doesn't require any effort on their part, so "help" doesn't seem broad enough. Perhaps something like "to do something that avoids an important harm to someone". We can liven up that bloodless definition with usage examples. DCDuring (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Agree. Regarding two senses versus one: Certainly the figurative sense of save someone's ass is more common, but the literal sense exists too; the register it is used in is discussions of combat. Quercus solaris (talk) 16:45, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

If you can call any use of ass "literal". DCDuring (talk) 17:10, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

The declension of my ass, your ass, his/her ass, our asses, their asses is etically a declension of synecdochal open compound pronouns, even though many humans won't admit that fact emically. When they eventually throw my ass in the ground, they will be throwing my body in the ground, and it will be an event with literal meaning. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:20, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

look like trouble

AI: "a common idiomatic phrase, often used in a flirty or teasing context, that generally means someone appears charmingly dangerous, mischievous, or likely to cause exciting, chaotic situations. While it can imply someone is high-maintenance or likely to break hearts, it is frequently used as a compliment to indicate that a person is irresistibly attractive or fun to be around." Is this entryworthy? PUC – 21:41, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Can you find cites that unambiguously support all that? DCDuring (talk) 22:20, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Probably not, even though it's true, which is an interesting epistemic pickle to be in. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:39, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

PS: Self-correction: I guess maybe it's not that interesting, after all, because there has always been a difference between what a dictionary can tell you and what a human translator or interpreter can explain to you about connotations and vibes. I guess the only difference now (i.e., mid-2020s versus all of human history before that) is that now a pseudosentient machine can often explain the vibes to you too. So I guess DCDuring's valid point is that a dictionary can't do everything, and that's OK. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:44, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

There might be some idiomatic definition that is supportable, but it would need to have low specificity, probably reflecting actual usage. What is offered is: eight words that would be in a label; eleven words, possibly reducible to fewer words, that might make a definition, and a 32-word usage note. DCDuring (talk) 17:22, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

ieme

This was entered by a native Dutch speaker as a Dutch word, then changed recently by Special:Contributions/Humanity_was_a_mistake to Dutch Low Saxon, a variety of Low German. Pinging a couple of active Dutch-speaking editors, @Mnemosientje, DrJos, can you check if ieme is (also) a Dutch word? (BTW if this related edit is correct, it could be made into a proper {{label}}...) - -sche (discuss) 06:28, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

The term does not occur in the official Groene Boekje.^[3] van Dale Puzzelwoordenboek gives ieme as a solution for the crossword puzzle clue for bij (4 letters).^[4] Mijnwoordenboek.org (not necessarily a reliable source) gives iem(e) as Gronings dialect for Dutch bij.^[5] (Gronings is not a single dialect but a subset of the Dutch Low Saxon dialects perhaps better classified as Friso-Saxon dialects.) We have ieme as an alternative Eastern Netherlands form of Dutch imme, which however is used for bee colonies, not for individual bees.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:39, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

dread fascination

Seems essentially sum of parts to me. ~2026-92217-4 (talk) 06:21, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Then RfD it. DCDuring (talk) 17:41, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

four more years

Does this noun and interjection (!!) strike anybody else as sum of parts? Note the citations are often parts of longer phrases: "Four more years of roughly the same"; "it will seem like four more years". Yes there is a contextual implication that we are talking about fixed four-year political terms, but that alone doesn't make it dictionary-worthy IMO. ~2026-92217-4 (talk) 07:41, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

Only the Clinton jest seems to support possible idiomaticity. All the others seem at best ambiguous between literalness and idiomaticity. DCDuring (talk) 17:36, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

靑乳󠄁

I saw this term with the following citation:

(Sko-ko 靑乳󠄁. Syn. Seï-seï-niu, Haku-yo-tan, Haku-ko).

The first synonymous term the most understandable; 青 can be read as せい, and 乳 as にゅう, making 青(せい)々(せい)乳(にゅう) (although with a reduplication). Sko looks to be in error for sho, and 青 can also be read as しょう; but 乳 as ko is inscrutable, the only other readings being じゅ, ち, and ちゝ. As for the other synonymizations, tan is 丹, and haku likely 白; I would presume that the ko of Haku-ko is the same as the ko of Sko-ko, but I don't have any guess for yo. Most of all, 乳 seems out of place; what do breasts have to do with mercurial bichloride? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:09, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm curious, where did you see this?

• 靑 is now a specifically Chinese form of this character, where the central stroke of the bottom portion is vertical in the middle as in 円, rather than horizontal as in 月. This older form hasn't been used in written Japanese for some time, which uses 青 anymore.
• As you note, sko is not a valid phonological combination in Japanese for any word, and ko is not a valid pronunciation for the 乳 character.
• w:Mercury(II) chloride in Japanese is most commonly w:ja:塩化水銀(II) (enka suigin ni) or 塩化第二水銀 (enka daini suigin). An older alternate name for this compound is 昇汞 read as shōkō, which might account for the botched romanization on the start of that line, but as you can plainly see, the kanji are completely different.

Without further context like where you encountered this, the best theory I can offer is that you saw either the results of badly-done optical character recognition, or some kind of deliberately rubbish text on one of those dodgy placeholder websites kept by domain squatters.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:36, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

• Eiríkr Útlendi: To the contrary; my source is a journal article (which I recently transcribed for enWS) by a prominent Dutch chemist. (Sorry I forgot to mention the source.) The age (1876) accounts for the kyūjitai characters: shinjitai would not be invented for decades after. The problem is that romaji had also not been invented at this point, so individual publishers had several different Romanization methods (like niu for nyū above and Pŭreshipitātŭ for プレシピタート). I checked a few other sources of this article (later editions of this volume and reports of the article in the Japan Mail), but they all use the same kanji as my source. Thank you for looking into it! TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:49, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

  Thank you for the additional information! I was able to find a snippet on Google Books here, confirming that the Wikisource content you linked is not garbled due to OCR. My thoughts:

  • The "Sko-ko" romanization is a mistake, possibly due to an earlier printer's error or even smudged ink distorting the "h" in an earlier "Sho-ko" rendering, which was misread and then reproduced in the printed document linked above. This is almost certainly from the shōkō reading for the 昇汞 kanji spelling.
  • The 靑乳 kanji spelling would seem to partially correspond with one of the synonyms listed in that text, rendered as "Seï-seï-niu". 靑乳, literally "blue milk", could reasonably be read as seinyū, raising the question of what the first sei was. I haven't seen much evidence in Japanese of reduplication of 靑, so I'm more inclined to wonder if this were possibly 正 (“true, proper”) or 精 (“essence”)?
    • However, I'm not sure I trust that the author (or later editor) sufficiently understood the source material to use the correct kanji here. As best I can tell, mercury bichloride is white, not blue, nor does it appear to form a milky liquid when in solution.

    Googling for "青乳"+"水銀"+"は" (adding the "は" on the end to filter for Japanese hits) nets me nearly nothing, and none of that appears to be relevant to the context of "mercury bichloride".

    I'm not sure what else might have a romanization of "seï-niu"; I find the words 生乳 (seinyū, “raw milk”) and 成乳 (seinyū, “later milk”), but neither seem relevant. As "seï-seï-niu", there's a chance this might have been 精製 (seisei, “refining, refinement, refined”) + 乳 (nyū, “milk”), with the latter possibly as an early synonym for 乳剤 (nyūzai, “emulsion”)? That is very much speculation on my part, however.

  • "Haku-yo-tan" loses me. The haku might be 白 (“white”), but I can't find any likely words matching the yo-tan portion. There's 与炭 (yotan, literally “giving charcoal”), but that refers to carburization during steel production -- not a great fit.
  • "Haku-ko" might be 白降 (literally “white precipitate”), as in 白降汞 (hakkō-kō ← hakukō-kō, “ammoniated mercury”, literally “white precipitate mercury”), possibly even 白汞 (hakkō ← hakukō, literally “white mercury”)?

  Hope that helps! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 10:38, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

girl please

I believe this is an AAVE interjection meaning "That's ridiculous!" or "Shut up!". Any second opinions? Nosferattus (talk) 06:41, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

This would traditionally be written with a comma as [direct address], [interjection], that is, girl, please! Even when people write it without a comma, it retains its essential sum-of-parts character. Equally common are n——[±,] please! and b——[±,] please! Quercus solaris (talk) 07:23, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

We have bitch, please. ~2026-96662-2 (talk) 14:37, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Ah. I hadn't realized that. All three of them are complete clauses and are not more than the sum of their parts (e.g., bitch, please is not more than bitch[±,] please!, and same with the other two). I know that WT enters some complete clauses that aren't more than SoP, but their justification for entry is as phrasebook entries for ESL, especially ESL tourists. I view these three as worthy of RfD. I might nominate the blue one for RfD. I have to look up how to do that (nominate) correctly, because I almost never do it. Quercus solaris (talk) 14:54, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

skinny jeans

drainpipes, drainpipe trousers, stovepipes and stovepipe trousers are given as synonyms of skinny jeans. However, I believe not all trousers are jeans, so this is probably wrong. The only true synonym might be drainpipe jeans which are of course jeans. ~2026-96662-2 (talk) 14:37, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

dazedly and dazedness pronunciations

/ˈdeɪzədli/ (3 syllables) but /ˈdeɪzdnəs/, /ˈdeɪzədnəs/ (either 2 or 3). Is there no /ˈdeɪzdli/? ~2026-96662-2 (talk) 14:42, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I feel an ingrained urge to lean toward saying /ˈ[blank][əd]li/ rather than /ˈ[blank][t/d]li/ for [blank]ed and [blank]edly pairs (such adj–adv pairs), and I am thinking of examples of such pairs off the top of my head to test it. I would say /ˈfɪksɪdli/ rather than /ˈfɪks(t)li/ for fixedly. But I view the second-listed variant as not wrong, though, for any such adverb that I can think of so far. If someone says that variant, they're not making an error. So showing the second-listed variant for dazedly would be descriptively valid and appropriate. One problem with most of these pairs is that these adverbs are words that one seldom hears or says in speech. In contrast, they are usually in the category of words encountered in written texts, pronounced subvocally in the reader's mind (when pronounced even that much), which makes adducing audio evidence about them a project. I guess they have AI agents now that can churn through YouTube seeking out audio clips for this purpose. I'd have to spend time sitting with teaching myself how to build and cobble an AI agent for that task before I could bust one out and apply it to this instance. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:17, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

There are far more AIs posting incorrect, useless, machine-generated "how to pronounce" videos... ~2026-96662-2 (talk) 15:25, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Lol, ikr? How human: lots of people building that crap, fewer people building something more useful. Quercus solaris (talk) 18:12, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

slaying

A seriously bitchin' usex was added back in 2017. Gottaa be understood, thrice Vealhurl (talk) 21:52, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Emphasize

to give special importance, prominence, or urgency to something, whether in speech, writing, or action Regine D. Miano (talk) 09:04, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

That is to be found at emphasise (the word isn’t capitalised unless at the beginning of a sentence). Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

pointation

What does it mean? I facetiously imagined it to be a blend of punctuation and pointing in the sense of vowel signs in Semitic scripts, but it turns out most frequent outside of linguistics in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, in books and web documents. An appetizer from the High Court of Sindh: During investigation, applicants were arrested and on their pointation robbed Suzuki car has been recovered and during investigation they were put to identification parade where complainant has identified them as accused […] – I pass to @J3133 before I word something silly. Fay Freak (talk) 11:15, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

First hit that came up was this textbook on World Englishes, which says "on the pointation of X means that X furnished the information or pointed out something with led to the arrest of Y or to the recovery of stolen goods". This claims it's a calque of the Urdu "nishaan dehii" - I don't know enough (any) Urdu to say what that is exactly, but it's obviously related to نشان (niśān, “symbol, clue”). It overwhelmingly appears in "on [someone's] pointation", although I found a very few hits without "on". Had a stab at creating the page, but I would appreciate if an Urdu speaker could verify and complete the etymology. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:55, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

stotting as a textile trade

In the background of Annie, I noticed a tailor's shop on its New York street set with a sign offering "WEAVING & STOTTING". On research, this appears to be based on a real shop. I can't find any other evidence of "stotting" as a textile trade - does anyone know what this could be? The shop has several signs in Yiddish, so it could be a borrowing from that language. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:59, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

(Managed to find a couple of cites, which might be the same?)

• [1866, The Boy's Book of Trades: And the Tools Used in Them, page 218:

  Stotting (pronounced stoating) is the stitch used for joining pieces of cloth so neatly that the join shall be but little visible, and yet so strongly as to prevent the pieces from being easily parted.]

• 1866, The Boy's Book of Trades: And the Tools Used in Them, page 221:

  When this stitch is intended to be employed, the edges of the cloth are first stotted together, after which the needle is passed backwards and forwards in diagonal lines, under the stotting, so as to make the join more strong and durable than it can be made by merely stotting the pieces together.

• 1925, The International Tailor ...:

  An especially attractive edge is made stotted, particularly with the heavy fabrics. The use of narrow braid, while not urged, fosters no condemnation.

Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:13, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

It's not a trade. It's both a hand-sewing technique and the resulting stitch. It seems to be a technique to make a virtually invisible seam in heavy fabrics. It can be used only with relatively thick fabrics (upholstery, carpeting, wool, felt) because it involves going only partway through the "wrong side" (that not normally seen) of one piece of fabric before drawing the thread through the piece of fabric to be joined without the thread ever appearing on the "right side" (visible side). The stitching is repeated forming a zig-zag (or ladder?) pattern on the "wrong side" with the stitches close together for strength. DCDuring (talk) 17:15, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Don't suppose you have any idea of the etymology? Smurrayinchester (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

No joy. I had picked up a sewing dictionary years ago because I thought that was the kind of field that we don't cover at all well, but that didn't have it. I didn't see any etymology in investigating, but two pronunciations, one like the other stott + -ing and one like stoat + ing. A superficial look at dewikt didn't help. Maybe someone familiar with Yiddish could guess, based on the signage. DCDuring (talk) 01:21, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

I was curious and found w:Stoating about this stitch. The article contains no derivation, but the linked references might. The article does mention that this kind of stitch is used on furs, which opens the possibility that this is derived somehow from the name of the animal, stoat, which has been used historically for its fur.

Googling led me to this June 1902 edition of "The American Tailor and Cutter", page 343, which again describes stotting in connection with furs:

• https://books.google.com/books?id=k15YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA343#v=onepage&q&f=true

Hope this helps! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:43, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

An ermine is just a stoat with white fur. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:54, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

FWIW I can find this in the spellings stoating, stoting, and stotting, and as stoated ("Double-breasted, with one sewing on edge, stoated, felled or stitched on raw"), stoted ("with bearer, seamed or stoted", "Stoted or felled edges [...] with bearers seamed or stoted"), and stotted ("Stotted, or felled edges"). The NED has it as a verb (to stoat, "of obscure origin": "it is impossible to stoat ravelled edges"), as does the EDD: "STOAT, v. Yks. [stoət.] To sew up a rent by fine drawing. w.Yks. (S.K.C.)". The EDD also has stot and stott with the same senses we do ("bounce, rebound", "stagger"), and has stotted as Yks. Der. [sto·təd.] Stunted in growth. w.Yks.2 Cattle in bad pastures and ill-nourished are stotted." Unfortunately(?), all of these or the animal stoat (or something else entirely) are conceivable as origins: the stitch "bounces" off the material rather than passing through to the other side; it is "stunted" rather than passing through; and it could perhaps be used to sew stoats' fur. The oldest cites I can find spell it stotting and say it is pronounced stoating, like this, which implies it was an established term even earlier or else I'd expect them to just spell it stoating:

• 1858, Charles Tomlinson, Illustrations of Useful Arts, Manufactures, and Trades, page 42:

  Stotting, pronounced stoating, is the stitch used for joining pieces of cloth so as to conceal the join. […]

- -sche (discuss) 17:26, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

And it turns out I can find stote too ("It is not good trade to stote small pieces together to make one of the size required, for the reason that, however well the stoting is done, the finish is liable to be clumsy.") Does Yks mean "Yorkshire" here? In that case, I'd lean towards connecting it to stott as in bounce, although the change in pronunciation would be difficult to explain. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:25, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

If our entry stot(t) and the MED entry stōten are correct in deriving the word from Middle Dutch and/or Middle Low German stôten, it's tempting to speculate that some dialect(s) retained the /oː/ (but this is pure speculation and may be unlikely). - -sche (discuss) 19:20, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

whine

@Soap: While this edit summary is correct that a traditionally regal king might criticize something but would not whine, I'm not sure your edit itself gets the reason correct, in asserting that a whine is typically from "a dependent of the target". (Certainly, I find no shortage of counterexamples.) I think the issue is that whine refers to particular types of complaining, rather than to particular complainants. Dictionary.com defines whine as to snivel or complain in a peevish, self-pitying way; the Cambridge dictionary says it is to "complain or express disappointment or unhappiness repeatedly", and Collins says it is "complaining in an annoying way about something unimportant". Maybe something like "to complain in a peevish or self-pitying way" (or for the noun, "a peevish or sely-pitying complaint") would be more accurate? - -sche (discuss) 01:31, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

yes, please feel free to improve my writing or even revert it altogether. sometimes i have a clear mental understanding of what i want to say but struggle to put it in words, and other times i'm wrong even about that. i think i'm at least onto something here in that there are situations when we wouldn't use the word, but i appreciate you bringing this up here so others can look at it and we can work together to improve the entry. —Soap— 15:48, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

flexure

One definition is The last joint, or bend, of the wing of a bird.. Apparently ornithos don't use this term now. Which joint is it? Can't figure "last", like where do they start from? Anyhow, my guess is it is the wrist, but I'm an idiot Vealhurl (talk) 13:23, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Should Differin and Accutane be proper nouns?

Title Inpacod2 (talk) 13:47, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Coca-Cola and Buick and many others have both a proper noun POS and a noun POS (i.e., the brand of beverage and one serving of it among millions; the brand of car and one car of that brand among millions.) Etically, name-brand drugs have this property too (just like Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Buick and Chrysler do). Quercus solaris (talk) 05:08, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

I see that the entry for Advil doesn't reflect it yet. The ones for Tylenol and Windex and Kleenex get it a bit wrong because they enter the genericized sense but not the noun sense for one unit of the brand-name product. The thing about parts of speech is that people disagree about how to conceive of them. Someone might say here, I predict, that the noun POS doesn't exist at all except when genericization has happened. I believe that that assertion is misguided. There might be existing linguistic science literature on this particular question, telling what linguists think about it, but if there is then the people who write it don't bother explaining it to the rest of the world in any effective way that most people have ever heard about. At any rate, yes, Differin and Accutane should have proper noun POSs entered, and then whether they should also have a noun POS too will depend on who-sez. Quercus solaris (talk) 05:23, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

character

The definitions are all over the place imo. PUC – 15:16, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

fractal dimension

This has a quote or usage example, which was in the original page created almost 17 years ago by @AugPi:

The perimeter of Britain measured in the first dimension yields infinity, and measured in the second dimension yields zero, so it has to be measured in a fractal dimension of approximately 1.25.^[6]

It has a hard-coded link (added 15 years ago) to a Wikipedia article that was later merged with Coastline paradox on WikipediaWikipedia , but which doesn't- and didn't at the time- contain the text in question. I checked the history of the redirect created from the old Wikipedia page for the last revision before March 2011, so I can say that with certainty. The name of the old page is also the name of a paper by Benoit Mandelbrot, but Fractal dimension on WikipediaWikipedia says the term was coined after the publication of that paper. That leaves its being a simple usage example with the Wikipedia link added to provide context.

My question: what do we do with this? The link gives the impression that the quote comes from Wikipedia. Elsewhere in the article we link to the WP fractal dimension page, which now might have the needed context. Do we keep the quote/usex? Do we change the link, and add text to explain why we're linking? Or do we replace either or both with something else? I don't have the background in higher math to resolve this. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:41, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Is that impression due to proximity to the WP box? Otherwise I don't see how the mere presence of a WP link would lead anyone to believe that the usage example came from there.

In any event, I have moved the WP link to the bottom of the entry. DCDuring (talk) 01:33, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

turn up one's nose

Do we need three senses? PUC – 11:07, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

The first one's the literal physical gesture. The second one implies attitude without necessarily any action (he turns up his nose at people like that), the third one specifically implies dismissive refusal for those attitude reasons (he turned up his nose at the advice). So I think splitting that is fine, even if both are based on "to think that something is beneath oneself". PhoenicianLetters (talk) 11:50, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

hag

Sense 4 "A woman, particularly one over the age of 30 years" is unexpectedly specific. I have noticed the user who made the edit makes many edits on (very broadly speaking) vulgar or offensive entries, and these edits are often marked as minor when they are clearly not. Their Wikipedia talk page also shows problems following correct process.

This isn't something I want to get involved in, so I am just leaving a drive-by comment here. Ƕ (talk) 11:11, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

It smelled like someone trying to make fetch happen in a WT:HOT way. I restored past it. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:24, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

choir

This edit brought to my attention that our entry claims a US "rapid speech" pronunciation of /kwaɹ/ on the basis of a Polish video about a Madonna song. There are several issues with this: (1) Neither /a/ nor /aɹ/ are in our list of American English phonemes; unless we want to start recognizing /a/ as a third phoneme contrastive with /ɑ/ and /æ/, I suspect our transcription should use one of those phonemes instead (or brackets); based on how the Polish speaker pronounces the English word, I suspect the 'intended' notation was /ɑɹ/. (2) Is "/aɹ/" ~ /ɑɹ/ actually what Madonna says? (3) Is this a "rapid speech" phenomenon or is it (as the editor noted with regard to the UK pronunciation) due to something else? - -sche (discuss) 08:34, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

You can hear her for yourself at [7]. It sounds like [kwaɪ̯ə̯] to me. At any rate, that certainly doesn't prove a rapid speech variant, since she's singing, not speaking, and not even particularly fast. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:15, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

That's what it sounds like to me, too—that if she is dropping any part of the word to say it faster, it doesn't appear to be any of the vowels, but (weirdly) the rhoticity. - -sche (discuss) 18:13, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Dropping the rhoticity in singing doesn't strike me as weird at all. Even singers whose native accent is rhotic usually drop or at least minimize their coda r's when singing. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:08, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Madonna sounds completely non-rhotic on ‘there’ and ‘prayer’ and completely rhotic on ‘hour’ and ‘power’ to me with ‘choir’ being a borderline case but I think I hear an extremely faint ‘r’ from her when she says ‘choir’. Talking about ‘borderline’, I’m not sure whether she sings it as ‘bah-duh-line’ or ‘bah(r)-duh-line’ in her song titled ‘Borderline’, the second ‘r’ isn’t present and the first is extremely faint. Carole King even goes as far as to sing ‘whe’eve’ I am’ instead of ‘wherever I am’ in her song “You’ve got a friend”, something even I wouldn’t doǃ Of course Carole is a New York native, so extreme non-rhoticity (sometimes up to and including the omission of medial and linking r’s) is to be expected and Madonna may have been influenced by NY speech patterns as she only became famous after moving there. Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:44, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Like (dialectal or archaic adjective senses)

The second and third senses at like#Adjective are currently marked as:

• (archaic or Scotland, Southern US)
• (Scotland, Southern US, otherwise archaic)

The different phrasings suggest that some distinction is being made between them, but it's not clear (to me) what. If the intent is to make a distinction then it should be clearer what it is; if that isn't the intent then the labels should probably be the same. Thryduulf (talk) 17:33, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I picked the better one (of the two synonymous options) and applied it to both. Quercus solaris (talk) 17:58, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

заебать

I reverted an IP edit that removed one of the 2 etymology sections, but I do find it odd that we have 2 of them with all the same definitions, but different derivations and different inflections. I know just enough Russian to know I don't know anything about this, so I'll leave it to others to sort out. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:49, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

It looks like it was a (different?) IP only a few months ago who split the entry into two etys; last time the entry was edited by a Russian-speaker it had only one ety section. Does the split into two make sense? I see that the two verb sections differ in being perfective vs imeprfective. Pinging a couple Russian speakers, @Atitarev, Brutal Russian, to take a look. - -sche (discuss) 21:27, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, @-sche: I am currently on a holiday overseas without my laptop. The reversal seems justified. Thanks for the ping. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:44, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, @-sche, @Anatoli T. I went ahead and removed the second etymology as such an imperfecitve verb does not exist and I'm puzzled as to why that IP added it. There's also this IP Special:Contributions/~2026-35090-33 which has converted a bunch of actually existing forms into alt forms of a dated alt form of the уебать etc. I'm tempted to revert all of that or to convert them to alt forms of the lemma. To clarify, basically, ебать has four different infinitives: the normal everyday form, the dated еть, the low-colloquial ебсти and ебти and, archaically, also ети. That IP seems to be a prescriptivist who believes that ебсти is wrong and еть is correct, althogh they themselves mark it as dated. Brutal Russian (talk) 20:09, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

Agree with that assessment, @Brutal Russian. The IP also seems to mix up perfective and imperfective verbs. We can block him/her on these entries but let me know if you think of more radical solutions. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:56, 16 August 2026 (UTC)

haematoblast

Old biology term. I suggest it is an NRBC aka erythroblast, but possibly a platelet? We wanna check the supposedly synonymous terms blood plaque/blood plate for historical usage too. Hup4442 (talk) 00:04, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

How about Hematopoietic stem cell on Wikipedia.Wikipedia ? See also Erythropoiesis on Wikipedia.Wikipedia . Collins defines haemoblast as "any of the undifferentiated cells in the bone marrow that develop into blood cells:. DCDuring (talk) 00:42, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

HSCs - they were first discovered in 1961, way after Webster defined the haematoblast. Hup4442 (talk) 00:51, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

The former (c. 2/17/2026 CE) definition included "supposed by some to be an early stage in the development of the red corpuscles." That supposition had some validity it seems. That the entities were better identified required a name change. Does what researchers c. 1900 saw correspond to what researchers c. 2000 have seen and identified as some stage in blood-cell development? DCDuring (talk) 16:06, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Some initial albeit cursory digging indicates that in the period of circa 1880 to 1950, the words hemoblast aka haemoblast and hematoblast aka haematoblast were both used in more than one sense, referring in some instances of use to (1) things in the pre-RBC category (hemocytoblast, CFU-GEMM, CFU-E, NRBC, proerythroblast, erythroblast), which was not well understood at the time (pre–molbio, e.g., none of the CFU-* terms were in use yet), and referring in other instances of use to (2) platelets/thrombocytes, as they are now known. I'm looking at various medical dictionaries from the 1940s to 2020s that supports this polysemy. As you move into the molbio era, nobody was calling platelets 'h(a)em(ato)blasts' anymore, but evidently plenty of people had been doing so circa 1880-1940 though. They probably often could not consistently tell platelets apart from HSCs at the time. I might improve the entries soon if the spirit moves me. I'm no expert in these things, but nobody who is an expert in them has volunteered to sort Wiktionary out, so here we are. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:57, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Archaic doesn't seem right. Would a modern medical blood doctor or researcher be sure what the term meant. It seems obsolete or historical. DCDuring (talk) 15:56, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good — I will change the label to "obsolete". It is most likely true that many doctors today reading a text from 1 or 1.5 centuries ago might try to take the word as referring to a hemocytoblast and could not find out by looking in current medical dictionaries that the word was formerly also sometimes used to refer to platelets (even after platelets could sometimes be told apart from hemocytoblasts, let alone before that). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:15, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

• Bloody awesome work, guys! How about parablast, histohaematin, idioplasma, stereoplasm and hygroplasm for maximum points? Vealhurl (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Māori Ngāti and Ngāi

Not sure whether to class these as prefixes or particles or something else. I'm sceptical of the noun classing because if so they are only ever used in connection to other words. Cameron.coombe (talk) 21:12, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

There's a bit more detail at the respective entries in the Te Aka online dictionary:

• https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=ngāti
• https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=ngāi

From that, it looks like lower-case ngāi is used somewhat more flexibly. I have no particular insight into how best to rework our entries. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:51, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

in the blade

Grains like wheat, barley, and maize are said to be in the blade when the plant has just sprouted and has not yet produced an ear. What do we think, is the phrase [[in the blade]] worthy of an entry, or would it be sufficient to add a sense to [[blade]]? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:07, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I tend towards blade. I have not closely parsed its definitions though, which would surely profit from a cleanup or better sorting. It is a classic {{collocation}}, or if not then its situation on the simple would be more expected anyway. Hard redirect on taste. Fay Freak (talk) 19:12, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I can find scattered uses of blade in (what seems like) this sense in other constructions [8], like references to corn's "blade-state" vs "ear-state", or "seeing only the corn in its blade stage", which suggests a sense at blade is needed, but (although I have not found a great way to quantify this) these uses seem a lot less common than in the blade: e.g. "its blade stage" and "its blade state" are too rare for Ngrams to even plot, compared to "corn in the blade". I like Fay Freak's idea of adding a sense at blade and a hard redirect from in the blade. - -sche (discuss) 20:45, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

institutional investor

Pretty sure we should create it. It is trifling, yet forced to declare it, a surely harmless term in our dictionary, a sum of parts. We mortals are just maybe not ready to define its limits. Yet we have other examples with this attribute such as institutional religion, institutional memory, institutional advancement, institutional syndrome, but not where the money is – guess the sociologists should love it. Fay Freak (talk) 23:43, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I support the entry's creation, on the grounds that the term's etymons alone cannot tell a reader or listener what the term means and what it doesn't mean. For example, does it mean an investor who is institutionalized? Lol, I kid, but insert joke here regarding the mental states behind some investing decisions; some institutions are more institutional than others. Quercus solaris (talk) 23:54, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

See “institutional investor”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. DCDuring (talk) 01:18, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

"Large organizations that invest funds on behalf of others for whom they are usually fiduciaries"? DCDuring (talk) 01:24, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I like that def. Ima use it. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:42, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

get off with

Defined as "(UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, slang) To have a sexual encounter with" but "The degree of intimacy varies with culture, but usually involves a minimum of kissing." I suppose it's possible to say that if as you kissed someone there seemed to be sexual energy in the air, the kiss was a "sexual encounter" of your and the other person's lips ... but I would normally interpret "I had a sexual encounter with X" to mean "I hooked up with X", so if "get off with" doesn't necessarily mean "have sex" but can just mean "kiss", surely we can define it more intelligibly? If nothing else, maybe just spell out the range of included activities, like "To kiss or have sex with"? Or have multiple senses, like make out does? (BTW I have tagged the second of make out's amorous senses as "rare"; American friends had never heard of it and thought it was wrong. It passed RFV a decade ago with one cite that could just mean kiss, one cite that uses it of masturbation, and one cite that appears to be no longer available.) Or, if getting off with someone necessarily includes or ends in sex, then change the usage note. In any case, add the &lit sense that an American would understand get off with to mean. - -sche (discuss) 02:06, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I would have said most senses of this are SoP, but that would lead a user to [[get off]], which is not one of our better entries, worse than those of many others of what we call 'phrasal verbs'. DCDuring (talk) 01:30, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

My hard-to-evidence gut feeling is that it's about as loose as the definition says and highly contextual, but certainly doesn't have to include intercourse or even genital contact. If someone told me that they "got off with someone at the club", I would assume snogging with possibly some heavy petting (side note: while it may not be inaccurate, I find the "dated except furry fandom" tag here quite funny). If they said they "got off with someone after the club", I would assume full sex. That said, without context I'd lean closer to kissing than sex. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:10, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Other dictionaries are split among begin-sexual-relationship (DCE, Cambridge), have-or-begin-sexual-relationship (MWO), and start-romantic-or-sexual-relationship (Collins).

IOW, all include "start", "sexual", and "relationship"; "have" and "romantic" each appear in only one out of four. MWO has and alternate definition ("to have sex with (someone)", ie, no "relationship"). I suspect that both "romantic" and "relationship" are euphemistic; "relationship" may be used in these definitions to include "encounters". DCDuring (talk) 13:18, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Good luck in finding attestation that would unambiguously support any definition. I see a need for numerous uses of "or". DCDuring (talk) 13:27, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Interesting. @Smurrayinchester, what do you make of the dictionaries that define this as starting/beginning a relationship? Are they being euphemistic, or if a friend says he got off with someone at (or after) the club, does that convey to you that he expects to continue seeing the person?
Hook up can be a one-time thing (indeed the definition says there is often no relationship intended): if that is also the case here, then the dictionaries defining it as "start a relationship" seem mistaken. Whereas, if the expectation is that getting off with someone starts a relationship with them, that's something our entry should mention (and indeed we should perhaps move hook up from being synonym to See also). FWIW, Urban Dictionary defines this (in the relevant sense) as "entice into the web of love; snog", "make out, pull or have casual sex", "make out, kiss, or heavy-pet", "make out / snog / pash", "have sex with", which suggests that people understand it as including casual / one-time stuff, not just relationships. - -sche (discuss) 19:15, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

"Start a relationship" sounds clearly wrong to me. Plenty of examples in Google Books of it being used for one-night stands ("the previous night […] she'd got off with his mate […] He'd gone now, headed off sometime, he hadn't stayed that long.", "You never said you'd gone out with her, you just said you'd got off with her."

A couple of quotes that seem to indicate "get off with" as specifically meaning kissing but not sex:

"And check this she's been going out with him six months and only got off with him"

"I only got off with her, I didn't get away with her." Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:03, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

(Thinking about it, "start a relationship" makes sense if it's meant in the sense of "Have an encounter with a stranger or person you've never had an encounter with before". I don't think anyone gets off with their own wife or husband.) Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:59, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Arabic ترديف

Ottoman Turkish has a word تردیف (terdif) which is regularly formed from ردف as a form II verbal noun. {{R:ar:Wehr-3}} does not show form II of this root in use. Was it once in use, or is the word an Ottoman innovation? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 23:07, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

寒い

The etymology for this term states that the medial k fell out, from samushi to samui; clearly it is the sh which has fallen out, as there was no k to begin with. But that sentence is pulled from a template; is there an adequate substitute? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:42, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

it does not say "the medial k fell out, from samushi to samui", it says "from the rentaikei (attrib form) of samushi with the medial /k/ gone". the rtk of a classical ku-adjective has shūshikei (terminal form, used in dictionaries) in -shi, and rtk in -ki. here in particular, the rtk of samushi is samuki, and modern samui comes from dropping this /k/. there is no error here.

(the template might be clearer if changed from "from rtk of adj x-shi" to "from rtk x-ki of adj x-shi", i.e. explicitly including the rtk in question)

(one could also question whether it is indeed the rtk that begets the modern form, i.e. why say that the k fell out of x-ki rather than that the sh fell out of x-shi, but i'm sure this is something well established and i'm in no position to doubt it) Kedymera (talk) 14:58, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @Fish bowl, Eirikr, Ookap, Chuterix for their thoughts: to me, the suggestion to have the template/wording actually include the rentaikei form, rather than just mentioning that some rentaikei form existed, seems like a good idea, because a naive reading of our entry (prior to seeing Kedymera's explanation) would've led me to the same conclusion as TE(æ)A, that it was saying the k dropped out of samushi (even though there ain't no k in samushi). - -sche (discuss) 19:57, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I had a quick go at it; does that look any better? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 12:05, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

That's clearer; thank you. - -sche (discuss) 22:11, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

{{ja-adj-shiku}} has the same problem (currently no explicit mention of the rtk in -shiki, but refers to losing its /k/); is the story similar? Kedymera (talk) 14:52, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

@Kedymera, ya, same sound shift happened there too. I'll update the template (hopefully later today). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:24, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Done. Just updated 疑わしい to use the template, have a look and tweak as needed. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:03, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Nice one, thanks Kedymera (talk) 00:57, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

will the good of another

The definition refers to "someone". Shouldn't it be "someone" in the entry title too? ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 05:08, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

This expression is an echo of St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote something translated as "to love is to will the good of the other (amare ... velle bonum alicui)". I found but one hit at Google Books (US) for "will the good of". The web has lots of uses of variations of the expression. I think this from a Catholic site that has an English translation of Summa Theologica is where something like the expression occurs. I have RfVed the entry. DCDuring (talk) 23:57, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I think it should be moved to will the good of. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:00, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I found only one hit for that at GBooks, surprisingly. This page from the online Summa (Benziger Bros. edition, 1947), not from GBooks, has the exact words. DCDuring (talk) 16:49, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

pooper scoop verb

Meaning to use a pooper scooper. Cannot create due to abuse filter. But was able to create poop scoop. ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 05:16, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

have the goods on vs. get the goods on

These are given as alt forms, but are not synonymous: to get is to acquire (for the first time), but to have is to possess already. First you get the goods, then you have the goods from that point onward. ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 05:38, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree. Someone may have been confused because of the idiomatic situation of have got (for example, "I've got the goods on them"). But that quirk of idiom doesn't mean that have and get are mere synonyms. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:39, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Chinamaxxing

Please move Talk:Chinamaxxing to entry page. Abuse filter "No xx" prevents. ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 06:04, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

tower

Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV once observed that "none of the definitions seems to cover the mediaeval defensive tower". It's true — and very strange that our first sense is something as modern and specific as a telecommunications tower. ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 19:19, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

What an absolutely dreadful entry! The principle being followed seems to be be that any type of tower structure that has a name can thereby be a definition of tower. The entry also omits any figurative sense as in tower of strength. MWOnline makes do with 4 definitions, compared to our 15. DCDuring (talk) 20:04, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Sense 8 is figurative: "A strong refuge; a defence." ~2026-11476-74 (talk) 20:08, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. What an oversight. I've taken a stab at the missing general definition; please improve further if possible. I tentatively left the more specific senses as subsenses, though I wonder if (at this point) "A very tall iron-framed structure, usually..." and "A similarly framed structure with...", and for that matter "A water tower", should be removed; that they are types of tower does not necessarily mean that they exist as specific senses. The only subsense that seems to me to clearly exist as a distinct sense is "control tower", because when books refer to pilots looking for the nearest tower, other senses of tower / other kinds of tower are not meant. - -sche (discuss) 20:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

One contributor added a few, probably unnecessary, senses in 2015. The various specialized senses look messy, but seem perfectly justifiablem, though I wonder about the glassmaking sense. The business sense seems like jargon, but it's attested. Maybe it could be reworded. Almost any [X] tower term, such as those in the derived terms section could be referred to as tower in likely contexts. Some seem (almost?) to have entered the lexicon, as tower referring to cell tower. But, in general, such usage seems to me to just show how context allows (even mandates per Grice) shortening. The open-frame type of tower, the masonry towers (eg. castle towers, church towers), and modern office and apartment towers seem distinct, possibly in a lexically relevant way. Lastly, are tower blocks (UK) always taller than they are wide? DCDuring (talk) 00:17, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

cemes

User @Vergencescattered asserts that Old English cemes should rather be ċemes based on Alistair Campbell's mention of ċemes as an example of palatisation in his 1959 Old English Grammar. The Middle English descendant of this term is listed in MED as kemes(e) [here] and clearly supports the cemes pronunciation. Is it possible (albeit unlikely) that palatisation could have occurred in the Old English word and left no descendant trace ? There was undoubtedly a velar form, but could both have existed side by side ? Leasnam (talk) 20:46, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

As I said on my talk page, it's not our place to declare that an academic source is wrong. We're a tertiary source, and not supposed to be doing original research. In general, I don't know why you think our opinions as Wiktionary editors matter more than published scholarly work. Vergencescattered (talk) 20:54, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Simple: 1). not all sourced material is true and accurate, especially older material. And 2). a casual editor today has access to greater information than a scholar in the 20th century. It's not "original research" to compare and scrutinise data. Your sourced material may be incorrect, and you are engaging in sourced-material absolutism, which is potentially just as harmful as original research. Leasnam (talk) 21:07, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Linking to the original discussion on Vergencescattered's talk page [here] Leasnam (talk) 21:17, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

The fact is, though, that you can't actually cite any sources to support your position. It's possible Campbell is incorrect, but that doesn't mean that you are a better source. Why don't we put a note on the page saying that the expected MidE outcome is different than what is attested? That way we can note the discrepancy without having to add an unsourced pronunciation to the page. Vergencescattered (talk) 01:33, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered: Just remember that there is no direct attestation of Old English pronunciation. There's lots of good indirect evidence, but not much dating that far back that directly addresses pronunciation. I doubt Campbell had access to anything significant that we don't. Also, see WT:NOT: it explicitly says we're a secondary, not tertiary source- beyond our definitions, most of our etymologies require some synthesis, for one thing. In general, it's good to avoid adding pronunciations from that far back without a reference to back us up, but this is one of those rare cases where we would do more damage by leaving the pronunciation as it is. I would recommend having two pronunciations: the Campbell one, and the one we reconstruct. Both should have explanatory notes so that readers will know what each is based on, and what we're not claiming about ours. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:08, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, unlike Wikipedia, a core part of the work of Wiktionary is original research (finding words/senses which are in use, even if other dictionaries don't have them; finding earlier attestations than other dictionaries' "first attested" dates; finding likely origins for things other dictionaries list as having "unknown" etymologies; finding how (modern-language) words are actually pronounced, even when dictionaries don't include the words or only recognize some pronunciations; etc). Certainly Wiktionary shouldn't contradict sources without good reason, but in this case the descendant having k seems like a fair reason to think one old source's ċ is not a complete picture. Probably, as Chuck says, the most informative thing to do is to state in the entry that it's unclear whether the pronunciation was ċ (/t͡ʃ/) or c (/k/), and that Campbell says ċ but the descendant has k, suggesting /k/. (Similar issues come up in Latin, where old sources occasionally claim vowel lengths that evidence now available suggests are wrong.) - -sche (discuss) 02:31, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I think there's a lot more flexibility when it comes to living languages than dead ones. As Chuck Entz said, there is no direct attestation of OE pronunciation, so we need to rely on sources in a way that we don't with modern English. That said, I see your point, and I was definitely speaking overbroadly about the need to avoid original research. Thank you the correction. Vergencescattered (talk) 03:43, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered, but the original attestations of the word are cemes and kemese (Butan his kemese and eac gelomlice butan his tunecan he eft cyrde). It's not spelt ċemes anywhere in any original source document. Ċemes is Campbell's interpretation of how it was pronounced. Leasnam (talk) 04:03, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I see. Thank you for finding that, because that does change things significantly to me if Campbell was doing that much interpretation. I'm also not sure I've ever seen k used in a word with palatalization. Category:Old English terms spelled with K seems to only have one example, skolde. Honestly in that case I'd be fine with removing the discussion of the pronunciation entirely. I'd also support putting the main entry at kemes, but I think that would go against normalization practices. I apologize for making this an issue in the first place. Vergencescattered (talk) 05:10, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I've updated the entry at cemes to display both pronunciations, and have added a Usage note regarding the pronunciation. @Vergencescattered, I have left the pleasure of adding support for ċemes up to you :) Leasnam (talk) 03:18, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you, Leasnam. I've added to the note. Let me know if you think it needs anything else. Vergencescattered (talk) 03:38, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered, did you save it ? I don't see anything yet.... Leasnam (talk) 03:43, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

it looks as though you accidentally undid it (?) See [here] Leasnam (talk) 03:45, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

I see it now. Looks good. Thanks ! Leasnam (talk) 03:46, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah sorry about that, not sure how I managed to mess that up Vergencescattered (talk) 05:06, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@Vergencescattered, Leasnam, Fenakhay: I edited further because I'm not convinced it's clear that Campbell 1959 even intended to argue that the word started with /t͡ʃ/: I don't see that said anywhere in words. Although that would be the normal meaning of the dot over "ċ", it isn't impossible for this to be a typo, or a spelling that was used reflexively because of the following "e" without fully thinking about it. There are two places where Campbell 1959, as published, writes this word without a dot. While we can mention the two dotted spellings, I don't think we should be especially deferential to them if we don't know of any reason to think they are correct.--Urszag (talk) 04:18, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

In particular, as far as I can see it is inaccurate to say ċemes is mentioned as an example of palatalization by Campbell: the two sections where the spelling appears seem to exclusively discuss the vowel quality in the first and second syllable, respectively. Whether the initial consonant is palatalized or not doesn't affect the point that Campbell is making either on page 201 (§495) or page 205 (§511).--Urszag (talk) 04:26, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Seeming inconsistency wrt *bel-

According to Irish Etymology given at bealach, *bel- means/meant “to dig, cut off?”. But *bel- gives the root as being Strength and does not mention "to dig" or "cut off". Am I missing something, this seems strange. BenAveling (talk) 22:40, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

@BenAveling: Our coverage of Proto-Indo-European (and indeed everything else) is still very much a work in progress. We don't have entries for every meaning of every PIE root yet; and in this case, it's possible that the etymology listed at bealach doesn't reflect current linguistic consensus, especially since the references cited are both from the early 20th century. It's not unlikely that modern Indo-Europeanists no longer even believe in a root *bel- (“to dig, cut off”), meaning some other source for bealach would need to be proposed. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:51, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

If we know we don't know, how then to proceed? Should I be adding {{citation_needed}}? BenAveling (talk) 12:36, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

It has citations, they're just old. Even the connection with Welsh bwlch is problematic, because even though the semantics look good, as both bwlch and Middle Irish belach mean 'gap, pass, defile', they can't come from the same Proto-Celtic form. There's no PC vowel that gives both Welsh w and Goidelic e, and the Welsh word requires there to be no vowel between the l and the k, while the Goidelic does require a vowel there. So the Welsh word presupposes *bolko- or *bulko-, while the Middle Irish word presupposes *belVkom. So we can't even decide on a Proto-Celtic form, let alone decide what its PIE ancestors might have been, or whether it's related to an Armenian word for 'to dig' and/or a Sanskrit word for 'hole' (which may or may not even be related to each other). I'd be inclined to etymologize it only as far back as Middle Irish, and mention the Welsh word as "possibly related", while omitting all reference to PIE and tenuous satem cognates. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:51, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Polish łono

In this video on the Interslavic language YouTube channel (1:03:18 - 1:05:46), a Pole (speaking in Interslavic) finds fault with our definitions of Polish łono. Could someone please take a look at these to see whether any improvements can be made? I've already corrected Slovak lono (diff) to remove faulty definitions that appeared to have been copypasted from the Polish entry. (Notifying workgroup: KamiruPL, BigDom, Hythonia, Tashi, Vininn126, Sławobóg, Silmethule, Rakso43243, Darellur): Voltaigne (talk) 14:18, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

@Voltaigne I gave it a proper Vin-style™ makeover. Vininn126 (talk) 22:37, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

urini

Esperanto. We describe it as "usually intransitive", i.e. occasionally transitive, and therefore we do list passive participles such as urinate. However, I looked through Tekstaro and couldn't find any transitive or passive-participle usages. jlwoodwa (talk) 16:47, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

I've taken a quick look on Google Books and Tekstaro and can't find any transitive usage either. —Granger (talk · contribs) 04:54, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

@User:Jlwoodwa, @User:Mx. Granger: Verbs like these can often be used with a cognate accusative: "they urinated smelly urine", "the urine urinated by the patient", etc.

Maybe the person that added that label was alluding to that. Emanuele6 (talk) 10:27, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

I have done something similar to Italian ovulare some time ago when I noticed it was defined as intransitive only, but had its passive participle forms already autogenerated. I was easily able to find them actually used with egg-related cognate accusatives. Special:Diff/89839967 Emanuele6 (talk) 10:35, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

@Emanuele6: Just adding "@User:Jlwoodwa, @User:Mx. Granger" doesn't add a ping unless it's done in the same edit as the signature to that paragraph. A working link to the user page and the signature have to be in the same edit. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:06, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the information, and for all your corrections! Emanuele6 (talk) 06:07, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

If you can find any citations of urini in this kind of context, please let us know. I haven't been able to find any. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:00, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

is my middle name

Should is my middle name be changed to “is one’s middle name”? See examples using “is his middle name” at the second definition of middle name.

Or do we even need “is my/one’s middle name” at all, versus just covering the ground at middle name? Ditto danger is one's middle name. JulieKahan (talk) 09:29, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

All of the common pronoun versions could be hard redirects to the appropriate sense of middle name, the second, figurative one. DCDuring (talk) 18:49, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it's needed. I have created a hard redirect at is his middle name to {{senseid|en|trait aptly describing person}} at middle name. We would have to consider whether other forms of be, eg, was, be, being, been would be needed with his and go through the same exercise with my, her, your, and possibly plurals like our and their. Most probably won't be common enough. DCDuring (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

It seems that all five forms of be with my middle name would be attestable using Google NGrams. It is clear that the definition at is my middle name, which restricts use to boasts is wrong. DCDuring (talk) 19:42, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I have a vegan friend whose middle name is "Iz", short for Isabel. She liked joking about that...Vealhurl (talk) 22:21, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Second pronunciation of Russian шестьсот

The second of the three pronunciations listed at шестьсот is [ʂɨsʲt͡sʲˈsot] (phonetic respelling: шесьтьсо́т). How is that possible? I thought [t͡s] cannot be palatalized in Russian, but here we have t͡sʲ (!) -- Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 09:36, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö: [t͡sʲ] is the palatalised allophone of /t/, not /t͡s/. But I don't remember if we decided on actually including it or not. Thadh (talk) 11:25, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be [tʲ] then? -- Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 12:15, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

In some dialects it should not, other dialects it should. Anyway, this IPA problem is not only for this word. Tollef Salemann (talk) 06:41, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I feel like the article talks about something else. I am from Moscow, yet I am 100% sure that my soft /tʲ/, /dʲ/ are at the very least [tˢʲ], [dᶻʲ]. And this is the case for I would say all Russian speakers who do not pronounce them as [c], [ɟ], which in turn is quite dialectal.

Speaking of, and this I am less sure of being a widespread thing: I have assimilation before a palatal nasal. So /nʲ/ for me is [ɲ], and /t(ʲ)nʲ/, /d(ʲ)nʲ/ are [cɲ], [ɟɲ]. I wonder how widespread this is... Thadh (talk) 08:07, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Maybe I can make an IPA template for IPA where soft T becomes soft TS and call it "tsekanye". For Nynorsk we have a bunch of such templates, what makes it easier to understand which dialect group different IPA examples represent, like IPA with "differentiation" or "palatalization". For Russian we can have "tsekanye", "okanye" etc. Also, doesn’t tsekanye always correspond with dzekanye? Then we can group such IPA as "tsekanye-dzekanye dialects" or something like it. Tollef Salemann (talk) 07:54, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mölli-Möllerö, @Thadh, @Tollef Salemann, Special:Contributions/~2026-11845-12 has been mass-adding Russian "proscribed" pronunciations. I am reverting them all, including the one on шестьсо́т (šestʹsót).

I have asked them to stop. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:20, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

soapless soap

Is morphemically interesting. Are there any more terms with this pattern - Xless X? My friend uses the term milkless milk to describe her vegan drinks, but she's not (yet) a published author or wiki-lexi-woman Vealhurl (talk) 14:09, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Love it. The only other one I can think of that is lexicalized, so far, is meatless meat. But it gives me some hopeless hope that others might be out there too. She smiled a smileless smile with guileless guile, saying a nopeless nope and giving some hopeless hope. Lol. Quercus solaris (talk) 15:02, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

non-apology apology is similar. BTW Wonderfool, while you are lying as usual about your "vegan friend", I am delighted to see you write "morphemically interesting". There's hope for you yet. (Just kidding. There is nothing morphemically interesting about "soapless soap" because the morphemes are standard. The interesting bit spans multiple words.) ~2026-12577-52 (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

technical debt: etymology problem revealing a wider issue with templates

technical debt etymology says: "Coined by American computer programmer who developed the first wiki Ward Cunningham in 1992." This obviously requires commas or rephrasing. But I can't fix it because the page contains template gibberish {{coin|en|Q7637|in=1992|nobycat=1}}.

The template was designed to produce something like "coined by scientist Alice Smith in 1991", but doesn't work properly with longer phrases. As always (and any software developer who has done localisation can tell you about this), attempts to generate and store and process strings will always screw you over, for example you write a routine for "1 apple, 2 apples, 3 apples" and forget about the dual in certain languages, or case requirements of Polish.

(Someone is going to say "oh we just need to add four more template parameters to indicate where the optional commas go". Let's throw that person under a train.)

~2026-12577-52 (talk) 17:57, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

But we can't do that: he's been elected. DCDuring (talk) 19:46, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" ~2026-12577-52 (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Obsolete pronunciation of series as /ˈsɪəɹɪ.ɪz/

Are we sure about this? The /ɪ.ɪ/ bit seems rather improbable to me. I may be a "Bri'ish citizen" (oi where's yer TV loicence?) but even that needs a glottal stop. Compare cereal maybe. Oh my god, the entire dictionary is rotten with termites: /ˈsɪə.ɪ.əl/ ?? No, there is an /ɹ/ sound there. Being non-rhotic doesn't mean you never produce an /ɹ/ ever!! Just in certain cases. Wow. ~2026-12577-52 (talk) 17:45, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Added 4 years ago by @Hazarasp. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:14, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-12577-52, I will add some sources to corroborate this pronunciation's existence; note that it is is unrelated to nonrhoticity as the /ɪ.ɪ/ corresponds to orthographic -ie- (like the /i.eː/ of Classical Latin seriēs). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 06:05, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

speaking of -- usage note regarding puns

The entry says: "In light-hearted conversations it may involve a pun or a joke, including dad jokes and groaners, intending to introduce a completely unrelated subject: Speaking of Europe, I'm Hungary! Who's ready for dinner?" Is this worth keeping? I don't think it's particularly common, or perhaps I had an unsufficiently punning father? Could one not equally introduce such a joke with other phrases ("talking of...", "now that you mention...")? ~2026-12577-52 (talk) 18:04, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I have a vegan friend. I got this text from her. "Oh, thanks for the soybeans. Speaking of which, how's your turtle?" One day, Wonderfool's SMS's will be published durably-archivedly...Vealhurl (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I agree with removing it; it doesn't seem distinct from the preceding use. ("Speaking of Europe, I'm Hungary" : Hungary is in Europe and sounds like "hungry".) - -sche (discuss) 03:05, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Alleged Russian war slang (BBC)

This BBC article [9] says that Russians use a verb "zero" to mean killing their own soldiers, and "meat storm" for sending a lot of soldiers out to be killed simply to gain time. If true, can we add these terms in Russian/Cyrillic? If not true, shame on me for trusting the stupid BBC. ~2026-12577-52 (talk) 02:22, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Meat storm is мясно́й штурм (mjasnój šturm) (мясно́й (mjasnój), штурм (šturm)), also rendered into English as meat assault. - -sche (discuss) 03:03, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Don't forget meat wave, which is in my opinion coined independently in English, as мясна́я волна́ (mjasnája volná) sounds unidiomatic/back-translated from English war reports to me, but heck do I know in these four years of SMO blitzkrieg. Fay Freak (talk) 14:22, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

As for your other question, the verb “to zero” they mean is обнули́ть (obnulítʹ); we also miss the sense at Ukrainian обнули́ти (obnulýty). Russian military jargon favors coded language to dehumanize acts, similar to двухсо́тый (dvuxsótyj, literally “200th”) for killed soldiers in reference to груз 200 (gruz 200, “cargo 200”) or liquidation for killings. обнули́ть (obnulítʹ) sanitizes murder, making it sound administrative—like clearing data—while evading direct legal terms like уби́ть (ubítʹ, “to kill”). Fay Freak (talk) 14:38, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Italian solito — the only non-penultimate-stressed past participle?

In Italian, sòlito (“usual”) is considered to be also the past participle of defective modal verb solere (“to use to X-ing”).

I think it is peculiar that its pronunciation as past participle is IPA^(key): /ˈsɔ.li.to/ exactly like that of the adjective/noun meaning "(the) usual" rather than for example *solìto IPA^(key): /soˈli.to/. (cfr. Spanish (rare but acceptable) solido IPA^(key): /soˈlido/ [soˈli.ð̞o], past participle of Spanish soler; vs. Spanish sólito IPA^(key): /ˈsolito/ [ˈso.li.t̪o], the adjective)

Is sòlito (with its inflections sòlita, sòliti, sòlite) the only Italian past participle pronounced with stress not on the penultimate syllable? All regular past participles have stress on the penultimate syllable (the inflectional suffixes are -àto, -ùto, and -ìto) and I cannot think of any other irregular past participle with stress not on the penultimate syllable.

n.b. Of course I am only referring to "simple" past participles, "compound" past participles with one enclitic particle attached e.g. dàtomi (dàto +‎ -mi) will naturally have stress on the antepenultimate.

For what it's worth, Latin solitus (the perfect active participle of Latin soleō) also has stress on the antepenultimate, so etymologically it is reasonable that the stress is there, but I cannot think of any other non-penultimate-stressed past participle in Italian.

I have not been able to find anyone explicitly claiming that sòlito is the only one, or even pointing out that it is odd that sòlito (as past participle, when they claim it is a past participle) is stressed on the antepenultimate, so I am not sure. Emanuele6 (talk) 22:07, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Indonesian Anda

The Indonesian etymology section for Anda cites that the word is coined by "Sarbini."

Whilst a simple search online did yield some results of a 'Kapten Sabirin' (see [1] and [2]). However, I couldn't find a specific excerpt that refers to this word being coined specifically, besides a Facebook post by the National Library of Indonesia (Perpusnas) that cites "Suara Karya, 14-7-1981 (page 5). Koleksi Surat Kabar Langka Salemba."

Although this does indeed come from Perpusnas (which we may be inclined to believe to be quite credible), I am still quite skeptical that this is truly the source. It seems quite atypical to me that a word coined during such a relatively early stage of the Indonesian language so happened to come about so mundanely (i.e., some army captain's plea created the word?), and not coming from an authoritative literary/academic/popular figure (cf. "berdikari," "swasembada").

Maybe I'm being too wary, but hopefully somebody may corroborate on this. Myrrhabeaugh (talk) 02:30, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

high line

Should probably add the sense used in soccer/football as well, as explained here and I'm sure many other places. Although I feel like someone else could phrase it more concisely than I might do. Dijacz (talk) 15:20, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Shevchenko

{{rfv-pron|en}}. Tagged but not listed by Randomcanarian. 0DF (talk) 17:34, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Should the pronunciation be changed to Sh/ɛ/vchenko? Randomcanarian (talk) 18:01, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Octopodes

According to Astrid Lundberg, a TikToker, English can preserve the original plural of loan words. While octopus comes from Latin, Latin borrowed it from Ancient Greek ὀκταπόδιον (oktapódion). Latin octopus doesn't actually end in -pus, it's a compound of octo (eight) and a corruption of pod (foot). As the correct plural form of octopus in English is debated, some people considered uncorrupting the Latin term, thus arriving at octopodes.
According to her. Because octopus#Latin says "From Ancient Greek ὀκτώπους (oktṓpous, “eight feet”)".
So either we're wrong (possible), she's wrong (she claims to do "pretty careful research before posting every fun facts video"), or I'm an idiot who doesn't understand Latin (verifiably correct). Any clues? — Alexis Jazz (talk) 21:37, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

As I write this, there isn't anything at octopus#English, octopus#Latin, octopodes#English, or octopodes#Latin that isn't already correct, i.e., descriptively true. There isn't anything about the plural-form variants at octopus#English that is truly debated or debatable, except by underinformed people (it has all long been true and long been known by many people, even if many others are ignorant of it, but the latter's ignorance doesn't make it unsettled, though); the phenomenon that does exist is many people's misapprehension that their personal prescription for which variant to prefer is the "right" or "correct" one and that the others are "incorrect", which is descriptively false. The TikToker is correct that people who try to hypercorrect others' choice of plural form away from the regular -es toward any other form are being annoying and misguided when they do that. (The same theme is true in other instances, too, such as insufferables who insist on hypercorrecting others' use of formulas#English to formulae#English or carcinomas#English to carcinomata#English; there's a good reason why a good dictionary like MW Collegiate lists the regular plural first for those nouns [i.e., it is both wholly accepted and very widely used, more so than the irregular option].) Regarding "corruption", not every sound change is a "corruption", although nonlinguists love to call them that (my understanding from online reading in years past is that some linguists deprecate that term, although maybe other linguists revel in getting the goat of the others by continuing to use it); "corruption" denotes something "incorrect" (per Pei's dictionary of linguistics) and strongly implies something "dirty" and "impure"/tainted (to most fluent English speakers), whereas many sound changes are none of those things and it is a (widespread) misapprehension of how language truly works to believe that they are those. One of the things that the TikToker says in the cited video is that she doesn't know whether any other languages besides English are capable of preserving the plural inflection of a loanword. Answer: yes, others can; English is not the only one that can. (I suspect that she does in fact already know that, but she needs to bait viewers into leaving comments about it so as to juice the interaction rates, regarding the algorithm.) Quercus solaris (talk) 06:39, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

wenzhounese pronunciation?

i'm making 𫠡, and on zi.tools there are 2 definitions, one of which is easy, and one of which is Wenzhounese? how do i put that into zh-pron? southern or oujiang wu is not on there, so i tried northern and it spits out a lua error. by the way, the pronunciation is gø˨˩˨ AtTheTownHouse (talk) 05:00, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

fixed the lua error, but i guess i just have to deal with it saying shanghainese AtTheTownHouse (talk) 05:07, 28 February 2026 (UTC)