Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/English

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All Wiktionary: namespace discussions 1 2 3 4 5 - All discussion pages 1 2 3 4 5

This page is for entries in English. For entries in other languages, see Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Non-English.

Newest 10 tagged RFDs

• Revvy
  WiTricity
  hyperphysical retail
  iced coffee
  have a wake
  printer buffer
  ♄
  ♃
  ☾
  🜂
  

Scope of this request page:

• In-scope: terms suspected to be multi-word sums of their parts such as “green leaf”
• Out-of-scope: terms whose existence is in doubt

Templates:

• {{rfd}}
• {{rfd-sense}}
• {{rfd-redundant}}
• {{archive-top|rfd}} + {{archive-bottom}}

See also:

• Criteria for inclusion
• Page deletion guidelines

Scope: This page is for requests for deletion of pages, entries and senses in the main namespace for a reason other than that the term cannot be attested. The most common reason for posting an entry or a sense here is that it is a sum of parts, such as "green leaf". It is occasionally used for undeletion requests (requests to restore entries that may have been wrongly deleted).

Out of scope: This page is not for words whose existence or attestation is disputed, for which see Wiktionary:Requests for verification. Disputes regarding whether an entry falls afoul of any of the subsections in our criteria for inclusion that demand a particular kind of attestation (such as figurative use requirements for certain place names and the WT:BRAND criteria) should also go to RFV. Blatantly obvious candidates for deletion should only be tagged with {{delete|Reason for deletion}} and not listed.

Adding a request: To add a request for deletion, place the template {{rfd}} or {{rfd-sense}} to the questioned entry, and then make a new nomination here. The section title should be exactly the wikified entry title such as [[green leaf]]. The deletion of just part of a page may also be proposed here. If an entire section is being proposed for deletion, the tag {{rfd}} should be placed at the top; if only a sense is, the tag {{rfd-sense}} should be used, or the more precise {{rfd-redundant}} if it applies. In any of these cases, any editor, including non-admins, may act on the discussion.

Closing a request: A request can be closed once a month has passed after the nomination was posted, except for snowball cases. If a decision to delete or keep has not been reached due to insufficient discussion, {{look}} can be added and knowledgeable editors pinged. If there is sufficient discussion, but a decision cannot be reached because there is no consensus, the request can be closed as “no consensus”, in which case the status quo is maintained. The threshold for consensus is hinted at the ratio of 2/3 of supports to supports and opposes, but is not set in stone and other considerations than pure tallying can play a role; see the vote.

• Deleting or removing the entry or sense (if it was deleted), or de-tagging it (if it was kept). In either case, the edit summary or deletion summary should indicate what is happening.
• Adding a comment to the discussion here with either RFD-deleted or RFD-kept, indicating what action was taken.
• Striking out the discussion header.

(Note: In some cases, like moves or redirections, the disposition is more complicated than simply “RFD-deleted” or “RFD-kept”.)

Archiving a request: At least a week after a request has been closed, if no one has objected to its disposition, the request should be archived to the entry's talk page. This is usually done using the aWa gadget, which can be enabled at WT:PREFS.

Oldest 100 tagged RFDs

• not-to-scale
  elder
  occasional furniture
  take its toll
  Kube
  stealth wealth
  stem mutation
  morel
  abstinence
  dynamics
  ex-minister
  be at
  lavalier microphone
  in conclave
  adoptive mother
  pro-Hamas
  anti-Hamas
  pro-Israel
  anti-American
  pro-American
  pro-Arab
  pro-British
  anti-British
  pro-Indonesian
  pro-Jew
  anti-Jew
  pro-Palestinian
  anti-Palestinian
  anti-Russian
  pro-Slavism
  anti-Slavism
  pro-US
  pro-Russian
  primiparous
  school-age
  fat lot of good
  anti-Hindu
  accessory before the fact
  accessory after the fact
  unspoken rule
  unwritten rule
  Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
  subbranch
  Lulu
  DKC2
  DKC3
  Nissia
  mean time
  foregoing
  unrequited love
  El Camino Real
  marine toilet
  quarter-
  do want
  do not want
  twelve hundred
  December solstice
  tacit collusion
  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
  aluminium-27
  argon-36
  argon-38
  calcium-45
  argon-40
  beryllium-9
  U-235
  run
  queen bee
  neutron radiation
  anti-Israel
  number homophone
  two-move checkmate
  freak
  aerophobia
  hobosexual
  digital signal processing
  -faction
  time perception
  Magnificat and Nunc dimittis
  racial segregation
  diriment impediment
  breadcrumb navigation
  takes (something) to
  set-in sleeve
  th sound
  -tive
  mutual aid
  reincarnation
  blue ribbon jury
  language resource
  -t
  galaxy
  Korea
  araneomorph funnel-web spider
  good deal
  channel coal
  Achilles tendon reflex time
  box ears
  malding
  whoreson
  

September 2022

United Nations Economic and Social Council

• Keep all per WT:THUB. Some readers would like to know NATO (or Nato in UK) is OTAN in French, NAVO in Dutch, etc. Otherwise I would defer to Wikipedia. Facts707 (talk) 10:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

It apparently appears in two or three dictionaries- see Further reading there. I am unclear if WT:LEMMING would apply to this case as an argument for inclusion. (My instinct is to go with the authoritative dictionaries to maintain the legitimacy of Wiktionary in the eyes of the readers.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC) (modified)

• Keep per lemmings in the entry, although I nominated this and although they are not the traditional ones except Collins. I won't shed a tear if this is deleted since the name is kind of transparent and I would not vote keep without lemmings, but I still like the general lemming principle. We have no sound and comprehensive criteria for multi-word proper names, and lemmings help us include United Arab Emirates and World War II, for instance. We should sooner delete United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, I think; it is no less "encyclopedic" and is not supported by lemmings. Admittedly, lemmings would have us include Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Central Intelligence Agency, so if you don't like that consequence, that's probably a delete from you. Later: I spoke too soon: the full name of the U.K. is supported by lemmings. Oh, well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  We should not be including terms in non-LDLs just because other dictionaries have them. Theknightwho (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  That's a normative opinion, not a fact. I have more at User talk:Dan Polansky § Lemming test, lemming principle or lemming heuristic. The lemming principle is in the spirit of Wikipedia, which depends on reliable sources, whereas Wiktionary is full of opinionated people who love to think for themselves, which is quite attractive but is not without problems. The rationale "encyclopedic" is a blanket statement of ignorance, not a statement of principle. "Quasi sum of parts" is a statement of principle, and I see it here, but I defer to lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  You say yourself that there is nothing lexically interesting about these and that they are "quasi sum of parts", but want to include them solely on the basis that they're included in one other dictionary (Collins). If your principle is just to blindly follow what other publications have done, then my "normative opinion" is that we shouldn't do that. The major difference between Wiktionary and Wikipedia is that Wiktionary is a secondary source, not a tertiary one; that means we generally have to curate at the point of inclusion, whereas Wikipedia has far more scope to vary the manner in which something is included, proportionally to its notability. It also leaves us in the absurd position of including some terms in a class but not others, due to the (potentially arbitrary) decisions of other publications. No thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  That is not really absurd and appears unavoidable anyway. All dictionaries do it and the otherwise excellent OED is quite bad at it, with its apparently arbitrary inclusion of some proper names but not others, as per Beer parlour. One can ask: why should United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland be included while National Aeronautics and Space Administration excluded? I see no principle based on purely lexicographic concerns that differentiates the two. Do you see such a principle? And do you have sound comprehensive inclusion criteria for multi-word proper names? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:50, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  You not being able to see the principle does not mean that outsourcing it to other publications is a good idea. I look forward to seeing your nomination to undelete Talk:西線無戰事 and all the other novel titles that are included in the Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary. Theknightwho (talk) 18:03, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  No one has given us these principles, not me, not you, not anyone else, except perhaps those who say, delete all proper names or delete all multi-word proper names. Is "Taiwan Ministry of Education dictionary" a general monolingual linguistic dictionary? And a single dictionary does not count for lemmings either. Outsourcing inclusion (not exclusion) would give contributors certainty that some of the content they will create would be predictably kept. What we have now is not really consistent either, randomly depending on who shows up in the RFD. Some want United Nations excluded since all organizations are "encyclopedic", some included. The lemmings would give us includable core around which we could ponder expansion into a more uncertain territory. I have drafted some inclusion principles on my talk page, but they are not wholly comprehensive and would probably exclude United Nations, which I don't see happening. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:21, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a general monolingual linguistic dictionary which we use very extensively, and you can see the entry here. The fact that you changed your opinion based on the inclusion by Collins alone also makes your point that a single dictionary doesn't count for lemmings irrelevant, anyway, and I shouldn't have to explain why the inevitable variability of who turns up to RFD doesn't justify doing things blindly instead.

  Let's be honest, here: you dislike the uncertainty, and would rather have an arbitrary line than a fuzzy one. If you don't trust our collective judgment in excluding these kinds of terms, then you also have no basis trusting our collective judgment in including others, either. Theknightwho (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  The full NASA name is in Collins and Dictionary.com so that's two; it is also in WordNet, but that does not count. If one argued that Dictionary.com should not count, I could perhaps be convinced and change my mind. The count of two does matter and was required in the failed vote. Predictably administrable policies are a widely recognized good, while you seem to be inexplicably dismissive about this good. Presumably, contributors prefer to be able to predict that the content they create will be kept. The notion that we should trust collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes, seems bizarre. Even with lemmings, the line would be fuzzy since we would include things beyond lemmings, but there would be a secure core. I created the vote that replaced the attributive-use rule with today's open-ended uncertainty, so it is really not about me personally. The derogatory use of "blindly" has no force: our CFI for geographic names has the RFD participants do things "blindly" for them, and that was presumably the purpose of the place name policy, which seems rather arbitrary from lexicographical standpoint but does exactly that which you dismiss: let us do things in a predictable manner. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:57, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Yet you do trust the "collective judgment of varying groups of decision makers, who do not agree on inclusion principles among themselves and each votes according to different inclusion principles and keep changing their minds as time passes" when it comes to the inclusion of terms not in other dictionaries, as I have already pointed out. You're just trying to sweep the fuzziness under the rug, but that doesn't make it go away - particularly as those very same points apply to the people that made those other dictionaries in the first place.

  Including things on a per-class basis is not the same as your proposal, because those are decided on the basis of what the terms refer to, while your proposal is decided on the basis of what other people have decided. That's why it's a useful signpost, but not a distinguishing characteristic. Theknightwho (talk) 19:29, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sure, lemmings do not eliminate all uncertainty, just some. Better than nothing. Fuzziness remains as admitted: no sweeping under the rag given the admission. Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to is non-lexicographic. It is not obviously better than deferring to others: both is predictable and both is lexicographically arbitrary. There does not seem to be anything lexicographical about Small Magellanic Cloud, but CFI has it included. CFI has "X County" terms included, lemmings don't. You may like the arbitrary referent-based policy better, that's up to you, that's not a matter of objective facts. You have not posted any inclusion principles and you have not even voted yet; you just ask us to trust inconsistent collective judgment. That's pretty empty handed, if you ask me. If that's the readers' and users' policy preference, I can't help it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't object on the basis that LEMMINGS doesn't eliminate all uncertainty - I objected on the basis that the removal of uncertainty is not justified by implementing arbitrary rules. The fact that you say "better than nothing" actually confirms my point that you're only doing this because you want to make the decisionmaking process simpler, ignoring that it removes editorial control from users and does nothing to solve the underlying problem. That is not a good approach. It was also soundly rejected by vote (and having checked, many users had the same sentiments as me), so please stop trying to force it.

  "Deciding on the basis of what the terms refer to" is an inherent aspect of the sum of parts principle, and the basis of several guidelines at WT:IDIOM. Fundamentally, those are all "arbitrary" too, in that we've decided that they best suit the purpose of what a dictionary is for (which is a normative judgment, as you say). However, there is a clear, qualitative difference between deciding based on the meaning of a term and deciding for each individual term on the basis of whether other dictionaries have included them or not: the former is based on a property of the term itself (and the classes it fits into), while your proposal is not, and leads to random inclusion/exclusion in cases such as 西線無戰事 (which is the title of a novel) - and before you object by saying that 西線無戰事 is only in one dictionary, I am obviously not just talking about that one entry.

  It's also all very well to point out that there are other arbitrary things as well, such as who participates in RFD discussions, but that's not persuasive because (a) the decisions are not random, (b) they're governed by Wiktionary policy (unlike other dictionaries), and (c) that objection also applies to any decision we make in respect of LEMMINGS, so it's self-defeating. Theknightwho (talk) 23:38, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

  I disagree with most of the above. The SOP principle does not depend on classification of referents at all. Again, two lemmings are the minimum. I feel this is getting repetitive and unproductive. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Ignoring the primary point while misrepresenting what I said about the SOP principle is not an adequate response. You very clearly have no response to the major flaw in your proposal that it allows for random inclusion/exclusion based on the whims of other publications, and just don’t want to admit it. Theknightwho (talk) 10:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The so-called major flaw is a real downside. But the upside is much bigger. What we have now is whim of randomly varying amateurs; whim of the pros seems much preferable. Just recently, Bank of England was deleted while non-SOP and European Central Bank was kept while SOP. Lemmings would have prevented that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:29, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

There is no upside - it’s just sweeping the arbitrariness under the carpet by making it look like it isn’t, which is a point you’ve failed to address with anything other than saying what we do is already arbitrary, while ignoring the difference between inclusion on a per-class basis versus a per-term basis and the difference in outcomes that creates. Nevermind the disdain you have just shown for your fellow users, which is a whole other issue. Theknightwho (talk) 10:46, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The upside of improved predictability and consistency is as undeniable as the downside of partial loss of autonomy and gain of certain arbitrariness (attestation is still a requirement). Wikipedia is doing fine deferring to pros for inclusion and even for fact. I have no disdain: I am as much an amateur as others here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:06, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

It has “certainty” in the way that including every attestable string of more than 5 characters has certainty, but that doesn’t mean we should implement it. We are also a secondary source, not a tertiary one like WP (and you must not be familiar with how hotly contested AFD can be - notability is not straightforward). I haven’t even begun with the other flaws, such as the fact that other dictionaries copy from each other (making inclusion in two often non-independent), errors, the question of historical dictionaries (and other hybrid works), propagandistic material (plenty of those in Russian from the Soviet era), the inherent biases of the authors and so on. It’s not workable, and is - to boil it down - lazy scholarship. Theknightwho (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) The lemming principle's arbitrariness is nowhere close to as bad and off topic as "include all 5 character combinations"; that's pretty much a non-argument. The principle is obviously workable; it is not ideal, but workable. I guess Wikipedia editors are also "lazy scholars" by depending on potentially erroneous authoritative sources instead of diligently doing their original research, which is much more work than taking over sentences from sources and rephrasing them. Whether we are a secondary or tertiary source makes no difference; our being a secondary source for WDLs (not always for LDLs) does not bar the lemming principle. And we would not even depend on them for matters of fact, merely for matters of inclusion. At worst, we would scope in too many redundant entries, no error of fact. Including a million entries for all the taxa from Wikispecies is the real elephant in the room, the king of avoidable redundancy; no one ever talks about that. About dictionaries copying from each other, the way in which they wary in their coverage of proper names depending on the name one picks suggests they are not trying particularly hard to outdo each other in covering anything anyone else has; the non-independence claim does not seem to be borne out by observable facts. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

If you agree that there are degrees of arbitrariness, then your argument that our current practice is also arbitrary falls apart, because it is self-evidently more arbitrary to include terms on a per-term basis than a per-class one. You also seem to have missed that I said that WP’s notability requirement is not comparable, because notability is hotly contested, and they don’t just include anything simply because it’s sourced. The latter would also be lazy scholarship. I also don’t care what Wikispecies is doing - another project making an error (and I make no comment on Wikispecies either way) is no justification for us making one too. Oh, and being a secondary source does bar the lemming principle, because other dictionaries are secondary sources. You realise that’s one of the things that distinguishes dictionaries and encyclopaedias, right? Theknightwho (talk) 12:13, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

(outdent) My complaint is above all that our practice is inconsistent and unpredictable since it depends on who comes to RFD and since RFD voters often state no usable criteria, instead throwing around the buzzword "encyclopedic". Our place name criteria are arbitrary, but that can be lived with; at least they are predictable. If adopted as a policy, the application of the lemming principle would be pretty straightforward and not hotly contested; in this we would differ from Wikipedia's AfD. We would at worst discuss whether a particular lemming counts, and we could keep refining our lists of accepted lemmings. Wikispecies is not making any error: it is their core business to document taxa. It is us who is making the error of avoidable redundancy to Wikispecies, which is not our lexicographical business. Right. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:33, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Predictability has no value if the outcome is arbitrary, and including things on a per-term basis instead of a per-class basis is a lot more arbitrary. We often self-correct mistakes, and we do not need a straitjacket like this which short-circuits productive discussion by simply deferring to people with inclusion criteria that we don’t even know. Theknightwho (talk) 12:55, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

To the contrary, rule design usually buys predictability at the cost of increased arbitrariness. To wit, the number 3 of attesting quotations is arbitrary: it could be 2, it could be 5, and it could be left unspecified and discussed on a per RFV basis. Setting it to 3 increases predictability. Any lemming principle acceptable as an approved policy would have to be overidable anyway, so there would be no "straightjacket". What about Wikispecies? Any point taken so far? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I have pointed out that arbitrariness is not all-or-nothing numerous times now, and you have stonewalled that every time (except when you felt it convenient when I used a ridiculous example to prove the point). It’s very clear that you are not engaging in reasonable discussion, whether you realise it or not, so I’m done here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:35, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

• @Dan Polansky (CC: @Theknightwho though I assume you already know this) The UK & UAE examples are automatically included with WT:CFI#Place names. If you’re going to argue that Place names shouldn’t be a policy, that’s a different discussion, but under our current policy, there’s a different between those and the full name of NASA. No comment at this point on the others though. AG202 (talk) 01:59, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Sure, but what I am investigating here are universal lexicographical principles, not those taxonomy-based arbitrary rules currently in CFI. "Exclude all multi-word proper names that name in a transparent manner", or exclude quasi-SOP names, sounds like a fine universal principle, but we do not intend to comprehensively enforce it. About the value of lemmings, let's consider the recently RFD-deleted Bank of England and the recently RFD-kept European Central Bank. The former is not quasi sum of parts (the bank serves the U.K., not England), while the latter is quasi sum of parts (it is the central bank of the EU and the meaning of European includes "of or pertaining to the EU"). The result is the opposite of what should be done, and lemmings would have prevented that. ECB was kept by near unanimity and BoE was deleted under the 2/3 threshold, so maybe it should have been kept. This happened because different groups of editors voted in the RFDs, and for BoE the deletionist ignored all the non-SOP objections and deleted the term anyway. Both terms are supported by lemmings: if both were kept, the situation would be better. One could object that we do not apply the "exclude quasi-SOP names" principle consistently, and the response would be, we mostly do except where overriden by lemmings. Dismissing lemmings would not improve the consistency all that much since we ignore the delete-SOP principle for place names; for states, this would be fine, but we include all those "X County" terms for no apparent reason. NASA is a more important organization than counties so if we include quasi-SOP county names, we can also include quasi-SOP full NASA name, together with quasi-SOP full ECB name. This leads us to classifying referents and not terms, and without lemmings, we now have to figure out which referents are large, important or powerful enough. One can also work with the lemmings principle flexibly, if one wishes: one may say that Dictionary.com does not count and that the sole Collins is not enough, and therefore NASA full name should be excluded; that's actually pretty convincing. If we had an overridable lemmings policy (overridable since otherwise it won't gain support), we could explicitly forbid Dictionary.com and make the lemming application more predictable and uniform. Without lemmings, what should be done for NASA? It is quasi SOP, but is it perhaps as prominent, notable or significant as ECB to warrant an exception? We can now ponder the principles to apply to NASA and "exclude all-SOP names" does not seem to be accepted without exception, as per ECB. One of the deleters of BoE said "the name of an institution, which in itself is not dictionary material"; to me, it is the nearly all lemmings that include United Nations, including OED, which suggest the "not dictionary material" to be blatantly incorrect. There are too many editors on the project who seem to love to arbitrate that names for some class of referents are not dictionary material even when almost all lemmings disagree. So all names of organizations are supposed to be gone, while nicknames of some individuals should be kept: that is absurd even from the point of view of prominence or importance of the referent. In any case, for those who see some value in the overridable lemming principle, NASA is weakly supported by it, and WT:NSE gives discretion to RFD voters. One may decide to require 3 independent lemmings, that's flexible; United Nations is supported by 6 lemmings. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

These are the kind of long multi-word proper names that we probably do not want to include. There does not seem to be anything lexicographically interesting about them, and are covered by Wikipedia. Orthodox Church is perhaps more defensible. Past deleted proper names are in Category:RFD result for proper names (failed). The batch could be longer; this is a start to see how it goes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP and encyclopedic. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:56, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
• Delete all as above. The only possible exception being the last one, as fundamentalist doesn’t really mean polygamous (though it is, or was, a fundament of the Mormon church). Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:14, 14 September 2022 (UTC)
• Delete all except National Aeronautics and Space Administration, per lemmings; see the discussion under the term above. More exceptions can be granted if a rationale is provided, but I currently don't see it. Deleting NASA won't be a terrible loss, as the lemming case is pretty weak, unlike for United Nations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:05, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

  Keep all except the army: I changed my mind. Our churches are listed at Thesaurus:church and we are not flooded by them. I thought it would be preferable to delete quasi-SOP names of organizations, but I am no longer convinced; it seems preferable to have some importance/notability criteria for them and keep some of the most important ones. Right now, we have no such criteria. In general, translation of proper names is a hard problem and Wiktionary can render a lexicographical service there. Wikidata has translations but not tracing to sources for them. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:07, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

  I started to keep track of inclusion arguments. Those that apply here: User:Dan Polansky/IA#Wikipedia-style generosity, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate for consistency, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Extrapolate lemmings, User:Dan Polansky/IA#Dictionary-style treatment. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  Another step toward complete circularity: adding links in discussions to you talking to yourself in userspace. Whatever your intention, it makes it look like you have your own CFI that you consider more important than the real one, because everyone else is too stupid to think like you do. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

  No circularity here. CFI's official WT:NSE requires editors to figure out their own inclusion criteria and arguments. Yes, I have my own CFI, and everyone who participates in WT:NSE-driven RFDs has their own CFI. There is no other way. The links serve concision. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:06, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Keep the Latter-Day Saints one (not SoP), the UN ones (feel relevant enough that someone would look it up, though I wouldn't be devastated if they're gone), & NASA (LEMMING). The other church ones I'm ambivalent about, and then delete Army of the Republic of Vietnam. AG202 (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I feel the LDS one should be deleted as well since it is very long and covered by Wikipedia anyway. The implied rule behind the keeping seems to be "include all attested multi-word names of organizations that are not transparent names", but that would still lead to a huge redundancy to Wikipedia since there are so many of them. Going by length of the name seems terribly arbitrary, but it's better than nothing. Another arbitrary aid are lemmings: org name in WP & not in lemmings => out. No purely lexicographical principles to aid the filtering come to mind. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

So now you do want to exclude things based on how many characters are in the string? This one has more value than some of the others, as it isn’t immediately obvious what it refers to, or why they differ from other Mormons. “Fundamentalist” is playing a role here. Theknightwho (talk) 13:51, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Number of words, to be precise. Yes, it's terribly arbitrary. If we are going to include all intransparent proper names of organizations, we are heading into a major redundancy. But I am actually happy to use lemmings instead of the number of words. There has to be some additional exclusion principle, I feel. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:01, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

I’ve had an idea: how about we consider terms on merit by discussing them, and then formulate a general policy once we can actually come up with one that isn’t arbitrary? How does that sound? Theknightwho (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Utopian. But if you can pull it off, so much better. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

The great thing about it is that it means we don’t implement arbitrary policies like LEMMING in the meantime. Glad you’ve come around to that. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, WT:NSE and lemmings walk hand in hand until you pull it off. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:45, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete, as with Talk:Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Canadian Armed Forces, etc, the last two of which Army of the Republic of Vietnam seems directly comparable to. - -sche (discuss) 01:35, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think it’s time for a general discussion about organization names at the Beer Parlour again, rather than trying to deal with this one entry at a time. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:05, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I created Wiktionary:Names of organizations to track the subject. Precedents are listed, as well as some arguments and counterarguments. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:59, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused to be honest as to why the LDS church name would not be SOP whereas the Assyrian Church of the East would be. The latter is a specific denomination and does not mean either a local church province (as the Orthodox ones can be read as) or the "church of Assyrians that's in the east". Any criterion that matches one goes for the other too. I also think attestable religious denominations ought to be included in general since it's not clear to me where the line ought to be drawn between minor ones that are encyclopedic and larger ones ("Roman Catholic Church" etc) that apparently aren't. So Keep both of those at least, I'm ambivalent on the rest. (Perhaps leaning keep on the Orthodox ones too, since they also represent distinctive practices and the precedent would otherwise logically lead to e.g. keeping Assyrian churches but deleting the sister Chaldean church since it happens to be in communion with the pope, which seems troubling.) —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

• Keep all per WT:THUB. Some readers would like to know NATO (or Nato in UK) is OTAN in French, NAVO in Dutch, etc. Otherwise I would defer to Wikipedia. Facts707 (talk) 10:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

• Kept all for no consensus. It was probably a poor idea to list all these together in the first place. This does not mean the terms could be RFD'd in future. Peace out xxx Jewle V (talk) 12:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

October 2022

most

One of the senses given for most § Adverb is:

3. superlative of many

As many is not an adverb, I do not believe it has an adverbial superlative.  --Lambiam 08:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't the usage example already covered by determiner sense 3? I don't really get the difference, if there is any. I guess that "Most times when I go hiking" is an adverbial phrase, but the word "most" itself is not being used as an adverb. 98.170.164.88 06:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, its syntactical function in the usage example is that of a determiner, the same as that of many in “many times when I’m lazy”, or most in “Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.” The difference is that one (determiner) is correct while the other (adverb) is incorrect.  --Lambiam 10:10, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Would it change anything if the sentence were worded

Most times I go hiking, I wear boots.?

I was the one who added the usex, but i realize now that my sentence doesn't illustrate adverbial use. Still, I think this is possible to interpret as an adverb if we simply omit the word when, since it will then make times function like sometimes, which is an adverb. Since only an adverb can modify an adverb, I'd say that the questioned sense does exist. —Soap— 16:56, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Here the word most modifies times, which is the plural of the noun time, sense 3.4. Adverbs do not modify nouns. The grammatical function of most times in the adverbial clause most times when is not affected by the omission of the relative adverb when.  --Lambiam  --Lambiam 19:10, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm gonna say delete. 98.170.164.88 23:58, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Are we sure that times isn't a relic genitive of time? (connected to betimes, sometimes, ofttimes, possibly others) DCDuring (talk) 17:06, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• Query: Do our definitions cover usages like: "They were the ones who won (the) most." (ie, say, "most frequently") DCDuring (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

November 2022

Citizen Kane

I don't really think this makes it a...term. The cites appear to use italics to refer to the movie, and this usage of movies/games/whatever in these kinds of contexts is pretty common, for example, "Well the movie was pretty bad, but it was surely no Manos: Hands of Fate". PseudoSkull (talk) 20:53, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

The "Citizen Kanes" cite looks promising, but phrases like "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" really shouldn't count. Binarystep (talk) 02:58, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

So if I see "The movie was no Citizen Kane" somewhere I can't come here to find out what it means? Drapetomanic (talk) 07:17, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

You would be better off going to Wikipedia and learning more about the movie than a single-sentence definition can tell you. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Same for Einstein then? Drapetomanic (talk) 14:50, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Einstein is much more generally applied and understood independently of context, I'm not sure Citizen Kane is. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:25, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Then we should look for some kind of test. Drapetomanic (talk) 07:00, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Delete per proponent. PUC – 13:03, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep, not different from Joan of Arc Drapetomanic (talk) 17:46, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: the non-proper-name uses (the X of, Xes) need to be covered in some way, whether via the current common noun sense or as part of proper name sense indicating what the entity is noted for. (The proper name sense in Joan of Arc ought to be restored: it was deleted using low-quality rationale.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete, merely being used as an object of comparison is not sufficient to be included, even if well known enough that the comparison can be made without further context. The sentiment above about a test being created is well taken, though I don't have a good suggestion for such a test. - TheDaveRoss 12:58, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I think taking a cite like "X is the Citizen Kane of horror movies" and using it to define "Citizen Kane" as "an exceptionally good movie" is questionable, anyway. Sometimes, a comparison-item can gain a new meaning, like at least some dictionaries have a sense for the use of the n-word in the famous line "woman is the [n-word] of the world", but anything can be compared: compare (...hah) google books:"woman is the Jew of". (Other examples from Google Books: "women are the Jews of the world, or Blacks are the Jews of America, or vice versa all around", "Jews are the women of the world".) If someone says "that's the Boris Johnson of arguments" is Boris Johnson now a noun meaning (take your pick!) something particularly bad or something particularly compelling? Mehhh. Einstein feels different because it's not restricted to comparisons (not restricted to just "X is the Einstein of biology", you can also just say "alright, Einstein"). If we can formulate a test, that'd be great. - -sche (discuss) 21:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete per -sche. MedK1 (talk) 15:20, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

run of luck

SOP. Not in lemmings; dictionary.com has an entry sourced from "THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® IDIOMS DICTIONARY". This, that and the other (talk) 00:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Leaning keep. It's not transparently SOP: per the OED, at least, run of luck is specifically a series of gambling wins, the more generic use to mean any spell of good fortune (not listed at our entry) is a later transferred sense. There, it has a sub-entry as a noun phrase under luck (alongside stuff like devil's luck—mere collocations are shunted to their own separate list). We also have the very similar lucky streak. There's another more general historical aspect, since etymologically it appears that the sense of run as a series or a spell might have been generalised from its use in gambling: "run of fortune" is attested from the late 17th century, whereas the more general concept in reference to events is 18th-century. Compare etymonline. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:01, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

• Delete, SOP. The collocation is not reserved to gambling contexts.^[1][2][3] One can also use the synonyms streak of luck^[4][5][6], run of fortune,^{[7][8](déjà vu)[9]} and, to complete the list, streak of fortune.^[10][11][12] Furthermore, the luck can be qualified, as in run of good luck or even of bad luck.^[13][14][15] I see no reason to think that the use of run in the sense of “series of like items” originated in gambling.  --Lambiam 12:28, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

@Lambian: Just to note, my argument above was a historical one—it is obviously used outside of gambling contexts, but this now-SOP use is transferred and not the original sense according to the OED. The "series of like items" sense of run is also listed as a subsense after "spell of luck" (similar earlier attestation is to continuous and abstract referents like "the run of time" and not a discrete series). The OED is only one source, but it seems reasonable enough and I'd want another citation to feel comfortable rejecting it out of hand. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:47, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I do not have access to the current edition of the OED, but the 1933 edition of the OED defines a sense of run as: “A course or spell of (good or ill) fortune, esp. in games of chance.”^[16] The first three supporting citations, which are ordered by date, are:

• 1697 John Vanbrugh Aesop: “forced to cut down his Timber, which he would willingly preserve against an ill run at dice”.
• 1759 Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy: “as the dice took a run against him”.
• 1782 Frances Burney Cecilia: “had had the preceding night an uncommon run of luck”.

The rest contains, in order, the collocations “a good or bad run of luck at cards”, “a long run of evil fortune”, and “a run of ill-luck”. With the 1933 OED definition, “run of luck” is definitely SOP. In my opinion, this sense is actually merely a specialization of a sense defined by the 1933 OED as: “A continued spell or course of some condition or state of things”. The aspect of fortune and the role of games of chance, if applicable, are conferred by the context in each of these quotations.  --Lambiam 22:12, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

The current edition is rather more detailed, yeah, but the 1933 would then seem to in fact support that it originated in gambling, no? All of those early uses relate to gambling. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:23, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the full passage containing the third quotation is interesting and seems to support the contention that "run of luck" in fact originated as a term specifically related to gambling: [17]. Note that it's introduced without prior context—the reader is expected to infer that it refers to gambling and not just any old luck—and also that it's italicised in a way suggesting that it's a term of art. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:39, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

These six quotations are uses of the term run. Obviously, they have been selected by Murray to support his definition, involving fortune – and a good source of discussions of fortune is provided by games of chance. So what we have here is a selection effect. Only two contain the specific collocation run of luck. We see either stand-alone uses of run or in various transparent combinations: with at dice, of luck, of evil fortune, and of ill-luck. As I said, IMO these are SOP uses of run in a more general sense. This sense of run is old enough. For example, a book from 1677 has “a run of 20 Years”,[18] viz. of the Ark residing in the house of Abinadab. Why shouldn’t one expect to see it applied to other spells or courses of something, including good or bad luck (in gambling)? The collocation “a constant run of Fortune” occurs in a book from 1694,^[19] unrelated to games of chance. Is there a reason to think this is by extension of a sense originating in gambling, instead of simply being the more general sense?  --Lambiam 18:21, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• Delete, and taken some quotes for run P. Sovjunk (talk) 00:26, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 21:30, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

dwimmer-crafty

Just used by Tolkien in that book from the year 2021(?!?!) Flackofnubs (talk) 18:05, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Yep. Leasnam (talk) 18:42, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

 Done Leasnam (talk) 18:43, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

@Leasnam This seems rather abrupt, no RFV? No waiting a few days for any discussion about whether this should be kept as a hapax legomenon? - TheDaveRoss 16:50, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Okay. Restored. Leasnam (talk) 18:47, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, WT:CFI implies that we don't include hapax legomena for WDLs, even if the hapax is from a notable work. This is written at the top of Category:Hapax legomena by language, and is confirmed by the fact that there is no English subcategory. 98.170.164.88 20:26, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

The category may be empty, but we assuredly have some. The idea that we ought to include a word which appears in three My Little Pony fanfics which will never be read by anyone, but we ought to exclude words which are intentionally included in the most-read books in the language may indicate a misalignment of policy. There is a pretty good chance someone may encounter dwimmer-crafty and be curious what it means. Policy can be wrong, and when it is we should keep the words it would exclude, or exclude the words it would keep. And perhaps fix the policy. - TheDaveRoss 21:38, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Put it in a nonce-word appendix then. (It needs a lot more love.) CitationsFreak (talk) 05:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

This should be at WT:RFVE. AG202 (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I suppose the first order of business is to RFV, although yes, if it's only used by one author it'll be deleted. We used to allow words used in only one work, but voted to remove that in 2014, see diff, voted linked in edit summary, so English terms do actually have to have been used (three whole times) and not just coined by a celebrity. If there are citations, we may nonetheless return here to RFD, because the current definition is basically "crafty in the art of dwimmer", and this works for the one cite given, and is arguably SOP. - -sche (discuss) 22:02, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

SOP is a more compelling argument to me. - TheDaveRoss 14:17, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

lol classic Leasnamism. Equinox ◑ 13:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

<<lol classic Leasnamism.>> lol classic Equinoxism. Leasnam (talk) 15:47, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

* RFD failed. It should really have been taken to RFV, but it would fail that too P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:42, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Striking close by inexperienced editor. The discussion should continue to a clearer conclusion. bd2412 T 15:36, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• RFD failed again. It should really have been taken to RFV, but it would fail that too Jewle V (talk) 13:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

December 2022

but then again

Given as "alternative form" of then again, but seems a rather grammatically different beast, and SoP. Equinox ◑ 09:25, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 20:05, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Weak Keep then again and but then both mean on the other hand or however but you wouldn't say on the other hand again or however again. You could say but on the other hand, though but however is much rarer and unidiomatic, perhaps even grammatically unsound. The phrase could plausibly be thought of as but+then again but not really as but then + again but I'd say but then again is idiomatic rather than SOP and keep it, personally. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:55, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

January 2023

aorist tense

Just attributive aorist + tense. Not comparable to future tense, past tense since the latter have trans-linguistic meanings whereas "aorist tense" is just "the tense(-aspect) of the aorist", whatever that implies in a given language (perfective in Ancient Greek, habitual in Turkish, etc). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:47, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Relevant precedent: we deleted Talk:relative future tense, too. - -sche (discuss) 17:54, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

so-and-so

Rfd-redundant — This unsigned comment was added by 81.5.38.43 (talk) at 07:41, 8 January 2023.

The sense targeted by the IP looks like it's a synonym of such-and-such. DonnanZ (talk) 10:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I think the complaint is that sense 2 ("Some thing or things") is redundant to sense 1 ("A placeholder name for a person or thing"), in which case I agree, delete, or merge. such-and-such has "placeholder or generic thing", which might be a better definition. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Nothing for that sense in Collins and Oxford hard copies, but I notice it crops up in phrases like "at so-and-so a" (time, place etc.) which could be replaced by such-and-such. Probably best described as non-standard. A quote or two would be useful. DonnanZ (talk) 17:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete/merge sense 2 into sense 1. - -sche (discuss) 23:49, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Merged. - -sche (discuss) 00:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

zero vector

Rfd-sense (mathematics) a vector whose value in every dimension is zero. i.e. ${\vec {0}}=<0,0,\ldots ,0>$. It's just a special case of the second (more general and correct) definition. The word has only one discernible sense. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 12:45, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete per nom. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:39, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps merge the definitions, it's still useful to have it spelled out (for math noobs). – Jberkel 09:24, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

How's this? - -sche (discuss) 23:51, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Merged (a while ago). - -sche (discuss) 00:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

rear front

Probably SOP. There are a few military meanings of front, which may or may not be a valid argument for keeping (or for deletion, for that matter) Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais (talk) 20:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Administrators ought to block Wonderfool User:Celui qui crée ébauches de football anglais already, protecting the project against this little playful devil. This RFD ought to be dismissed; Wonderfool ought not be allowed to create RFD nominations. Wonderfool's social standing ought to be demolished. Wonderfool ought to pledge to stop using multiple accounts, stop editing irresponsibly, and pledge to become a respectable adult citizen of the English Wiktionary. Wonderfool ought to stop being a playful child in the sense of little funny mischievous rascal and become a responsible adult; age-wise, it is probably about time. Wonderfool is one of the most useful and productive editors the English Wiktionary ever had and ought to do much better. --Dan Polansky (talk) 04:37, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

I replaced the original Webster link, which no longer worked. DonnanZ (talk) 21:05, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Might be one for RFV since I can't find any examples of this in actual use outside of dictionaries. In earlier specialist military dictionaries it's used as an adjective or adverb, and refers to the whole formation, not a single rank, e.g. [20]. There may be a game of telephone at work: the gloss copied from Webster's 1913 is "The rear rank of a body of troops when faced about and standing in that position", Worcester's 1847 has "a company or body of men when faced about, and standing in that position", citing Crabb; Crabb 1823 has "a term applied to a battalion, troop, or company, when it is faced about, and stands in that position". For the RFD as such, I would say keep since the meaning of the term, judging from the source I linked which essentially defines it as the troops individually facing backwards without the formation itself being rotated, is not really straightforward. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 07:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for scrapping my effort. DonnanZ (talk) 12:07, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Definition's word for word from Webster's and seems to be wrong so I'm afraid there's no reason to remove the notice @Donnanz, it's re-pointed to the right entry. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:06, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Re-pointed to a load of other stuff too. Anyway, it seems to be archaic, I don't know what was in vogue in 1913, the year of my father's birth. DonnanZ (talk) 14:26, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I've RFVed it and commented about the apparent POS there. - -sche (discuss) 00:12, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Deleted via RFV, for lacking citations of idiomatic use in anything like this sense in any part of speech. - -sche (discuss) 00:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

adult material

Meaning "pornography", very transparent SOP, also used for other mature content which is not pornography. - TheDaveRoss 15:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

• Keep, I think. Ostensibly the term means "material that is suitable for adults", but because it is really only used to refer to pornography (perhaps euphemistically) and not, say, movies and novels where the characters are adults, points to the fact that it is idiomatic. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

  You are looking at the wrong definition of "adult," this is the sense "intended for use only by adults" e.g. "adult content", "adult movie", "adult magazine", "adult website", "adult language" etc. - TheDaveRoss 16:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I would say keep. It's from sense 3 of the adjective, and sense 2 of the noun material. It may be "material suitable for adults" but it's also "material unsuitable for children". DonnanZ (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

We also have adult content, of which this is a perfect synonym. I think these should be kept because of their function as euphemisms; only one sense of adult is ever meant, even though all senses of the adjective could potentially apply. This, that and the other (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but how far should we extend this? We could also create entries for adult bookstore, adult comic, adult comic book, adult literature, adult video, adult video game, and adult website, among others. Definition 3 of adult could theoretically be applied to any media-related noun.

I suppose the fact that these terms are euphemistic could make them less SOP, but I'm not entirely convinced. Binarystep (talk) 06:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you on all but adult bookstore, which Ive just now created. I think it's good that we're taking these on a case-by-case basis. Another good example is adult beverage, because there's no other context where the word adult means "containing alcohol".

As for this discussion, I can see both sides .... I'd even say the nominator undercut his argument by stating that it's not just for porn .... that makes it less sum-of-parts and means we might just need to clarify the definition instead of deleting the page. Yet, I could apply the same logic to adult and say we should rework definition #3 to clarify that it doesn't just mean porn. For now I abstain. —Soap— 13:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Side note: I found "adult drink", "adult root beer float", etc. prominently on Google. On this basis, I'm going to add another sense to the adjective at adult. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 10:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete all, unless any of them pass the jiffy test. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per TheDaveRoss and Binarystep. Old Man Consequences (talk) 12:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I haven't checked, but adult should cover this, even if it doesn't yet. Equinox ◑ 00:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

If someone is said to be "noted for creating adult fingmippets" and we know that a "fingmippet" is a work in some creative medium, it will be obvious which sense of adult applies. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Delete: OK, I’m convinced so I’m changing my vote. I agree it is sufficient if the relevant meaning of adult is in that entry. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:51, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. Note that we also have adult bookstore, adult movie, adult star, and several more equally SOP entries in which adult means “related to pornography”. — This unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) at 13:01, 2 February 2023.

The reason I felt the need to create a page for adult bookstore is that it's not sum-of-parts ... knowing what adult and bookstore mean would not tell you what an adult bookstore is. An adult bookstore, so far as I know, sells primarily sex toys, with video and books being less profitable. I worded the definition conservatively out of caution. I don't think adult movie is sum-of-parts either because, while less common, there are movies with no sex but such graphic violence that they are also restricted to adult viewers in theaters, and adult movie as presently defined does not encompass that (and I believe the current definition is correct). As for adult star .... well, few native English speakers will misunderstand the meaning, but I always think of English language learners first .... for someone with an incomplete grasp of the language, it's very easy to misunderstand this as simply meaning someone who is both an adult and a star. I still don't have a strong opinion on what to do with adult material, and I promise I wont just vote keep just because Im in favor of keeping the other three .... I'd say all four of these phrases are different from each other, really, and should be treated as such. —Soap— 22:10, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per This, That and the other. AllenY99 (talk) 08:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

adult diaper

We recently deleted adult diaper as a sum-of-parts, likely influenced by this ongoing RFD. At first that made sense to me, but while I don't doubt it's the sum of its parts, there are other reasons why we list two-word entries. In this case, deleting adult diaper could lead the reader to believe that the little-heard incontinence diaper is actually the most common term for what adults wear, when this to me sounds like not just a medical euphemism but one that might not be understood by a listener (what other kind of diaper could there be?) Someone might recommend listing adult diaper as a collocation under adult or diaper or both, but this doesnt solve the problem .... a person on the adult page probably already knows what theyre looking for, and a person on the diaper page is still liable to think incontinence diaper is the term they want, as it's the only one we deem worthy of a separate entry. Moreover, there is still no policy regarding collocations and so anyone can delete them at any time; reducing an entry to a collocation seems to me little different than deletion. Lastly, there's a possibility of unexpected dialectal agreement here ... do people in Commonwealth countries who say nappy for the baby's garment always call adult diapers nappies as well? I wouldnt be surprised if people thought nappy sounded too cute to refer to what grownups wear, but perhaps Im wrong. In any case, I would like to restore the adult diaper page. One more thing I could add: it's possible I'm the one who created the adult diaper entry, as I was the one who added it to diaper; but if that's the case, I've forgotten about it. Best regards, —Soap— 11:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

February 2023

terminate

Senses:

• (transitive) To conclude.
• (intransitive) To issue or result.

Tagged with {{rfd-redundant}} by Voltaigne on 2 October 2022, not listed. These senses were added by Neel.arunabh on 16 September 2022. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for listing this and sorry for neglecting to do so. The transitive sense "to conclude" seems to me to be covered by the first sense "to end something". On second thoughts the intransitive sense "to issue or result" could potentially be distinguished from "to end, conclude, or cease; to come to an end" if it is intended to cover usages such as "the river terminates in a waterfall" or "the integer sequence terminates in three prime numbers". If so, some quotations would help to clarify the distinction. Voltaigne (talk) 12:36, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: and @Voltaigne: See the definitions at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/terminate. Neel.arunabh (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I would guess that "to conclude" is meant to cover "to occur at the end of something", but it should be rewritten in that case since "to conclude" is rather opaque. The dictionary.com definitions don't seem to support "to issue or result" as a separate sense, though I'm also confused by why dictionary.com have "to end" (intransitive) and "to come to an end" as separate senses. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

"To occur at the end of something" is intransitive.  --Lambiam 21:45, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Slightly confused by this comment—"to occur" is intransitive in that phrase, yes, but "to occur at the end of" (or rather "to occur at or form the conclusion of" in their wording) is substitutable for "to terminate", hence it being listed as a transitive sense at dictionary.com. (e.g.: "This scene terminates the play." = "This scene occurs at the end of the play.") —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:34, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

IMO, "the river comes to an end in a waterfall" or "the integer sequence ends in three prime numbers" are fine.  --Lambiam 21:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

poop on

“(transitive, colloquial, Canada, US, childish) To upset the progress of; to ruin.” Tagged by EquinoxFan2022 on 5 January, not listed. Created by Unknownuser2022 on 12 November 2022. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Those two accounts are the same person, so this could be considered a self-nomination, if it matters. Anyway ....

Delete. I'd say this definitely exists, but I suspect the meaning is so vague that it would be difficult to pin down ... it can serve as a euphemism for shit on, which itself has several different senses, and I found a children's book just now where a dog says "I really pooped on it this time" which seems to mean "I really messed up big time". I suspect that poop is the singular and standout "bad word" among small children, and essentially can substitute for just about anything. (Though I also suspect that euphemistic usages like this are more common in novels where characters have their lines fed to them, as opposed to real children who are unlikely to know the adult expressions these euphemisms are meant to replace.) Unless this expression is in common use by adults I don't think it can really be assigned a single definition. —Soap— 17:29, 20 February 2023 (UTC) edited 21:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC) to place a formal vote instead of just a comment

Yeah, I can't find any non-literal use apart from the one children's book. I think it may be that we typically don't combine metaphors with safe-for-kids euphemisms ... most kids won't understand what it's a euphemism for, and among adults it sounds awkward. —Soap— 16:47, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Inquire further Actually I'm familiar with the general term you can say that someone is trying to << poo poo >> ( sp ?) an idea, if we're going to have this particular usage, i don't knhow if we have different spellings or forms, i would require textual references with this exact spelling before would support keep Technicalrestrictions01 (talk) 14:01, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

That's pooh-pooh, which is not really the same thing. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:08, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The term definitely exists and I don't see how it would be SOP. Send to RFV if necessary. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:22, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's not sum-of-parts. This RFD was added on behalf of a new user who may not have known the difference between RFD and RFV .... it took me quite a while to figure it out myself, so I dont hold that against them. To be honest, I didnt notice it was on the wrong page .... but since I've been thinking of this as an RFV, I've done what I could to find the required three cites and come up short-handed. I thought earlier that I'd at least be able to find three uses of the phrase metaphorically and that they'd all have different meanings, but I couldn't even find that.

If someone wants to transfer this to RFV and start the clock over, I guess that's what we're supposed to do, ... and other people might remember something from a kids' TV show, or a book that I wasn't able to access. Or it may be that adults do say this and I'm just wrong. But I honestly feel we're overthinking this, and that my original intuition is correct ... we don't typically combine vulgar metaphors with child-speak, and when we do, it's meaning is likely dependent on context. So, even if we do find three uses, I expect they won't share a precise meaning. —Soap— 09:12, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

This appears to use it to mean something like "give bad luck to". 2601:147:4600:3880:3459:2B61:1A8C:AFFE

Yes, but only because the writer sets up the context by using the well-known phrase the stars smile on us (which we have as sense 5 of the verb smile).... without the setup, I dont think the readers would have understood this. —Soap— 08:20, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

786

“[…] a lucky or holy number […]”. Tagged by Sinonquoi on 10 February (“Nonsensical entry.”), not listed. Created by Kashmiri language on 9 February. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete Abstain. The numerology sense is mentioned on Wikipedia at w:786 (number) and I think it is best kept there, since to explain the significance of the number to a naive reader in a dictionary would require so much background information that it would become an encyclopedic entry. —Soap— 16:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Im sitting this out for the time being, as the recent improvements to the page and the comments below have convinced me that this is a valid entry in and of itself. But I'm still reluctant to vote keep because numerology could also provide us with definitions for numbers like 19 (also significant in Islam), 616 (a variant of 666), 777 (used in Christianity), and I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. That we haven't added entries for these already makes me wonder whether we've just never gotten around to it in all this time, or whether it's best considered outside our project's scope. —Soap— 12:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete for the above reason. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:37, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

it's ridiculous i think there was a subject here or maybe on wikipedia about how many numbers -- as numbers and not years -- should have separate entries ... delete it immediately this is just absurd ... Technicalrestrictions01 (talk) 14:00, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The fact that this has an idiomatic meaning justifies its inclusion per Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2017-05/Numbers, numerals, and ordinals, which is further supported by our recent decision to keep 666. Binarystep (talk) 01:57, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

"A lucky or holy number" isn't a sense, idiomatic or otherwise. We don't have "an unlucky number" at 4 and 13. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:11, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete per my comment above. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 02:12, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Keep, since the entry has been rewritten and per the evidence below. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:28, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete as defined. It doesn't have a meaning: it doesn't explain what it would mean if you spoke or wrote this in a sentence. Equinox ◑ 21:53, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

This book suggests it could be found in Indian Islamic books or letters as a shortening of the basmala, in which case we should definitely include it, but I don't know where to look for attestation. However, this book indicates that it is used in "truck art or other mediums vulnerable to the dirt and defilement of the outside world", in which case it may be difficult to find durably archived quotations. 70.172.194.25 00:09, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers—I found an example in diplomatic correspondence (in translation) here: [21] though worth noting that the original (scan given on previous page) uses Eastern Arabic numerals. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:21, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: I think this is another example, in English and using Western Arabic numerals: [22] (it occurs in the front matter, definitely not a page number). This might be a similar example in Urdu: [23] (I can't see the whole page, but it seems to be at the top of page 2, so it wouldn't be a page number, and I'm not sure what else it could mean). Accordingly, keep. 70.172.194.25 00:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

vandal

Sense: “(computing) A person who needlessly destroys, defaces, or damages software. The anonymous vandal was blocked after going on a vandalism spree.” Tagged by 2A01:598:99BB:D1EE:BDD5:A538:2EFC:98F9 on 20 February (today; “not really “different” from sense 1, only that the thing being vandalized is something digital”), not listed. This sense was added by Br00pVain (Wonderfool) with “(computing) {{rfdef|en}}” and the usage example on 24 December 2021. The definition was added by Inner Focus on 17 June 2022. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I agree, it's redundant, but perhaps sense 1 should be reworded since I think "other people's property" is too restrictive (apart from software, someone who decides to tear down a historic building that they own might still be described as a vandal, for example). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

agree with your assessment and with al-muqanna have to agree also when we're namedropping different enwiktionary users Dan Polansky wrote on his talk page -- was it here or on cz.wiktionary that he found it << insolent >> for those with under 50 edits to comment, vote on discussions .. where he waited years ( ?) or in any case until he had thousands of edits .. someone made a remark about his edit totals -- essentially his wiktionary +talk edits were equal in percentage to his main-namespace edits to he was there to cause trouble -- or << rule >> , impose on other people there ideas of how the project should be run -- still unclear to me .. but i agree with you it seems completely extraneous can't this wonderfool find something better to do -- or people in general who add extra definitions and senses not only here but on WP -- i've been in that position actually, i know how it is, such foolishness, such a waste of time, if you want to make your mark on the world, why don't you go outside, why don't you develop yourself as an individual rather than anonymously editing an internet web site Technicalrestrictions01 (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment: A person who damages software is not likely to go on a "spree". I think this sense is confusing the Wiktionary or wiki vandal (who can damage a lot of pages quickly, but those pages are text content, and not software/code) with the traditional virus writer or "hacker" (who might do a lot of damage to programs and systems, but doesn't go on a "spree": it involves writing careful code and releasing it in one place). I also can't remember any situation where I heard a virus writer or "hacker" called a "vandal", and I'm very old (I remember Chris Pile!). Equinox ◑ 07:18, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

(But cf. cybervandal, which like all those cyber- words is probably a fleeting 1990s coinage relating to Web sites. We know there was software and systems long before.) Equinox ◑ 07:33, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

To be fair when I mentioned people vandalising things that aren't other people's property above one of the thoughts I had was someone going rogue on Github or NPM or whatever, which could easily amount to a vandalism spree on software and doesn't even have to take much effort nowadays. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I've deleted sense 2 and tweaked sense 1. Please revise further if needed. - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Resolved? (Sense removed; other sense modified.) - -sche (discuss) 00:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

the measure of a man

SOP, see measure (“a standard against which something can be judged; a criterion”). Pinging @FishandChipper (creator) Ioaxxere (talk) 23:52, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how this could be considered SOP in the slighest. Even your included definition doesn't contradict it's inclusion. FishandChipper (talk) 06:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

well it;s an idiom yeah ? if it's in that category, i don';t know , maybe it should be .. i guess i could look on the page and even add myself with hotcat before i post the comment .. whoops ... well yeah of course many idioms, phrases which exist on wiktionary -- not only in english, but in other languages, involve forms of verbs, nouns and so on which already exist .. can't you see that the meaning and context is different ? might as well get rid of all idioms, all sayings .. take for example one's name is mud -- you can say name, named for verb form -- why not nominate it for deletion ? sorry i think i've made the point yeah don't mean to pound you into the mud here trout the new editor beat a dead horse and so on yeah Keep Fishing Publication (talk) 14:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The term measure is similarly used in “the measure of a leader”,^{[24][25][26][27]} “the measure of a statesman”,^[28] and in figurative uses of take someone’s measure.^[29][30][31] So it appears that the contested term is indeed SOP.  --Lambiam 11:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Keep. This phrase may have originated from the King James Bible, Revelation 21:17, which says And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. Now *that* is what I would call sum of parts, because it really is a literal usage of the phrase. The new meaning is much more specific and its meaning would not be immediately obvious to someone who had never heard the phrase before, or perhaps someone who had only come across it in the older Biblical usage. —Soap— 16:54, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The OED citations for this sense of measure (the standard by which something is judged) go back to the 14th century and don't involve man so I don't think it's derived from that Bible passage, which is using a different sense (literal measurement). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:02, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Well I think we agree that the usage of the word measure in the questioned sense is older than the King James Bible, and that the verse in Revelation is using in a truly literal sense. I'm saying that this phrase is not sum-of-parts because there is a literal sense used in the Bible and a nonliteral sense which is up at RFV right now. I see your point, though .... and I understand that something can be considered SOP even if it has more than one definition .... but it seems helpful to me to have a page with the two different senses listed just for those few people who might be familiar with only one sense and be confused when they see the phrase used in the other sense. —Soap— 14:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Delete as an SoP common collocation/cliche. In addition to the collocations Lambiam pointed out above, there are numerous uses of measure, in this sense, of the form take [X]['s] measure, where X can be a pronoun or a proper personal name (eg, Jack's/John's/Fred's). DCDuring (talk) 18:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap Akalendos (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

March 2023

nasal vowel

SOP: "this vowel is nasal". PUC – 08:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

oral vowel

SOP: “a vowel which resonates through the mouth (because the velum closes the passage of air through the nose)”. (Auxiliary request if the outcome of the motion to delete “nasal vowel” is successful.) Fay Freak (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

• Delete both. Ultimateria (talk) 05:59, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

not entirely

SOP. PUC – 15:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• @PUC Can entirely mean exactly (rather than completely) outside of this phrase? "Did she still make it to the wedding?" "Not entirely..." (Here it means exactly, not completely.) — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 23:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Doesn’t the response “not entirely” mean “she only made it to part of the wedding” (e.g. she was late/left early)? Or I guess it could mean “only part of her turned up” haha. I don’t interpret it as meaning “not exactly”, but this could be a regional thing.

On a related point, the quotation on the entry doesn’t seem to support this definition: “His analysis is not entirely unsound” means “his analysis is not completely unsound” (i.e. it’s partly unsound, but not fully); it doesn’t mean “his analysis is not exactly unsound”, which has a very different connotation, implying that “the analysis is actually fully sound [but might not look that way at first glance]”. There’s a much stronger argument for not exactly being idiomatic, to be honest. Theknightwho (talk) 13:48, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. PUC – 13:51, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

• I thought I had heard it used to mean "not exactly" (as a western Canadian speaker), but now I'm not certain. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 22:58, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• While few adults are likely to misunderstand the phrase, it is not strictly sum-of-parts, as the above example makes plain ... i can imagine a cartoonist using this to set up a joke. It seems odd, but I'd say that the fact that we're so used to this construction that we don't notice it's idiomatic is the very reason it must be idiomatic. I held off from this until now but I will still vote keep. —Soap— 05:46, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

April 2023

strange-ass

SOP: strange + -ass. Could be duplicated for any number of adjectives.--Simplificationalizer (talk) 01:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. We also have crazy-ass, lazy ass, smartass, and wild-ass (as adjectives). — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 01:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Here are of all the -ass adjectives we have which I find to be plainly SoP:

• big-ass
• crazy-ass
• dumb-ass
• fly-ass
• gay-ass
• grown-ass
• lazy-ass
• punk-ass
• raggedy-ass
• shitty-ass
• short-ass
• sick-ass
• sketch-ass
• smartass
• stank-ass
• strange-ass
• suck-ass
• wild-ass

 

— excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 06:49, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I think some of these like smartass, suck-ass, punk-ass, and grown-ass have validity since their meanings wouldn't be necessarily obvious from analyzing "(word) + -ass". However others like big-ass, lazy-ass, crazy-ass, fly-ass and strange-ass do appear SOP since their meanings are essentially "very (adjective)". One might even call them SOP-ass entries... – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 12:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• @User:Guitarmankev1 Hmm, I agree with you about smartass and suck-ass; I've struck those. But it still seems to me that the adjective senses of grown-ass and punk-ass are SoP: "You're a grown-ass man" == "You're a grown man"; "Some punk-ass kid tried to stop me" == "Some punk kid tried to stop me". (Perhaps the suffix adds emphasis, but that is irrelevant to idiomaticity.) — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 04:56, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

  @ExcarnateSojourner: Hm, I suppose when you compare them with sentences like that, you have a good point. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 12:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: It wasn't obvious to me, is it an American oddity? DonnanZ (talk) 08:17, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  As far as I'm aware "ass-constructions" are an American thing, specifically AAVE. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 17:17, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Delete. If it was ever an AAVE expression, it has not been so limited for a long time. See xkcd number 37, which would have been from 2005 or 2006. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Right, I'm not claiming that use of the -ass suffix is limited to AAVE (especially not anymore), only that it originated in AAVE and may be exclusively American. – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 17:39, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  There are a few words with arse ... see the arse#Derived_terms section for examples ... many of them are plainly adaptations of pre-existing American coinages, but open-arse is not .... it's just a question of whether it's the same "arse" or not (I'd say not). —Soap— 08:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

• Keep all, for more than one reason ... but I dont think I need to list them all .... just the fact that there's three different meanings of "ass" used in this list (intensifier, anatomical, and unwelcome person) is enough in my mind to rule out their being sum-of-parts. I get that other people dont see it that way, but rather than have the same argument on every RFD I'd rather just stake out my position in the shortest and simplest way possible. Thanks, —Soap— 08:16, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
  • To be clear, I did not intend to broaden the scope of this nomination by listing related terms above, but just to give context. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 04:56, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I understand, thank you. But my rationale is based on the existence of the open formation process which gives the words unpredictable meanings, and so applies to every word in the set, even if we only consider one at a time. —Soap— 18:07, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap. Binarystep (talk) 11:36, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap. Americans seem to be blissfully unaware that this word may not be used elsewhere in the English-speaking world. DonnanZ (talk) 11:56, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Delete. It's not that Americans are unaware this may not be used elsewhere, but I don't see how the definition of strange-ass as "very strange" isn't SOP of strange and the first definition listed under -ass: "Used to intensify an adjective". That is, I don't see how strange-ass is any more unique than any (adjective) + -ass formation? Should we also have entries for narrow-ass, wide-ass, wet-ass, dry-ass, etc? – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 12:34, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Delete per Guitarmankev. SOP. -ass already has the appropriate tags (US, Canada). PUC – 14:18, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep all. Please avoid doing batch nominations. Some of these blatantly pass by policy with WT:COALMINE. See also: WT:HOSPITAL. I don't get why we have these checks if no one uses them. It's extremely frustrating. AG202 (talk) 14:58, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This does not seem a batch nomination because only strange-ass is tagged. Pinging @ExcarnateSojourner for confirmation. J3133 (talk) 15:07, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

• @AG202 This is not a batch nomination; I've learned my lesson with those. (See my reply to Soap above.) Thank you, J. It seems I've confused multiple people with my list, so I've struck the entire list for the sake of clarity. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

fuck it up

fuck up + it. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
• Hmm, there is a similar entry for fuck up. Though it's not my kind of language, they seem to have (slightly) different senses. DonnanZ (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

  I don't necessarily understand SoP, but fuck up is very similar to fuck it up. it could be normal to express this on the pages, as on the page there is already a link to fuck up. i only made the page because it was requested entry, but at the same time i believe the definitions are unique (in a sense).

  i'm very new to this, so i may be wrong, but i think this definition should stay :] | 24.227.101.130 14:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Keep for the second sense. We don't have a sense at fuck up corresponding to the quotes on the citations page. (I'm not sure the second sense is defined correctly, but that's another issue)--Simplificationalizer (talk) 13:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Běijīng

Rfd-sense-- @Acolyte of Ice, J3133, LlywelynII At Talk:Běijīng, LlywelynII is really opposed to this term being an English language word. I personally am ambivalent-- J3133 made this English language sense and added three good cites (see Citations:Běijīng). Acolyte of Ice was against keeping it. I'm just not sure what to think!! I don't know if this is English or not. I'd love to see the smart people take a look at this one. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

Delete: I don't think the word with diacriticals would be used in ordinary English text. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:08, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw Thanks for your input! That makes 100% sense, and I really agree. I get it! But what about these three cites (Citations:Běijīng) that J3133 found?? Do they prove the Mandarin pinyin sense? Do they prove some Translingual sense? What is that linguistic phenonmenon in those cites, and how does Wiktionary deal with it? Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:16, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

You are bound to find some uses of pinyin diacriticals in English language text, but I don't think this should be taken as an indication that the use of such diacriticals are the norm in English texts. It could just be code-switching, or sometimes texts aimed at people learning Mandarin Chinese will include such diacriticals. I recall, for example, that the print version of the South China Morning Post used to do this—when referring to something with a Chinese name such as a person or a place, it would give the name in Chinese characters and add the pinyin transcription with diacriticals. But this is far from the usual case. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:30, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep (change from Neutral above): In this diff from March, I explored the three good cites that J3133 had used to make this sense. Today, I found three more cites which I added directly to Citations:Běijīng. I think that Sgconlaw has missed the point- these cites don't document the "common" version of Beijing- they document an alternative form that occurs in specialized literaure indpendent from the presence of any Chinese characters or parentheses. So I have changed my mind personally to believe that yes, this is a (as J3133 says) "rare" alternative form of Beijing. The fact that English does not use the diacritics for anything doesn't change that in my mind. Those six cites at Citations:Beijing show a linguistic phenomenon that I think is beyond 'Translingual' and beyond 'Mandarin'. So I agree with J3133's original creation of this sense in this diff. I would never have made that edit, but now that I have confirmed J3133's three cites and I have found three more myself, I think there's some "there" there. If you all decide against this, I totally understand! (I have no further comment to make on this issue; please vote as you will below.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:03, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I would just comment that this may mean creating an English entry for many, many pinyin transliterations with diacriticals. — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete: Pronunciation-wise, the version with diacritics suggests to me that it should be pronounced as if it were pinyin (with tones and phonemes not found in English and what not), which is different from the usual pronunciation of the English word Beijing without the diacritics. Also agree with Sgconlaw that this would result in many, many English entries for pinyin transliterations – I know this is rather of a slippery slope argument and perhaps these entries may never be created and cited, but it is obvious that this will be done very soon if someone (e.g. Geographyinitiative) puts in their effort. Wpi31 (talk) 18:11, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Comment: in some print Bibles (and maybe still today online) you can see ample diacritics on transcribed Hebrew names, and I think possibly Greek names. These are an aid to pronunciation, and may also provide a one-to-one transliteration from the original language. Does anyone know what this is called? Its possible I havent seen it lately because it's mostly used with children's Bibles. In any case, I think we could all agree that there is no need to create an entry for, e.g. Nĕbücḥadnĕzzär even if it appears spelled that way in three different Bibles or other religious texts. On that rationale I'd be leaning towards deletion, however I'm not sure it's actually the same thing. Putting tone diacritics on the name Běijīng isnt likely to change anyone's pronunciation of it in English ... since they represent tones, it wouldnt be English anymore if someone did pronounce them. Also, Im not too worried about the prospect of more diacriticked entries like this. Creating properly cited pages is a lot of work, and it will only get harder if we move on toi less common placenames. —Soap— 19:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I would view this as code-switching. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete: this should be considered a direct rendering of Mandarin. It might also be worth noting that at least two citations are explicit about the non-English nature of their use of diacriticked text (i.e. what they record is not the nativised English pronunciation such as /beɪˈ(d)ʒɪŋ/, but instead Mandarin proper), so they in particular might not be good cites after all:

People's Peking Man p.xvii: "Rendering Chinese: [...] Where Romanization of Chinese is necessary, I use the pīnyīn system, complete with tone marks. Tones are essential to the Chinese language, and readers who hope to discuss this subject in Chinese will benefit from knowledge of the correct pronunciation."

Similarly, The Shortest History of China p.8: "Chinese is a tonal language—the contoured pitch at which words are spoken is integral to the meaning. When using Pinyin, I add diacritics to indicate the four tones of Putonghua in the first instance a word appears, as well as in the index, where you’ll also find the Chinese characters for individuals’ names." 蒼鳥 _{fawk. tell me if i did anything wrong.} 12:39, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

I vote delete per the aforementioned reasons pretty much. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 13:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Comment. Note that we voted (maybe it was just in RFD) to remove Sanskrit entries that were written in the Latin alphabet with diacritics, rather than include them as either English or Sanskrit entries. It was a while ago, and I'm too lazy to hunt it down, but I would think this should follow that precedent. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:44, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Sheedy We include pinyin entries under Mandarin, and I don't think anyone's proposing that we remove that. Theknightwho (talk) 10:39, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I do, below. I'm sure others have as well. — LlywelynII 07:32, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The cites mentioned are in English, without an explicit intent to help the reader understand Chinese. I have a feeling that there are very few citations like these in English for other Chinese place names. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 02:26, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@CitationsFreak You would be wrong. The sources are explicitly (outside the quote) using pinyin to help the user with Chinese, as pointed out at length in the posts above yours. The tone marks have no possible meaning in the English language, except as a transliteration system of Mandarin (not English) pronunciation and the sources acknowledge that. They're just supporting using Mandarin to speak Chinese names, instead of using English.

More importantly, it will be possible for editors to create thousands or tens of thousands of these on the basis of random apparances of pinyin in English running text. It doesn't seem particularly helpful to do so, especially when you realize similar code switching happens in dozens of other languages and we'll need #French #German #Italian etc. entries for tonal Beijing. It's a waste of everyone's time and a misguided sense of formatting.

Alternatively, all pinyin entries need to be moved from "Chinese" to "Translingual", which is both more accurate and solves the problem coming and going. This is exactly the situation with using plants' Latin names in running text. — LlywelynII 07:28, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

If we don't count the Peking Man and Shortest History cites, there are still four cites that, as far as I know, use this spelling without helping the reader to pronounce this capital. CitationsFreak: Accessed 2023/01/01 (talk) 07:47, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

All pinyin entries are (or should be) under the Mandarin L2 label, which is honestly the most accurate. If we move them to translingual then anything that could be "codeswitching" could be under it, which wouldn't really make as much sense. AG202 (talk) 14:58, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Nope, if we're counting this as 'English', then it is translingual. Otherwise, you end up spamming every major Chinese city and every language with sinologists with pinyin "citations" in the running text of some speakers. — LlywelynII 11:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Note that I personally did not count this as English and specifically said that it should be under the Mandarin header. AG202 (talk) 13:16, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

No. I will not be happy if pinyin from Mandarin as spoken in mainland China were to be promoted against other varieties of Chinese. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 02:01, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Geographyinitiative and CitationsFreak. Binarystep (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

@Binarystep Fair enough for GeoIni but CF's points were demonstrably wrong, as detailed by others within this thread. These mostly are sources that are going out of their way to use Mandarin pronunciation (/code switching) within English. They don't repeat that at every usage, but it is mentioned and is their rationale. There's no other possible meaning of the tones, other than marking the Mandarin pronunciation; it's like treating macroned Latin as optional English because English also has some Latin phrases. Beijing is English. The form listed here is just Chinese in English running text. Et al. is a kind of English. Et ālia isn't. — LlywelynII 11:28, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Without commenting on whether this really is English, I would remind you that the mere fact that there's no good reason to do something in English doesn't mean that English speakers don't do it anyway. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete. A foreign word or a rare misspelling of an English word. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 11:27, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete This is the same as writing an English sentence that includes a italicized Latin word. Furthermore the pinyin is already under the Chinese heading below. Readers will recognize the tone marks as being from Mandarin and will know that it's a some kind of romanization of a Mandarin word which causes them to look at the corresponding Mandarin entry. Since having a separate English entry does not further improve readers' understanding, this entry should be deleted. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 03:40, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Per my comment on the talk page I see no real value in keeping the English section of the entry. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 13:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

@Acolyte of Ice: You have already voted. J3133 (talk) 13:35, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh, my bad...it's been so many days I forgot lol. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 14:01, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

ground offensive

SOP. PUC – 19:36, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
• Keep. Ƿidsiþ 15:44, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

  Struck out, no rationale provided. PUC – 17:11, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  You can't strike out other people's votes. Theknightwho (talk) 22:39, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  Are we required to give a rationale? I suppose WT:FRIED and WT:PRIOR both have bearing on it. Ƿidsiþ 12:42, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

  A closing admin could certainly disregard a !vote with no rationale. I would grant that the discussion following the !vote here constitutes the requisite rationale. bd2412 T 18:52, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

  @BD2412: This isn't Wikipedia though, the established understanding here is that RFD votes are partly quantitative and it's not just about the closer weighing arguments. As was voted into Wiktionary:Voting policy last year: "Tallying does play a role." —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

  Even so, the closer has some discretion based on the weight (or lack of weight) of arguments. bd2412 T 19:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete I don't see how either of those tests apply. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:09, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  OK, put it this way. A ground attack in aviation is specifically an attack on the ground, from the air. A ground offensive is by contrast an attack over the ground, using ground forces. There is no logical reason why these two terms should not be switched around; but they aren't. They mean specific things. Ƿidsiþ 15:17, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I disagree - a ground attack can also refer to an attack carried out over land: see Collins. That strongly suggests it’s merely SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 15:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, that's interesting, since half their examples don't support what their definition says! In any case, I still feel strongly that "ground offensive" is a set term in English, and should be included. Ƿidsiþ 05:27, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

words cannot describe

SOP. PUC – 18:36, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

• Hmm, is there something idiomatic in its use exclusively to describe extremes? It seems to mean "there are no words strong enough to describe", rather than "there are no words with precisely the right nuance to fully describe". On the other hand, words cannot express gets more Google Ngram hits, and I imagine there are a few other similar phrasings. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 05:32, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

May 2023

leave someone unread

SOP. Ioaxxere (talk) 00:07, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

As I said on the talk page (and how it was in the entry before you changed it), this might simply be leave someone on read. – Jberkel 08:34, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps {{misconstruction of|leave someone on read}} could be used. Einstein2 (talk) 08:50, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good. The second cite is from a podcast, so it might just be a transcription error there, but I've seen this form mentioned on reddit as well. Jberkel 09:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

I just don't see evidence that this is a misconstruction of anything—see for example [32] Ioaxxere (talk) 10:29, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

This articles takes some time to define both phrases, it's not that transparent (referring to someone's messages, not the person). – Jberkel 15:41, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:10, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. Here someone states, “I guess I'm still on read.” And here someone asks, “Which here wants to remain on read?” It thus appears that leave someone on read = leave someone +‎ on read.  --Lambiam 20:17, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. If I were using this de novo, I'd mean leaving the author's works unread, e.g.: "I've looked at the UK's 'Inklings' group, loved Tolkien, had mixed feelings about Lewis, and couldn't get into Williams at all, so I left him unread." Likewise for email or social media posts. – .Raven (talk) 03:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. If one leaves ”someone” unread it means the ”works he has written”. The ivory tower would recommend me Hegel but I left him unread. Dating experts recommended me to watch Star Wars but I left it unwatched. Hypebeasts recommended me shitty NIKE shoes, but I have left this meme brand unworn / it is yet unworn by me. And so on. Not all combinations are equally likely, but this does not make some idiomatic in the sense that a dictionary entry is required. Fay Freak (talk) 11:30, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

marine toilet

Err, SOP, right? Skisckis (talk) 08:17, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

• No idea. Do they use seawater? Do they have retention tanks or not? DonnanZ (talk) 11:25, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Devil's advocate: "marine" means sea-related. Not all boats go to sea. Equinox ◑ 17:12, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but when they don’t then one is less likely to use toilets on the boats but more likely to use a better toilet in a land building. Just a natural likelihood distribution, hence the name. Does not reach the threshold of idiomaticity. Delete. Fay Freak (talk) 11:36, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per Equinox. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 20:04, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

• KEPT Denazz (talk) 12:29, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to reopen this and say, based on the current definition (and even on the corresponding WP article), my !vote is delete. I am sceptical that "marine toilet" could be attested in reference to the toilets of purely freshwater-going vessels any more often than "marine" in general and in other phrases could be attested in reference to such vessels. - -sche (discuss) 19:43, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

not-to-scale

to-scale

These are both prepositional phrases that act like adjectives when used attributively, not adjectives. The main problem, though, is that the hyphenated spelling is just what happens to any phrase when used as a modifier, and we already have an entry for to scale. I suppose one could make a case for keeping to-scale as an alternative form, but by any analysis not-to-scale is SOP. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, unscaled is not a synonym of not-to-scale... DonnanZ (talk) 14:06, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

And scaled is not a synonym of to scale. So what? Chuck Entz (talk) 14:22, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

So there may be a case for not to scale. DonnanZ (talk) 14:51, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

We have an entry to order, and a good reason for not having an entry not to order.  --Lambiam 16:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Hardly a good comparison - It was not stolen to order.

A model not to scale is not a scale model. DonnanZ (talk) 17:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

"I have only once written a book, not to order, exactly, but to please a particular audience; a girl of seven who was, as she put it. ‘a little bit blind.’ "^[33]  --Lambiam 14:02, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

-poiesis

Not convinced it's a suffix. Forms ending in -poiesis can be analysed as compounds of poiesis. PUC – 09:01, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Delete. This is just as little a suffix as synthesis in amorphosynthesis, autosynthesis, baryosynthesis, biosynthesis, chemosynthesis, cosynthesis, ecosynthesis, electrosynthesis, glycosynthesis, heterosynthesis, hyposynthesis, ketosynthase, liposynthesis, mechanosynthesis, narcosynthesis, neosynthesis, nucleosynthesis, oligosynthesis, osteosynthesis, photosynthesis, phytosynthesis, proteosynthesis, psychosynthesis, pyrosynthesis, radiosynthesis, retrobiosynthesis, retrosynthesis, thermosynthesis and tomosynthesis.  --Lambiam 16:37, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Keep. This is somewhat similar to -phobia, -genesis or -lysis, most of which are treated as suffixes despite the existence of a corresponding common noun with the same meaning. The noun poiesis is rarely used independently, and according to OED2, its first attestation is from 1934, compared to 1900 for hemopoiesis and 1918 for lymphopoiesis, which suggests that a derivation from poiesis in these terms is unlikely. Also, Collins, M-W, Dictionary.com and OED2 all contain -poiesis as a combining form. Einstein2 (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

June 2023

mounting

Rfd-sense: That continues to mount; steadily accumulating. - probably just verbal usage, not a true-adj Mr. and Mrs. Bombastic (talk) 20:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Just compare

•  the evidence is pretty damning ;
•  the evidence is pretty convincing ;
• *the evidence is pretty mounting.

So this fails one of the most basic adjectivality tests.  --Lambiam 21:13, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

When used like that, the present participle is pretty obvious (though "pretty mounting" raises my eyebrows), but used before a noun it modifies it. I would keep this all the same. Present and past participles are frequently used as adjectives, but I avoid creating entries for them, preferring to add a quote to the relevant participle. DonnanZ (talk) 23:19, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Leaning keep – Cambridge Dictionary, Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and OED2 all have separate adjective entries for mounting. Einstein2 (talk) 09:11, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Those refs are good enough for me. DonnanZ (talk) 09:22, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete; the participle cannot be modified with very or compared with most. Moreover, I note that OED2 does not actually contain a sense that corresponds to ours. It is true that Cambridge has an entry. I would not consider learner's dictionaries useful for the lemming test - they will pick up common uses of particular non-lemma forms to assist their readers to understand typical English texts, which is not what we are aiming to do on this project. This, that and the other (talk) 02:24, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam and This, that and the other. PUC – 06:41, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

smackers

Rfd-sense: "(humorous slang) Money."

It's just the plural of smacker ("dollar"). Money is uncountable in this sense; smackers is not. DCDuring (talk) 22:09, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I almost agree with that but we should rewrite the definition of smacker along the lines of the one already in Collins dictionary, namely 'a pound or a dollar' (or 'a dollar or a pound' if you like) as it can certainly refer to pounds. I remember a parody song on the radio about the divorce between Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit where the lyrics parodied the Oasis song 'Don't Look Back in Anger' - it went:- "Oh Patsy can wait, she wants it all on a plate and there's just no way (can't remember the next line). She wants 5 million smackers, I heard her say". Of course she did then go on to win 5 mil in the divorce settlement, I can't find that online but I'm sure I could dig up some cites with this meaning. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:55, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I've found and added some cites where 'smackers' and 'smackeroonies' is used to mean pounds to Citations:smacker and Citations:smackeroonies but this word and all its variants doesn't mean money in an uncountable sense. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 14:30, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

A motto or aphorism, rather than a proverb. That the definition is almost entirely a rephrasing save for the last part is for certain a hint. Consider also Wiktionary:Proverbs, this lemma certainly fails attributes 1 and 2, perhaps in addition to other ones. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 09:42, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete per proponent. Makes me think of traue keiner Statistik, die du nicht selbst gefälscht hast, which was unfortunately kept. PUC – 09:51, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Which in turn makes me think of Lies, damned lies, and statistics (which I'm surprised we don't already have as an entry). --Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:31, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Asides, I can elaborate on the etymology. English quote sites generally stop at English sources in the mid-nineteenth century, but it is attested earlier in French, as one would expect of an authentic dictum by Napoleon. The oldest attestion that I have found is by Jomini: […] quand l'ennemi fait un faux mouvement, il faux se garder de l'interrompre. A rather literal rendering of this would be "when the enemy is making a false move, one ought to withhold from interrupting him." Jomini was an officer under Napoleon, so the saying may well be authentic (I do not know how trustworthy Jomini is as a source for Napoleon). Jomini used to be widely read at West Point as well. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 21:01, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 01:37, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

never change a running system

Discussion moved from WT:RFVE.

It seems like a pseudo-anglicism, as opposed to an actual English proverb, and thus doesn't belong under an English language header. Megathonic (talk) 13:43, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

It seems SoP. It is a flat, boring definition of more colorful and common expressions like if it ain't broke don't fix it. IOW, it seems more deserving an RfD. DCDuring (talk) 16:43, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Delete. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 11:42, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Remark. It is obviously a variation of never change a winning team, which I think is a far more common saying than don't change a winning team.  --Lambiam 10:22, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep - it’s a proverb, and which is not something that can be deduced from the constituents alone. It has essentially the same meaning as if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Theknightwho (talk) 10:34, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep per TKW. It's not entirely SOP because of the potential polysemy of "running", e.g. it's not, in this case, just telling you to shut down a programme before you make changes to it, which might be the more natural interpretation out of context. It has at least one third-party dictionary entry (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms). I've also added various quotations citing it as a proverb. It's true that this apparently originated in Germany but it isn't a pseudo-Anglicism in the sense that, say, French smoking is; it makes perfect sense in English and looks widely attested in English-language publications. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:16, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

nape of the neck

Equinox suggested, on the Talk page, that this entry is redundant. 12 years later, I agree with them. Elevenpluscolors (talk) 06:34, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

• Would the empty space test apply here? — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 02:04, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

According to nape, fish have them, but I don't think fish have necks. DonnanZ (talk) 07:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:55, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

• RFD-failed, I suppose P. Sovjunk (talk) 00:17, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

have one's pockets on swole

"To have a lot of money" SOP of pocket (“financial resources”) and on swole (“swollen, enlarged”). Ioaxxere (talk) 19:06, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I'm not sure that I can articulate why, but this doesn't "feel" to me like it's simply "pocket" + "swole". I also tend to be more lenient when it comes to combining multiple figurative senses together. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

There is only one figurative sense. swole is a dialectal variant of swollen. Ioaxxere (talk) 20:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Both "pocket" and "swole" are being used in a figurative sense. "Swole/swollen" refers to physical enlargement, and only by extension (i.e., figuratively) to the enlargement of financial resources, etc. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep - readers unlikely to deduce meaning from parts. Facts707 (talk) 14:03, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

elder

One who is older than another.

Respect your elders.

This sense was removed by Mechanical Keyboarder on 28 April, with the edit summary “redundant”. We still have the translation table. J3133 (talk) 06:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Where it was, diff. It might have been considered redundant to sense 1, "An older person". DonnanZ (talk) 23:18, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah this is difficult. I strongly support keeping the deleted sense ... it's definitely not redundant ... but Im having a hard time explaining why. Maybe it would've been more clear if we hadnt used the word older in the deleted sense with its literal meaning and in sense 1 with its idiomatic meaning of someone who is advanced in age ("elderly"). Further complicating things is that I think elder can also be used both ways, e.g. an elder child can be six years old, but the elders of the community cannot. —Soap— 09:06, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

[:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mechanical_Keyboarder] shows only 53 edits. Hardly an experienced user. DonnanZ (talk) 09:55, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

My Oxford Dictionary of English has:

(one's elders) people who are older than one: schoolchildren were no less fascinated than their elders.

(one's elder) a person who is older than one by a specified length of time: she was two years his elder.

Turning to Collins, my copy says, "an older person, one's senior", before covering tribal and religious elders. Online. Collins says: "A person's elder is someone who is older than them, especially someone quite a lot older: The young have no respect for their elders.

On this basis, I recommend that the deleted sense is reinstated. DonnanZ (talk) 14:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge senses? The definition of the first sense, “An older person”, is problematic. We give two senses for older: 1. “comparative form of old: more old, elder, senior” and 2. “elderly”. A user who is not proficient in English cannot know that in “An older person” the comparative is meant; used as a noun, elder – whether “an elder” or ”someone’s elder”, does not mean “an elderly person”. (The person referred to may of course happen to be elderly, but this is not conveyed by the term.) That said, like the deleting editor, I suspect that the intention of this definition is the same as that of the deleted sense, so instead of simply reinstating it, I think they should be merged into something unambiguous, such as “Someone who is older (than another person).”  --Lambiam 14:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 to merging with the first sense. I can't imagine saying, of an older person, "see that elder across the way?" it has to be relative [someone's elder, my / your elder]. +sj + 20:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

This is really an RFV question, isn't it? I think of the YouTube series "Elders React", where the participants were referred to as elders in a non-relative sense, in the same way as the word seniors is used. Here and here are some uses of elders in a non-relative sense. This, that and the other (talk) 04:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. My first reaction was that these could be merged with sense 1 as ~"An older person (especially relative to someone else)". But could they, really? Maybe the difference in what "older" means in one vs the other, as Lambiam points out, suggests it's better to keep the senses separate like this (though I would move them next to each other for clarity and redefine this one more like "(in particular) A person who is older than someone else, in relation to that person"). - -sche (discuss) 02:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Colon Street

Another street that fails our CFI for place names because it lacks figurative senses. (Previously nominated as a member of Category:en:Roads but not discussed directly.) — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 03:34, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Delete as policy requires unless a figurative meaning can be established. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:47, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I decided to not add a street entry I discovered today to the category in question, due to the category's toxicity. DonnanZ (talk) 16:50, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

In other words, I refrained from adding the category to the entry. DonnanZ (talk) 10:28, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to solicit other people's input about this, and the previous discussion at Talk:Avus: if a user is trying to add/hide edits they know are policy-noncompliant, are we in the position of needing to remove the user from the Autopatroller user group so their edits show up in the patrol log again...? (The street in question above may've been Broadmead or Dundas.) - -sche (discuss) 18:34, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, @Donnanz, I don't know what you are trying to achieve by deliberately flouting policy. Either accept the current policy, or propose a change in policy through the proper channels and abide by the result, whichever way it goes. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@-sche, Sgconlaw: If Broadmead, which I didn't create, never had the category in the first place (you can check the entry's history), I can't be accused of deleting it and flouting policy. DonnanZ (talk) 19:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

qualifying round

A round of qualifying. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:16, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

(Definition isn't great, by the way: "where the winner moves"...? During, afterwards?) Equinox ◑ 16:53, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Keep but change the sucky definition Pinch88 (talk) 19:04, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

mathematical function program

SoP. Also barely attested, but probably keepable at RFV. This, that and the other (talk) 06:48, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

• Delete, transparent (although it is unusual to refer to a subroutine as "program"). I doubt this would survive RFV; I see a use of the term mathematical function program library,^[34] but this is a program library of mathematical functions, where a program library is a collection of subroutines.^[35][36]  --Lambiam 13:52, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

oscillating

Is it really an adjective of just a gerund? Spicker and spanner (talk) 08:11, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

OED2 has a participial adjective entry with various senses. Einstein2 (talk) 11:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't rule it out, quotes illustrating adjectival usage are needed. DonnanZ (talk) 08:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep, have added a bunch of unambiguously adjectival cites. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:36, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

July 2023

family pajamas

SOP? What's your poisson? (talk) 16:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep If these really include pets, it's definitely not SOP. No one would get that just from knowing the definitions of the two words. And I do see advertisements showing the full matching set including dogs. —Soap— 23:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we should move the content to the (currently red-linked) given synonym famjams, and reduce this to a synonym. Then we lose less if it's deleted. Equinox ◑ 13:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete. "Famjams" doesn't look attestable and I don't care about the content. Ultimateria (talk) 01:26, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a legitimate compound formation with family. Leaning keep. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 14:55, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

instance dungeon

Redundant to instance senses 9-10. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The word instance has other meanings in video gaming, though admittedly Im thinking more about game design than game playing. (If I search Google for instance of an enemy I see people using six different game engines asking similar questions.) It does seem at least that not every instance is a dungeon in games such as STALCRAFT, so it's possible that some games prefer the longer form instance dungeon to make it clear what they mean. This is just a comment, though. —Soap— 09:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

There is a video-game sense of instance (which we have), but I don't think "instance of an enemy" is using that sense. In programming if you have a type of object (e.g. defined by an OOP class) then any object of that type is an "instance". Equinox ◑ 13:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay thanks. It sounds I picked up a programming term and thought it was related to video games specifically. As for the existing senses we have at instance, yes, I saw those, and at first I thought they were too specific, but I suppose "dungeon or other area" is broad enough to cover the uses in non-RPG games like STALCRAFT. —Soap— 15:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

reduce to rubble

SOP. PUC – 09:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

It does have figurative use ("dreams reduced to rubble"), where "rubble" alone generally doesn't (?). Equinox ◑ 13:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

”Rubble” does not need to be understood strictly materially. It is even covered by our definition of it “the broken remains of an object” when broken is taken figuratively. Figurative senses otherwise are often left out. SOP. Fay Freak (talk) 13:50, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox: "turn to rubble" can also be used figuratively ("The social, political, and economic system of the whole country had turned to rubble"), as well as "pile of rubble" ("my life is a pile of rubble"). PUC – 14:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, PUC, I didn't write an explicit "keep": this was just an observation. Equinox ◑ 01:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• Delete Any meaning assigned above doesn't appear to be specific to this phrase * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:03, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 01:24, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• RFD deleted Denazz (talk) 21:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

back pedal brake

A synonym for something with an idiomatic name, which shouldn't save it from being SOP in itself Lesscot, J (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:03, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
• It's a synonym, right? I didn't know the term coaster brake, so I would keep it. I seem to remember calling it a back pedal brake. DonnanZ (talk) 07:42, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
• Keep don't think this is obvious from the parts. Also, we don't have a noun back pedal, so this would be back + pedal + brake. – Jberkel 13:27, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

There is the verb backpedal or back-pedal, though. My Oxford includes for back-pedal: move the pedals of a bicycle backwards (formerly to brake). DonnanZ (talk) 23:27, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

• Shouldn’t this be spelled backpedal brake? The latter is a red link under the derived terms of backpedal and at the definition of Dutch terugtraprem. I doubt think someone unfamiliar with the concept would guess the meaning of the compound from those of its components.  --Lambiam 20:56, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

corporate social responsibility

Deleted as SOP in 2012, maybe time to re-evaluate. Jberkel 14:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep Tellingly, the only quote we have at social responsibility is "corporate social responsibility", and it seems to be much more common in this combination. – Jberkel 13:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep as term of art. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:03, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete as a meaningless corporate buzzword. Corporate PR media is frequently laced with facile, promotional, or vapid jargon in this vein. AP295 (talk) 13:26, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Wiktionary is a descriptive dictionary. If it's in use in the language in question, isn't just a transparent combination of other terms, and isn't a term for a specific thing like the name of an individual, we have an entry for it. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:57, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

One can just as easily say it should be deleted as SoP. Descriptivism is all well and fine but if it means wiktionary must include meaningless corporate jargon (if it's not SoP in the first place) then I have to question the value of descriptivism as such a strict, dogmatic approach. AP295 (talk) 17:12, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Naturally I shall follow the rules. I only mean to say that it does not seem ideal to apply absolute prescriptivism or absolute descriptivism. Descriptivism might be easier to justify, but if it's followed strictly and to the point that the language is debased as a result of integrating any sort of nonsense just because people use it, then clearly that's not a responsible approach. In other words I feel it's a bit of a cop out if it's taken to the extreme, because it requires one to enshrine every popular buzzword or stock phrase as long as it's arguably not SoP, regardless of whether such words and phrases are subversive, or politically expedient, or generally a bastardization/distortion of the language at large. It seems like common sense that neither are ideal when they're set in stone. AP295 (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a term of art. We don't delete things because some people can't be bothered to learn what they mean or because they don't like them. We're not a propaganda outlet. Theknightwho (talk) 02:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

white

Rfd-sense: (board games, chess) The person playing with the white set of pieces. - in any competition that there is a white team this "sense" can be used, ("white was up three points to two"). While it is true in chess that the sides are referred to as white and black, the same is true in go and many other games which have white or black pieces, and when there are other colors those are also referred to by name. It doesn't seem like a distinct sense of white. - TheDaveRoss 16:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The person playing with the white pieces is clearly distinct from the white pieces themselves, whether chess or go (or some other game) is being referred to. —-Overlordnat1 (talk) 17:01, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep, I guess. The fact that it is a metonymy is not a particularly strong argument by itself, especially as it can probably be applied to other colour names besides "white" and "black". I'm more convinced by the fact that lemmings have seen fit to include this metonymy as a separate sense or subsense. This, that and the other (talk) 07:59, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Weak delete. I'm not sure on this one... Should this same sense be added to red, since checkers uses red pieces? What about yellow, blue, red and green when playing parcheesi? You could probably find any given color in some board game where it would be appropriate to refer to one player as that given color... – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 12:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Overlordnat1. Nothing about this sense's existence in multiple board games invalidates it; it is very common in chess particularly. –CopperyMarrow15 (talk | edits) Feel free to ping me! 20:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

take its toll

To me this is NISoP, as the quotations seem to me to show. DCDuring (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

• Agree this in principle could be SoP, but the relevant sense of toll is worded poorly (loss or damage incurred through a disaster), whereas the definition here does not reference a disaster per se. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:00, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

by now

This is just sum of parts. Kiwima (talk) 23:01, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Mh, I guess, but what about from now on, up to now (an entry I created, admittedly)? +for now PUC – 08:41, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@PUC: I guess the question is why "now" is privileged here—not sure these are any less SOP than up to that point, from the foundation of the Empire on, etc. I'm ambivalent on "by now" but the other two seem harder to justify to me. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:31, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Surely WT:THUB applies to this sort of basic construct. I see lots of idiomatic translations in the box. This, that and the other (talk) 10:20, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Something tells me we should keep this. The translations for a start, and it seems to be a bit unique. DonnanZ (talk) 11:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

It is SOP, but it should be kept per THUB. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:24, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Kube

Rfd-sense "(computing) An individual container of the Kubernetes orchestration system." Jargon specific to a particular system, not particularly relevant for a general dictionary. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete Jberkel 12:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep. Not sure why we shouldn't have jargon. The real question is whether it's attestable. cf (talk) 01:54, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

two-pronged

As three-pronged, totally SOP Fumble through it (talk) 16:56, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

• Three-pronged is a coalmine, so there's a good chance two-pronged is as well. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 18:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

August 2023

South China

Rfd-sense "Southern China"-- maybe SOP? Or it could be changed to a "lb|en|literal|usually| &lit|en|south|China" or similar --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, we definitely need this, as it has a Wikipedia article plain to see: w:South China. The idea of looking up South China and finding a village in Maine but no mention of the vastly larger territory in Asia is something we should avoid. We just need to refine the meaning. It's possible the definition has changed over time ... China was once colonized by Western powers, after all, and it's possible that the late-1800s sense at the bottom could refer to some defined area consisting of at least Kwangsi and Hong Kong that was under the control of a Western navy at least indirectly. —Soap— 07:36, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Liangguang is one possible candidate for the area I'm thinking of ... it was not an independent country, but it seems that it was set apart from the rest of China for a period of time in the late Qing dynasty by having greater Western oversight than the country as a whole. See w:Liangguang for more details. —Soap— 07:51, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I didnt notice this was RFD until I saw the reply below. Consider this a keep vote as well, but with a request that we pin down the definition and if necessary split it into at least two. —Soap— 09:20, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep. In addition to that article, there is the South China Sea, South China tiger, and South China Morning Post. DonnanZ (talk) 08:03, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, let me ask this: among the cites at Citations:South China, are there some that go with a SoP/literal meaning, and some that go with a more "solidified" South China? Maybe the lowercase "south China" ones are SoP/literal? Compare to Citations:northeast China, West Taiwan. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:58, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I made the definition into this: diff. Now I think it may be okay not to delete this, idk. Revert/change/etc as you see fit! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:11, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I liked it better the way we had it before, but I would still prefer to have a more expanded definition, and perhaps two definitions, than to just say it means southern China or use the &lit template. I just havent gotten around to this because I figured that there was still plenty of time. Anyway, note that most of our cites are capitalized ... I think this was traditionally perceived as a political entity, even though it was never the official name of a separate country. Compare Free China and Red China which are also usually capitalized despite not being official proper names. —Soap— 11:30, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a well-defined geographical region. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 18:22, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

stem mutation

Originally this entry claimed it was a synonym of apophony / ablaut, meaning an internal vowel change like get vs. got. That's trivially false: of the first 5 relevant results I found on Google Books, 3 of them were talking about consonant changes (e.g. "nominal morphology of conservative Adamawa Fula is characterised by ... nominal stem mutation based on a system of initial consonant alternation" [37]). That leaves it just defined as a change in the stem, which looks SOP. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Since nobody's bitten on this so far, I'd also point out that "stem mutation" is attested in other contexts like biology for genetic mutations in a plant stem or in stem cells [38], so it doesn't seem to restrict the meaning of "stem". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:04, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:54, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

disposable razor

Sum of parts. Pious Eterino (talk) 21:34, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

But in form, it is a safety razor with a razor blade that are in their entirety disposable, so it is neither a razor nor a blade. I don’t see disposable straight razors (shavettes), only disposable blade straight razors. So not SOP. Fay Freak (talk) 22:17, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Frek Your analysis it is neither a razor nor a blade seems misinformed to me. It undeniably is a razor (Any tool or instrument designed for shaving.) and yes, it is not a blade (but it contains one), but that is neither here nor there. Pious Eterino (talk) 07:59, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Is it though, and is this decisive? “Any tool or instrument designed for shaving” is inexact and technically applies to blades, but a blade is undeniably not a razor, on the other hand the handle itself is not designed for shaving but only in conjunction with a blade, so why would it suddenly be a razor when these two parts are stuck together? You see, it is just the “function of a razor”, the function of being a tool to facilitate shaving, so it is beside the point to merely take together the circumstances that it “is a razor” and also “disposable”, it does not pay attention to whether there is some restriction in construction or shape endowing the whole term idiomaticity. A fried egg is also undeniably a fried egg, and it is easy to formulate something that looks like an argument for SOPness and convince oneself while not considering this factor. If you can define it as SOP, it does not imply it is SOP.

If I were to define it “as a handle in the form of a safety razor to which a standard razor blade is fixed during cheap production pursuant to planned obsolescence” you would be less suspicious of the term being SOP. Why is not razor blade itself SOP? Apart from WT:COALMINE, I don’t even understand its second definition on first glance (a collection of razor blades available to be stuck onto plastic razor handles?), and the first definition is just that it is a blade “with a sharp edge” (as any blade) that fits “into a razor” in the second sense which is ill-defined according to my exposition; a weight plate is also not put “onto a barbell” but unto a weight bar, combined they become a barbell or dumbbell (the page is better because I defined it, as also needed for translations, which are more obvious for disposable razor however). Fay Freak (talk) 23:05, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:12, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Razor sense 2 is meant in usual use, but if a disposable "keen-edged knife of peculiar shape" (gotta love those Webster defs!) came along, it would be called this too. Clear SOP. This, that and the other (talk) 07:49, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. A "normal" razor is obviously disposable too. Why would a disposable razor be called "disposable" anyway? P. Sovjunk (talk) 20:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  It's self-evident that sense 1 of disposable applies to all razors. Nobody would say disposable razor with sense 1 of disposable as their intended meaning. In the phrase disposable razor, sense 2 of disposable is obviously meant. The phrase is (still) SOP. This, that and the other (talk) 08:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

justifiable homicide

I created this apparently, but it now appears SOP to me. Why single this particular crime out? Compare justifiable crime, justifiable theft, etc. If we must, let's simply add a legal sense at justifiable. PUC – 08:24, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 08:26, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It's a legal term of art for a particular legal defense. Imetsia (talk (more)) 21:28, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The term of art should probably be a sense at justifiable unless I'm missing something specific to homicide? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

There is the proper legal defense of w:justifiable homicide, but there isn't anything similar for "justified robbery," "justified arson," etc. In addition, justifiable homicide generally refers to homicide committed in the attempt to protect one's life; not homicide that is otherwise "justifiable" on other philosophical grounds, for example. Black's Law Dictionary distinguishes, moreover, between "excusable homicide," "innocent homicide," and "justifiable homicide" as three separate entries with distinct legal criteria for each one. Imetsia (talk (more)) 23:02, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

But there is "justifiable force"/"justifiable use of force", "justifiable discipline" (corporal punishment), and even "justifiable battery" (see this case). The SOP argument isn't about being "justifiable" in a general philosophical sense, it's that "justifiable" is a legal term with specific application that extends beyond homicide (as is "excusable"): cf. the wp article on justification and excuse. "Innocent homicide" is simply homicide without criminal guilt, which can be either excused or justifiable. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:34, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per Imetsia, and as a lemming of Black's Law Dictionary. To be clear, a "homicide" that is "justifiable" is not necessary a "justifiable homicide". If you come out of your house and see a hooligan smashing your car windows with a crowbar, and you shoot him dead, you can articulate a justification for the shooting and call it "justifiable", but that does not meet the legal definition of the phrase. bd2412 T 17:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Note: I have corrected the definition to specify homicide committed "because it is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily harm". bd2412 T 17:32, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

  Hmm, but would the court say "the defendant's homicide of the hooligan was justifiable"? I don't think so; AFAICT, for a given context (e.g. laws about deaths), the definition of "justifiable" resides in "justifiable", i.e. I would expect that the range of things that can be called "justifiable homicide" and that which can be called "homicide which was/is justifiable" is the same. Is there evidence to the contrary? It also seems like the range of homicides which could be called "justifiable" (or "justifiable homicides") is likely to vary by jurisdiction (it wouldn't surprise me if some jurisdictions have considered "honor killings" justifiable homicides / a justifiable type of homicide, for example). I am leaning towards delete per Al-Muqanna. - -sche (discuss) 18:16, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

  @-sche: Good point. I have restored the previous sense and converted this discussion into an RfD-sense for the original (now first) sense. If there is a question as to whether the second sense exists beyond the existing citation to Black's Law Dictionary Sixth (which defines "Justifiable homicide" as "Killing of another in self-defense when danger of death or serious bodily harm exists"), this would be an RfV issue. bd2412 T 21:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

  @-sche, bd2412: I don't think those senses should have been introduced. The core definition of "justifiable homicide" is simply homicide that is justified according to the law. What sorts of homicide are justified have varied according to time and place, and the specific content of the laws pertaining to it shouldn't be considered definitional. Antebellum sources comment, for example, on the killing of a master by a slave in self-defence being "justifiable homicide" in England but murder in Georgia. Recent histories of law describe the evolution of "justifiable homicide" in England; for example, the killing of felons engaged in arson was apparently rendered "justifiable homicide" in the 14th century. Here are three other sources on contemporary context beyond the two sentences in Black's Law Dictionary:

  • Gardner and Anderson, Criminal Law 13th ed. (2018): "Justifiable homicide is defined in the common law as an intentional homicide committed under circumstances of necessity or duty without any evil intent and without any fault or blame on the person who commits the homicide. Justifiable homicide includes state executions, homicides by police officers in the performance of their legal duty, and self-defense […] "
  • Partial Defences to Murder (2004 report by the Law Commission of England and Wales): "Historically English law distinguished justifiable homicide from excusable homicide […] In modern scholarship a good deal has been written about the concepts of justificatory and excusatory defences. Essentially, justificatory defences are those which recognise that the conduct was legitimate in the circumstances e.g. self-defence."
  • Oxford Dictionary of Law 8th ed. (2015): Lawful homicide (sometimes termed justifiable homicide) occurs when somebody uses reasonable force in preventing a crime or arresting an offender, in self-defence or defence of others, or (possibly) in defence of his property." —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:54, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, adding two separate senses for two of the types of homicides that are considered justifiable only highlights that the only meaning of the term is "homicide that's considered justifiable by the relevant jurisdiction"; rather than adding a few dozen more senses for everything every era and region has considered justifiable (honor killing, killing someone who sexually harassed you in ancient Iceland, 'standing your ground' and going over to attack and then shoot someone who's Black in Florida, etc), I think it makes more sense to recognize that it's SOP and delete the entry. (This reminds me of the discussion over having 'legal standard' definitions of things like 'mayonnaise', 'margarine' and 'murder', where I raised the same issue, that we'd have dozens of senses that just amounted to "mayonnaise, but when it conforms to US law 3702561", "mayonnaise, but when it confirms to Irish law 9234567"... compare this revision of murder—readable version here— with various jurisdictions' different criteria spelled out...) - -sche (discuss) 01:11, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I still don't think that gets you around the issue of homicides that would be considered justifiable by some person (e.g., shooting a con man who is on the phone with your grandmother and about to get her to transmit her life savings), but which would clearly not fall within any legal definition of the term. Honor killings, for example, are not deemed "justifiable homicide" in any jurisdiction, nor is homicide committed pursuant to "stand your ground" laws within the definition of "justifiable homicide", even though it is legally excused. In short, your rationale is misinformation. bd2412 T 03:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Some person who considers a homicide "justifiable" also considers it a "justifiable homicide"; some court which considers something to not be a "justifiable homicide" also considers it to not be "justifiable"; AFAICT, for any given context/speaker, the use of the collocation "justifiable homicide" and the use of the word "justifiable" is consistent, because each one's use of "justifiable homicide" just means a homicide which they consider justifiable. The restrictions on what is or isn't "justifibable homicide" reside in "justifiable", in what the person considers is or isn't justifiable (and conceivably to some extent also in what the speaker considers is or isn't "homicide").
I initially reconverted the conversion of the RFD to an RFD-sense back to an RFD, but I wonder if we should have a separate RFD (since this one is getting input from only a few people) about merging the two just-added senses... there are many things which some person would (or conversely would not) consider murder (or theft, or justifiable homicide, or justifiable use of force, etc) which a court in Vermont would not (or conversely would) consider murder (etc), and then there are different things which a court in El Salvador would or would not consider murder, but obviously listing each one on a separate sense-line like we did for a while was not the right approach, and likewise taking "some jurisdictions consider murder by police or in self-defense justifiable" and turning it into three senses does not strike me as the right approach. - -sche (discuss) 16:07, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with the contention that a person who considers a homicide "justifiable" also considers it a "justifiable homicide"; firstly, this is a convention about how a specific phrase is used (and note, a set phrase, as "justified homicide" or "justifiable murder" would both be incorrect). Can you provide citations showing use of the phrase "justifiable homicide" to generically mean any homicide that is considered "justified" by a given person? Secondly, compare grand theft auto. It could theoretically generically mean any theft that was "grand" in the general sense of something being grand and "auto" in the sense of being automatic, but if someone steals your automatic typewriter and you as they run away you yell, "stop! That's a grand theft auto", does your use of the phrase indicate that the theft meets the definition of "grand theft auto"? bd2412 T 01:55, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Three senses now? It looks even sillier. PUC – 10:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

The first of the three senses can be deleted, as it is not attested. The other two reflect distinct legal meanings of the phrase, as a set phrase, over distinct periods in time. bd2412 T 20:01, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

abstinence

Two strange senses here. We've got:

1. (not being RFD'd): The act or practice of abstaining, refraining from indulging a desire or appetite. (with a bunch of subsenses)
2. ? The practice of self-denial; self-restraint; forebearance from anything.
3. ? (obsolete) Self-denial; abstaining; or forebearance of anything.

These are cited to the Shorter OED, which I don't have, but don't seem to correspond to anything in the full OED, which just distinguishes self-restraint (+ subsenses) and the practice of abstaining from a specific thing. I don't see what the distinction between our senses is meant to be, nor how the third one could be obsolete. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:31, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna: I agree that senses 2 and 3 seem redundant to sense 1. Perhaps the terms “forbearance”, “self-denial”, etc., can be worked into sense 1. As for the difference between senses 2 and 3, perhaps the editor was trying to distinguish between uncountable and countable senses. The better way to do this is as follows: “(uncountable) Abstaining, forbearance, or self-denial; (countable) an instance of this.” But if the senses are merged into sense 1 this is unnecessary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 01:55, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

py chiminey

Do vee vant schpellinz like zees? Also py chiminy Pinch88 (talk) 18:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to consult @PseudoSkull. DonnanZ (talk) 19:35, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is useful, because I originally couldn't make out what it meant when I was reading a book that had that phrase in it. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:52, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep if it passes CFI. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:21, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm against including phrases like this, as I've intimated elsewhere, since in the vast majority of cases, these phrases are just eye dialect spellings of existing phrases, with no independent meaning. pasghetti is one of the few exceptions, a phrase that is used by adults to sound cute, and therefore can't be reduced to merely being a child's word for spaghetti. So I ask ... is py chiminey used by people without an accent in order to make fun of German immigrants? Perhaps it once was.

We could flood the site with hundreds more words and phrases like this so long as we can turn up three cites across the whole corpus of English literature for each one. But I'm reluctant to vote delete based on what might happen, so I want time to think some more about this. Whichever way this vote goes, it will help me firm up my opinions on the wider category of eye dialect spellings.

One more comment ... archive.org is impressing me with how powerful its search is in comparison to that of Google Books. py chiminey isnt cited now, and searching Google Books turns up mostly results about chimneys (forget about using plus signs and quote marks, as they dont seem to do much), but the new archive.org text search turns up plenty of hits for this exact phrase, so this would easily pass CFI if kept at RFD. Thanks, —Soap— 11:01, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Soap, this is useful to know. What specific search function are you using on archive.org? Searching books in general just returns an error for me. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 16:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

this link goes directly to the search results i was looking at. from the front page, use the main search tool (not the Wayback Machine) with "search text contents" selected and with the phrase in quotes. If that's what you've been doing and it returns an error, I can't help, but I notice the site is slow for me especially with large PDF's, so maybe their server resources arent as powerful as Google's and they sometimes fail to complete a search. —Soap— 18:54, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

A problem with Internet Archive is that older books are often badly OCR'd and the search function won't work there because the scanned text is garbled. That might be the problem Andrew's having. In those cases you often need to view the full scanned text, ctrl+F for plausible strings in the mess, and then plug in what you find to the search function in the main view to get the actual location. I imagine they also won't turn up in full-site searches. Google's OCR is generally better, errors are usually limited to the normal stuff like reading long s as "f" etc. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:00, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Off-topic, but what's going on with the /b/ → /p/ here, it does seem weird (expected in word-final position, final obstruent devoicing). Or is it simulating aspiration, /bʰ/? Jberkel 12:25, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

English stereotypes of how a German accent shifts English sounds often seem perplexingly backwards to me; a similar case is the English use of mid to signal a German pronunciation of the (German!) word mit. It's like a cross between eye dialect and Mockney: changing words to signal "this speaker has an accent" even if that means changing the words in diametrically the opposite way to what the speaker's accent does.- -sche (discuss) 09:29, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

and one of those cites has pisness for "business", so the /b/ > /p/ thing seems like part of a pattern. There are some dialects in the Alps where all stops are devoiced, which could have theoretically provided a sound basis for the stereotype, but I think in some cases writers need to "make it wrong on purpose" because subtleties of speech don't carry over as well in writing. The fact that pisness and mid appear in the same cite suggests accuracy isnt always a priority with writing. Makes me think also of a stereotypical pan-Asian accent where L and R are always switched, meaning the speaker somehow gets them both wrong instead of merging them both into one sound. —Soap— 10:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning keep if it's attested (RFV), on the grounds that we keep all kinds of dialectally- / pronunciation- motivated respellings, and these are not predictable (indeed, as Jberkel's and my comments above indicate, it's unexpected). This is on a spectrum, IMO: on one end of the spectrum are things like Winterpeg (changing the spelling to highlight Winnipeg's coldness) that are clearly includable, on the other end is baaaaaaad (changing spelling to mark intensity / drawn-out pronunciation), which we explicitly decided to make redirects. I think this and e.g. dwagon are pretty low-importance, but still includable (and I think py... is slightly more includable than dwagon since dwagon is theowetically a systematic change, weplace all rs with w, wheweas py... doesn't seem to follow a consistent pattern). - -sche (discuss) 09:41, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Just pointing out that baaad exists as an independent page, among many others in Category:English elongated forms. I didn't look into the history behind the category, but I figured they'd be treated as ordinary words, meaning anything with three cites passes, and that because the spelling is flexible it's not required that they all have the exact same number of extra letters. —Soap— 10:45, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Soap: According to Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion § Repetitions, baaaaaaad would be a redirect to baaad (three repeating letters). J3133 (talk) 11:00, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I read the prior discussion just now for more context ... to be honest, that could have been deleted, but I won't poke the dragon ... and I won't worry about the elongated forms getting deleted since it seems we decided that they belong so long as they're cited, just like I'd assumed. I just misinterpreted the comment above to mean that they were supposed to be redirects to the standard spelling. This also gives me more material to add to an essay ... as I implied at the beginning of the discussion, I'm actually against including py chiminey and similar phrases, but I didnt place a vote because my objection is to the policy rather than to this individual entry, and we presumably won't be changing the policy without a long drawn-out vote in which at least two thirds of the community vote for a stricter policy. —Soap— 11:25, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it actually is systematic: voicing is switched, so that b>p and f>v, etc. It's just that it's only sprinkled in for effect so it won't obscure the meaning too much, and it's in addition to the changes that the average reader of the period who didn't know German would already be aware of. This convention is used even by writers such as Mark Twain, who had studied German and knew better. In this case, by jiminy is a phrase that has never been used much in real life but was often substituted in written reported speech for tabooed oaths. It's unintelligible to modern readers because it's the intersection of two artificial conventions that are no longer used. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:35, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

While searching for evidence to support the now-failed triste, I came across this strange passage by Walter Scott that supposedly represents the speech of a Highlander: “Put what would his honour pe axing for the peasts pe the head, if she was to tak the park for twa or three days?”[39] Overlordnat1 (talk) 16:04, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it is rubbish, but keep per above. It can probably be attested. But I am not convinced that this bizarre ethnic stereotype can be sensibly called a pronunciation spelling. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 19:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete as it is merely attempting to reproduce the idiosyncratic pronunciation of a specific speaker. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:05, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete. - TheDaveRoss 14:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

take

Rfd-sense: "An intensifier" (currently sense 54, marked "intransitive, dialectal, proscribed"). The example is "I took and beat the devil out of him", and a prescriptive citation is also given, saying "In the sentence, 'He took and beat the horse unmercifully,' took and should be omitted entirely."

I think this is simply sense 1 "To get into one's hands", used transitively, and the extra sense is just an excuse for stylistic grouching about it being redundant in those sentences. If it were actually an intransitive intensifier you would expect cases like "she took and turned bright red", "he took and sat down forcefully", etc., which does not seem to be what's actually being described. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:32, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning keep; I've added a few more cites (spanning more than a century) where nothing is being gotten in hand, picked up or received, like "Then I took and went back to the hotel." where it serves a similar role to went itself in go sense 6.2, "(intransitive, colloquial, with another verb, sometimes linked by and) To proceed (especially to do something foolish). [...] He just went and punched the guy." Merriam-Webster has this too BTW. - -sche (discuss) 09:02, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

(Indeed, with the right search terms I can find them both used, a redundant redundancy: "Next night his gran'ry 's burnt. What do he tak' and go and do? He takes and goes and hangs unsel'.") - -sche (discuss) 09:09, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: Thanks, I think the "took and turned on me" one you added is convincing. Now I'm just not sure whether those should be considered the same thing as the original examples, which still appear transitive or at least ambiguously transitive to me. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:09, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

renewable resource

SOP? KLFThe Moomoo (talk) 18:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:36, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• It does not match the current definition at renewable: "sustainable; able to be regrown or renewed; having an ongoing or continuous source of supply" versus "replenished by natural processes at a rate comparable to its rate of consumption by humans or other users". The latter is much better albeit too verbose. Fossil fuels could even be "renewable" per the middle part of the definition at renewable, while solar energy and its derivative wind energy could arguably fall that part. It can be deleted once the definition there is acceptable. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:51, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

renewable electricity

SOP? KLFThe Moomoo (talk) 18:43, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:36, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• Stall. Same as above. This might in theory be a "jiffy" for this sense of renewable, but I doubt it (I think that would be renewable energy). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 18:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

a lick of

This is basically just lick sense 7. Im guessing we have a separate entry for this because it is almost never pluralized .... no one says "i only did two licks of work" .... but it seems like an unlikely search term, and it's only incoming link is from lick, so almost everyone reading the page has already seen the term defined on the lick page. Note this is similar to a good deal which I would also have expected to find at good deal and which is also rarely if ever pluralized. Even so, I think there must be a better solution for terms like this than having a separate entry that just adds an a or an a and an of. —Soap— 20:30, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

As with world of difference recently, the plural is better attested than you might think—"two licks of" certainly is ("you ain't got two licks of sense" [40], "I hadn't done two licks of work" [41], "the only one with two licks of sense" [42] etc.), and so is stuff like "two or three licks of Latin" here. I agree this should be deleted, though perhaps the most user-friendly solution is to use senseid and redirect to the specific sense at lick. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Delete or redirect if you want. Ultimateria (talk) 01:11, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 11:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete: redundant to lick. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:11, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

• RFD failed. Kept as a redirect Denazz (talk) 21:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

non-Arabic

non-Italian etc.

Not sure if we are prepared to have a plethora of lemmas of “non-X language”. We definitely haven’t finished creating entries of every language and lect names yet, and I can’t imagine the vast number of attested SoP entries that we will potentially bring forth by affixing non- to them all, a number that might be at the least as high as half of the aforesaid language/lect names; and I would strongly suggest including such terms in quotations/usexes in the relevant entry instead, as a decent way of representing such terms rather than have them as lemmas. I personally vote delete, but thoughts? We currently seem to be tolerant towards similar ethnic and national lemma like non-Arab, non-Canadian etc., but the language ones feel more weird and unnecessary. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 18:28, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Most of these non + proper adjective entries (though not "non-Arabic", a recent creation) seem to be Polanskyisms reflecting his personal interest in matters of hyphenation and capitalisation, and I agree they probably don't contribute much. There is an argument, though, that non- can be affixed productively to basically any adjective, and it's not clear that the orthographic convention that it always takes a hyphen before a capitalised one should determine whether the product counts as an eligible word. There are other things that can generate arbitrary and less controversial words (like verb + -er). So I don't have strong feelings about it at first glance.

I'm not sure the "etc." in the proposal is helpful: we should define the scope of the RFD clearly and of the four you list only "non-Arabic" is specifically glossed in terms of language. Are you proposing to delete all non- + nationality entries? Does for example non-Asian count? What about other proper adjectives like non-Bayesian? —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:22, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I nominated only the language entries / senses here. "Etc." indicates an exhaustive list of all “non-X language” constructions. And well, in my opinion productivity alone shouldn’t necessarily determine whether a term is suitable to have its own entry, and probably other criteria such as dating of a term may be considered as well: ”non-X language” terms are probably a rather recent coinage, whereas terms affixed with un- or dis- tend to date back to the formative period of the language itself, making the latter more legitimate as lemmas. (un- and dis- are still productive in contemporary English of course but newer coinages with un- and dis- for specific domains could always be challenged in RFD.) ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:58, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, these are the correct spelling forms, and should be kept for that reason. IMO, nothing else will do. DonnanZ (talk) 16:03, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: To be clear, non-Portuguese, non-Italian, and non-Spanish are currently defined in terms of the adjectives "Portuguese", "Spanish", "Italian", not in terms of languages like non-Arabic is. Google Books shows they're not used primarily in reference to languages either (e.g., "non-Italian immigrants", "non-Portuguese European merchants"). If definition in terms of language is the reason for nominating them then it seems to be spurious in those cases. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing it up. Since the definitions aren’t precise, I assumed they were defined in the sense of the language. Now I am confused myself, and will leave other people to interpret the definitions while still sticking to my nomination for deleting ”non-X language” terms LOL. So per your analysis, only the nomination of non-Arabic is valid now. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 17:52, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

You can try googling "Arabic * non-Arabic". You might be surprised by the results. DonnanZ (talk) 17:25, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: Well my personal take is that the number of citations doesn’t necessarily reinforce the legitimacy of a term that feels very SoP. Phrases as non-Arabic speakers and the like could be easily added as citations to Arabic or even non- without any loss of valuable lexicographical information from Wiktionary. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:13, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment: we don't seem to be entirely consistent as far as whether we keep things like this, although we often do. Various similar discussions are Talk:non-French (deleted), Talk:non-Japanese (kept), Talk:ex-chancellor (kept), Talk:ex-pilot (deleted), Talk:ex-stepfather (kept), Talk:ex-alumna (Spanish, kept). - -sche (discuss) 18:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Confusing things further, at non-English it seems the discussion and decision were about deleting the general sense and the specific language sense was left alone, whereas this discussion seems to be taking the opposite angle. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:13, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Right… This time, I wanted to nominate the specific language sense instead of focusing on random senses, because the language senses feel more SoP than ethnic/national senses. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:13, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete non-Arabic (the others have been struck so I suppose they are no longer being considered right now). But I would prefer something like a BP discussion about whether to have such things in general, rather than piecemeal RfDs that go different ways for different non-glossonyms. - -sche (discuss) 04:02, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• @-sche Just such a BP discussion happened in Sep 2022 (initiated by Polansky). The result was 3 in favour of keeping them (including Polansky and myself, for transparency) and 1 in favour of deleting. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 20:44, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

September 2023

history book

SOP; compare chemistry book, sociology book, etc. There may be an idiomatic sense out there (compare “the history books” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.) but this is not it. PUC – 18:41, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete as it stands, although there may be a possibility for a better entry about what future generations will see in "the history books" etc.: often it's just a metaphor for history. Equinox ◑ 18:42, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

I added a quote only yesterday, so there's something about "history books" that's idiomatic. You can't say it's plural only though. And @Equinox: I think you have butchered the def - it was better before. DonnanZ (talk) 20:32, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP, man should know from his linguistics books. Actually one should know from primary school 😱 – does this mean “primary school” has an “idiomatic” sense of “primary education“? No. This is what Equinox means with “metaphor”. There are figurative senses we must not include. Somewhere the relations are too close and the margins are fuzzy, vagueness. Separate senses must be contoured. Fay Freak (talk) 22:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep but improve the definition, and withal add a {{&lit}} sense. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 08:37, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete per nom. There is for the history books, essentially for the book(s), but I don't think that should be handled at history book (singular), and generally less fixed metaphors involving history books are probably going to be sum-of-parts. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

• I think the definition provided is wrong based on the citations provided. There are history textbooks for school (which the definition suggests) and then there are general-readership books on history. I don't think that when someone refers to a sports performance as entering the history books, they mean that it will be included in school textbooks. bd2412 T 19:04, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it could be treated as an antonym of ash heap of history / trash heap of history, and we could base our definition off of that: "A notional place where …"? PUC – 09:00, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

That particular figurative sense only works in the plural. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 09:33, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with moving the entry to history books if necessary. PUC – 14:12, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I can also find the singular, google books:"entered the history book", albeit mostly in low-quality self-published books and/or books by non-native speakers. I would delete the entry as it stands ("history book" just defined as a book about history), but "history books" defined as "a notional place...[etc]" as discussed above, with "history book" as the {{singular of}} that, seems more inclusible. - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

dynamics

Rfd-sense: "Forces that stimulate growth, change, or development. The changing dynamics in international politics led to such an outcome."

I don't think this sense is plural-only—you can say for example "the dynamic of China–US relations"—dynamic#Noun just maybe needs a better gloss. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:48, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

ex-senator

And ex-minister. Like ex-king Jewle V (talk) 09:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

• Delete both as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 19:30, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete both as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:19, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
• See also non-Arabic above. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 20:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

be at

SOP. Compare "be on", "be in", etc. Ioaxxere (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

ex-serviceman

and ex-servicewoman. SOP Jewle V (talk) 14:07, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Definitely keep. It seems to be the Commonwealth synonym of veteran, with most usages currently in Indian English apparently. The term is also cited by other dictionaries [43] [44]. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:17, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep both. Used in NZ too. DonnanZ (talk) 09:15, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Probably keep, because serviceman feels very dated, while ex-serviceman is still in use in Australia, although veteran also gets plenty of use here. I believe the usual gender-neutral collective term is ex-service personnel. This, that and the other (talk) 11:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

When I see this vote, in my perspective, this vote illustrates a major flaw in the rigid and absurd SOP dogma on Wiktionary which is: that any English language word with a prefix and hyphenation is suspect, while an equally SOP word without a hyphen is not suspect. Would you bring exserviceman? And there are unhyphenated mash-ups of words that are legitimately hyphenated like pro-democracy that Wiktionary treated the unhyphenated form of as more correct. Pitiful. As I see it, this has lead to years of lack of coverage of hyphenated words in English on this website; disgrace and infamy. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:02, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

A hyphenless word like exserviceman has one part (the word itself), while "ex-serviceman" has two (ex- and serviceman). CitationsFreak (talk) 14:25, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's absurd, infamous, disgraceful, or some other moral enormity: the justification of WT:COALMINE, in as much as it's withstood attempts to abolish it, is that it's a somewhat useful index of lexicalisation and despite occasional silly results nobody has yet come up with a better one. The policy does not at all, of course, dictate that prodemocracy should be the main lemma. COALMINE entries are often not lemmatised at the single-word form (see stubble field, treated just above). There are other, more humdrum reasons why hyphenated (and for that matter multiword) terms are poorly covered on Wiktionary: mainly that they tend not to be covered by the other dictionaries and corpora many of our English entries are based on in the first instance, so their coverage depends on one of our limited number of individual editors deciding to add them when they happen to remember them or when it takes their fancy. But this is, at the end of the day a project involving real people who are all freely volunteering their time, and shouldn't be insulted just because they happen to have different views about entry inclusion or are more interested in some things than others. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• Leaning keep per Dictator and This, that and the other, there seem to be contextual aspects of usage that make this worth retaining. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:31, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete both as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 23:55, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

The fact that printed dictionaries see fit to include these (I checked my own copies of Collins and Oxford) make them an exception. DonnanZ (talk) 10:35, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz We don’t make exceptions for that reason. Please learn how CFI works. Theknightwho (talk) 10:56, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

We do though (sometimes and unpredictably)... WT:LEMMING —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:36, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking through Oxford, the only other ex- (meaning former) examples I can find are ex-con and ex-service (related to ex-serviceman). Others included, ex-directory, ex-voto and ex-works (direct from the factory) don't mean "former". DonnanZ (talk) 12:53, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep per WT:LEMMING and maybe WT:ONCE. CitationsFreak (talk) 17:28, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

lavalier microphone

Is this SOP? You can also just call it a lavalier#Noun... we also have "lavaliere microphone" as a usex of lavaliere#Adjective (note the spelling variation). - -sche (discuss) 21:56, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

WT:JIFFY? The earliest attestation for "lavalier microphone" I can find is 1946 (in Sales Management vol. 56), "lavalier" by itself seems to be a later development (OED has 1972, I can see some in the 60s). In early sources "lavalier-type microphone" seems to be common. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 23:16, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep as WT:JIFFY. I also edited the def here and at lavalier. This, that and the other (talk) 22:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

up to something

We have the relevant senses at the preposition up to. I'd previously thought that this should be merged with be up to, but that should be deleted too. DCDuring (talk) 15:42, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It is an idiomatic expression, "something" that can't be defined, and it has been WOTD. There's translations too. DonnanZ (talk) 18:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I think keep—WT:FRIED, the meaning of the components is restricted in a way that's not obvious pragmatically. It's not entirely watertight: there are very sporadic cases of things like "up to something good"—"they're up to something good" has two legitimate hits on Google Books. But I can't find more divergent examples that might be hypothetically possible like "up to something" meaning "ready to do something", and unqualified it certainly seems to imply scheming. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:11, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete. SOP with sense “Doing; involved in” of up to + context relating the facts substantiating a suspicion. One can also talk about doing tings; which is SOP especially the way I defined ting, together with peng ting; but here “something” does not even have a connotation justifying such gloss, but such senses depend even more on context, which does not mean conversely that combinations are not SOP. Fay Freak (talk) 18:21, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

The point is it's not dependent on context in English. "He's up to various things" is neutral without context, "he's up to something" is not. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:02, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep per my "figure it out" rationale. Deleting this makes sense only if we assume the reader already knows which sense of up to and which sense of something are being used in this context. But someone who knows those things doesn't need to look them up in a dictionary. —Soap— 18:41, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

@Al-Muqanna There's something at work here, but I don't think it's lexical as much as pragmatic. Pronouns starting with "some", under certain circumstances, seem to have the implication that 1) It would be reasonable to expect that the referent would be known. 2) It isn't. 3) Therefore, one can't trust what one is being told. Examples: "Someone was in the house that night." "He knows something." "They found out somehow".

In this case, you get a similar connotation if you say "I don't know what he's up to". The question "what are you up to?" can have that connotation, as can "what are you doing?", though there are other readings, depending on the context: one might answer "oh, not much, just puttering around", or, flippantly, "two pints a day" or "chapter 5". Chuck Entz (talk) 00:09, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I also assumed something like that before actually searching, but in fact on a (non-exhaustive) search I didn't find a single unqualified instance where it meant something other than scheming/mischief, so it seems rather more fixed than your examples. Other dictionaries often also highlight scheming as a distinct sense: the problem is that they rarely distinguish between up to something as such and up to... (an object) in general (Farlex Idioms is an exception, explicitly distinguishing "up to (something)" and "up to something"). So the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms simply notes "this usage can mean 'devising' or 'scheming'", but their example there is the only one that actually uses the word "something". Longman has a sense line "doing something secret or something that you should not be doing", which again has the only usex with "something" actually in it. All of this isn't totally conclusive for a fixed phrase, but certainly seems suggestive hence my "leaning". —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

be up to

SoP = be + up to.

Other copulas can be substituted for be (eg, seem). The up to entry has the relevant sense of up to. DCDuring (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Redirect to up to. --(((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 03:10, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Redirect to up to, senses “Doing; involved in” and “Within the responsibility of […]”. Fay Freak (talk) 18:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Many uses involve the sense "Capable, ready or equipped for".  --Lambiam 11:51, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• Keep as WT:THUB. Most of the translations are not literally "be" + "up to", and will not be correct translations of "up to" if merged onto that page. Many languages do not have a way of saying "up to" in that sense. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:19, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

feel up to

This was redirected without (so far as I can see) its own RFD or any other related discussion. It also went through RFD in 2017 and passed.

• Keep per the rationale added late at the prior discussion ... someone who's learned the idiomatic meaning of feel up might see feel up to and think it means something related, when it does not. Additionally there is a possible translation in Icelandic, nenna, which we could not add if we redirected this to up to. —Soap— 17:39, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
  • This rationale is silly, though. The usage notes you've added at feel up are perfectly sufficient to dispel any confusion, we don't need two entries for that. PUC – 09:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
• I analyze this is as “to feel capable”, one of the senses of up to, that’s what “confidence” refers to. The difference between inclination and capability is in the end unreal, we recently merged overly fussy distinctions at up to. Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/August#up to. Delete or hard redirect. @PUC, but I see he redirected feel up to. So why is it less SOP than “feel confident”? Only because you want a usage note to say “Feel up to is broken down like feel + up to and unrelated to feel up. (grope someone in a sexual manner)”. Fay Freak (talk) 18:11, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete, SOP of copulative feel + up to (a task). Compare:

  You say you feel better, but are you really better?

  You say you feel strong enough, but are you really strong enough?

  You say you feel up to it, but are you really up to it?

 --Lambiam 11:48, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

• Delete, SOP. PUC – 09:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

KA-BLAOW

A louder form of the sound ka-blaow. This is not a separate word, just a typical use of capitalization. We wouldn't create "BOOM" as a louder boom, etc. Equinox ◑ 18:58, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per nom, lol. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 21:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

ka-BLAOW

A louder form of the sound ka-blaow. This is not a separate word, just a typical use of capitalization. We wouldn't create "BOOM" as a louder boom, etc. Equinox ◑ 18:58, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete both per nominator. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:28, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

de-LETE as above. —Soap— 12:56, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

delete, lol Jberkel 08:27, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 21:03, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• RFD failed Denazz (talk) 21:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

supply-side

I think it's just one of these "noun being used adjectivally" things Jewle V (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Meh, don't think it's a particularly useful entry but there are cases of it being used in a way that's solidly adjectival and not just an attributive noun (which is what I guess you mean), see the cites I added. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:30, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Wayback Machine

Name (and trademark) of a Web site, something more suited to Wikipedia. Equinox ◑ 01:02, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes delete. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 15:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Not sure. It does crop up in references, notably for Lexico. DonnanZ (talk) 16:27, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Screw the references P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:34, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete WT:NSE. This, that and the other (talk) 04:48, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Yeah, it crops up in references, so do many other titles. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I don't see why this entry needs to be deleted. Wayback Machine is commonly mentioned on the internet as a method of archival. E.g. "The page got deleted, I'll have to check the Wayback Machine." Netizen3102 (talk) 05:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

... Okay? Delete to counter this vote. PUC – 16:45, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Hypatia

I thought WT:CFI did not permit names of individual persons. This certainly seems like a "name of a specific entity". But the wording seems to allow inclusion of a person with a one-part name. At the very least, the definition is encyclopedic, not a dictionary definition. Probably a definition like "A female given name of Greek origin". Maybe also it is a surname. DCDuring (talk) 19:51, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

The name has been given to a few women, such as Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner. Hypatia Tarleton is a character in GBS's play Misalliance. The name is derived from Ancient Greek ὕπατος (húpatos, “highest, best”).  --Lambiam 11:35, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I've added an ordinary given name sense and converted this to rfd-sense. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:53, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

CFI only says "No individual person should be listed as a sense in any entry whose page title includes both a given name or diminutive and a family name or patronymic [like] Walter Elias Disney". In practice, we so far seem to also exclude modern mononymic people, like the millions of truly mononymic Indonesians (Suharto, Sukarno, etc, who literally do not have any other parts to their names) and people who have but don't use last names like Madonna. However, we include a lot of old mononymic people (including the ancient equivalents of Madonna, people who did have full names but are just best known by mononyms), like Cicero and Virgil and Confucius... - -sche (discuss) 16:14, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

So, in the absence of any further input from anyone else, I say weak keep unless we're going to start getting rid of ancient mononymic people like that (see also: non-mononymic people, like Gengis Khan) more systematically. - -sche (discuss) 04:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

in conclave

SOP. PUC – 14:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The omission of the article is surprising, no? Isn't this part of a closed class of phrases like in force, in step, in secret, ...? (Note that, unlike in camera, in vitro, ..., this one is not Latin. That would be in conclāvī.) This, that and the other (talk) 09:04, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Isn’t it a predictable construction when an uncountable noun is involved? I’m thinking of examples like in amazement, in horror and in joy. The main thing to make clear would be that conclave can be used in this uncountable sense. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Is it uncountable in any other situation though? "Conclave is ..." for example. This, that and the other (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

leonine share

As I mentioned at Talk:lion's share some time ago, we're missing a figurative sense at leonine, but I believe this is SOP: compare leonine deal, leonine contract. PUC – 14:10, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Keep as this is not currently SoP because it is not adequately explained by leonine. You should have added your new sense there first. Equinox ◑ 22:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

It seems to be literary rather than figurative, and not very common in any case. Keep, I think. DonnanZ (talk) 09:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

If actually cited, I suppose it could be included as (jocular) Alternative form of lion's share. Ƿidsiþ 08:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

religious priest

SOP? P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:06, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

How bizarre. Is a "non-religious priest" even possible? Equinox ◑ 22:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yup! This terminology predates the modern usage. "Religious" here refers to the literal sense of being bound to a rule (influenced by the Christian folk etymology religo) or being set aside for religious life (i.e. following the three evangelical counsels and belonging to a religious order). A non-religious priest is called a secular or diocesan priest, which is what most parish priests are. It's quite common in certain Catholic circles to hear references to "religious priests" and "diocesan priests" in counterdistinction to each other. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:27, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete, but we're missing the appropriate adjectival sense at religious (i.e. "pertaining or belonging to religious or consecrated life"). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:29, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

If such a sense is added, it should be “pertaining or belonging to a religious order”; secular priests are also supposed to lead a religious life. But is this specific sense used in other collocations than religious priest (and, obviously but circularly, religious order)?  --Lambiam 11:42, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

The most accurate definition would probably be "pertaining or belonging to a religious order or congregation". Collocations with this sense of "religious" include: religious life, religious congregation, religious sister, religious habit (i.e. the garment worn by religious), religious house (a convent or monastery), religious vows, religious rule (the rule of life of a religious order), etc. That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Because of the possible ambiguity involved, I don't think this sense is used postpositively much, or if it is, it is used in context where it could also be interpreted as substantive (especially in informal usage, "a religious" is a member of a religious order or congregation, with the plural being simply "religious", so "They are religious" is, IMO, more likely to be a noun than an adjective when used in this sense). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:19, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete, nothing to add to what Andrew said and it seems to be covered adequately at religious now. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 20:02, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

RFD failed Denazz (talk) 21:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

stature in life

Sum of parts: stature sense 2. Various other obvious "X in life" are possible, e.g. success. Equinox ◑ 22:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment. For this to be seen as a sum of parts, life needs to have some meaning such as “society” (leading social circles). We do not list such a sense, and neither do leading dictionaries.  --Lambiam 11:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps we should? Compare standing in life, maybe also position in life. PUC – 09:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I read this phrase as "[social] stature [one has attained] in [one's] life", parallel to phrases such as "achievements in life". This doesn't require an extra sense at life. This, that and the other (talk) 08:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Delete. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:30, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

stray dog

You're not gonna like this RFD nomination, and will probably crush it, but here goes: SOP crap P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:59, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

SOP, compare stray cat, but I'm a bit hesitant here. Abstain for now. PUC – 09:31, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I am never going to like gonna. DonnanZ (talk) 12:01, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

What are you tryna say? PUC – 12:34, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

We do have one non-SOP translation so far (the Romanian; the German Streuner just means "stray") which makes me wonder if there would be more for a potential THUB here. This, that and the other (talk) 07:48, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: What about Dutch zwerfhond of straathond? Not super convincing examples as they can be fairly literally translated, but...

In any case, I'll say keep after all, as I think it's a useful entry. PUC – 10:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say that would count. "Street dog" is not a literal word-for-word translation of "stray dog" per WT:THUB. So keep as THUB. This, that and the other (talk) 21:58, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete Ƿidsiþ 08:05, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

• Keep as WT:THUB per above. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:08, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Yugoslav People's Army

Yugoslav Army

Encyclopedic content. Compare Talk:Soviet Armed Forces. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 16:34, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Talk:Soviet Armed Forces, Talk:United States Army. - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete for nominator's reason. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:16, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

well-gowned

Sum of parts ("wearing a fine gown"). Equinox ◑ 19:06, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:23, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Delete: "all words in all languages". PUC – 19:49, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Comment: Is it any different from well-dressed ? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 12:38, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

It's definitely in the same vein. DonnanZ (talk) 14:35, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards keep. Most of its usage relates to a period that finished around a century ago. A well-gowned woman was usually well-to-do, and could afford fine gowns. DonnanZ (talk) 09:43, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

But the definition says nothing about being well-to-do, it just says "wearing a fine gown". You're considering a definition in your own head that isn't in our entry at all. That's not how to handle an RFV. Equinox ◑ 14:37, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

That's my assessment after reading available material. I did see two quotes available on Google Books. DonnanZ (talk) 08:19, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

October 2023

square root of fuck all

Tagged for speedy deletion but I feel like it should be discussed hence I've opened this discussion. User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 20:27, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

There are a few hits for things like "square root of nada/nothing/zilch", etc. Not enough to easily justify entries for them individually, but enough to show some productivity. Then there's "nothing squared" and "twice nothing"... Chuck Entz (talk) 20:57, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see any need for what is a long-winded sum of parts, one of which is potentially offensive. DonnanZ (talk) 06:30, 10 October 2023 (UTC) sum

Er, it's not a sum of parts because there is no sense at square root that applies here. Neither is offensiveness a reason for us to exclude things. You're just making stuff up. Equinox ◑ 14:36, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Nonsense. I didn't add "vulgar" to fuck all, which means "absolutely nothing" anyway. You will probably get away with this with the quotes you have dredged up. DonnanZ (talk) 16:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

You're throwing ad-hominems whereas I proved you wrong with logic. Equinox ◑ 16:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

It'll be the heat death of the universe before @Donnanz reads WT:CFI. Theknightwho (talk) 17:31, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's how CFI works?????????????????? CitationsFreak (talk) 19:06, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep: not SoP (it doesn't mean "mathematical zero", and square root only has mathematical definitions). Send to RFV if we must verify it. Equinox ◑ 14:39, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

square root of nothing is also attested, as are square root of bugger all and square root of jack shit (though I only see one good GB hit). Are there others? If yes, I think the SOP argument could hold water, though I'm not sure (maybe all of these deserve entries? Or is it a snowclone?) PUC – 14:46, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I would say add something to the square root entry on this. Not sure how to word it, tho. CitationsFreak (talk) 19:12, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

There is also the square root of sod all, but it doesn't deserve an entry. DonnanZ (talk) 19:34, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete: Not a set phrase; "square root of" (or maybe "square root") is. CitationsFreak (talk) 09:04, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

• Move to something, but I'm not sure whether "square root" or "square root of" is a better location to host the definition. The problem is that grammatically "square root" is a noun, but it is used solely as an adverbial/adjectival intensifier for a noun meaning "nothing" (i.e. square root of fuck all is a set phrase except that one of the components is flexible). So I don't know how to define "square root" as a noun. We could define "square root of" as "basically; essentially" but that would mess with the parse tree. Perhaps we could move to square root of nothing and be clear that nothing is being used as a pronoun rather than an idiomatic component of the set phrase (similar to our use of one and someone in proverbs), and explain the situation in the usage notes. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:33, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you say "square root of absolutely nothing"? "square root of jack squat"? "square root of fucking nothing"? Google says yes to all three. I say delete, add something to "square root". MedK1 (talk) 16:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@MedK1 What would you propose as a valid gloss definition for square root? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps exactly what's at square root of fuck all but preceded by "{{lb|with a term meaning nothing|"? I actually think it might be best for it to be added at the usage notes section instead, something along the lines of "May be used with a term meaning 'nothing' for an emphatic synonym of nothing." MedK1 (talk) 15:03, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

statically-typed language, dynamically-typed language

Another Sae1962 SOP creation. Jberkel 10:30, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Note that dynamically-typed language has been a redirect to dynamically-typed since it was RFDed in 2017. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 21:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

adoptive mother

SOP. All translations appear SOP too. Compare Talk:madre adoptiva (Spanish). This, that and the other (talk) 10:56, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Reluctant keep because the Japanese translation doesn't appear SOP. 養 doesn't show up by itself as a word in the dictionaries I have with me. MedK1 (talk) 01:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

養 is given as the Japanese translation of adoptive. Perhaps the Japanese entry simply needs expansion. This, that and the other (talk) 06:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

pro-Hamas and anti-Hamas

SOP Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. We must draw the line somewhere. Otherwise there is no end to it: pro-Trump, anti-Biden, pro-ISIS, anti-Taliban, ..., all are easily attested, with exactly the meaning one would expect.  --Lambiam 16:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam. PUC – 17:03, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

These should easily be Speedied. AG202 (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Created them in good faith! We have pro-Israel and anti-Israel so we probably should be consistent, or invoke the dumb WT:COALMINE rule. P. Sovjunk (talk) 23:16, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  Nobody doubts your good faith. The canary-in-a-coalmine rule would apply if proHamas and antiHamas were acceptable orthographic variants, but they are not.  --Lambiam 11:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Hamas is the dirty word here. IMO, where there is no practical alternative, Lambiam's assertion is flawed. I can sympathise with WF in this particular case. DonnanZ (talk) 11:42, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

What does this even mean? Theknightwho (talk) 21:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

pro-Israel and anti-Israel

Nominating these as sum-of-parts as well. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

pro-Russian and anti-Russian

Also P. Sovjunk (talk) 21:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Others

Also nominating the following entries on the same basis as above. I have left out terms that have non-hyphenated forms, such as anti-Muslim and pro-Muslim. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:21, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

anti-American and pro-American

I did notice Cebuano amboy for pro-American. DonnanZ (talk) 15:39, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep ---- See this diff. In that diff, I show that the word 'anti-American' is a word according to five dictionaries. I am a deep skeptic of the way Wiktionary's Sum of Parts doctrine is enforced at present and over the past several years. I believe that the enforcement of SOP is biased against hyphenated words, and that the coverage of hyphenated words on Wiktionary is stilted and not conforming to actual usage because of a systemic preference for non-hyphenated words caused by hyper-enforcement of the SOP doctrine. I believe that the current iteration of the enforcement of the SOP doctrine is not academically sound, otherwise, the other dictionaries would exclude this word. I believe that the five dictionaries I cite are normative in including 'anti-American', and that Wiktionary is non-normative, i.e., fringe, if it excludes the word 'anti-American'. If 'anti-American' is removed as an entry as a result of these proceedings, I will attempt to bring a vote on SOP doctrine that adds another limit to the policy: that if mainstream, authoritative dictionaries include a term, that the SOP policy cannot be used to remove an entry from Wiktionary. Fight me, come at me, lol lmao even, I know kung fu, &c. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:44, 29 October 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

That's WT:LEMMING. Which isn't offcial policy yet. But it could be. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

pro-US

• Personally I would keep all of these (if cited) as single words. Ƿidsiþ 08:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree, per my comment above. DonnanZ (talk) 10:55, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

crack is whack

Not an idiomatic phrase (see whack) Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment: This was a slogan of Reagan's War on Drugs. Not sure if this will affect your judgment, but worth keeping in mind. CitationsFreak (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

From the same people that brought us "this is your brain on drugs"? 🍳 Jberkel 12:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I looked it up, and it's not a slogan from that era. It was the title of a 1986 mural, as well as a famous quote by Whitney Houston during a 2002 Oprah interview. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

So it IS from the Reagan era, in other words! In any case delete. It's a shame to delete rhyming phrases like this but they're not idiomatic. Funnily enough, we don't have the far more idiomatic free the weed as an entry yet. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 05:51, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

META

Is this a noun? Is it even English? Is it capitalised like this? So many questions. I can understand why we have an entry for meta tag, but this one is harder to stomach. This, that and the other (talk) 06:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I doubt HTML tags should be regarded as words. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:01, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The hypertext markup language is definitely not the English language or any other natural language. It is not a conlan either; HTML has no parts of speech such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and HTML tags do not carry meaning in the sense that words in natural languages do. HTML tags are case-insensitive; one could write <mEtA property="og:title" content="META - Wiktionary, the free dictionary"> using camel case.  --Lambiam 17:35, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but should the "lemma" be capitalised, given that people stopped capitalising HTML tag names about 20 years ago? Thankfully, by your argument that's a moot point. This, that and the other (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Move to Translingual, preferably as lowercase. The English section was added to an existing Finnish acronym entry in 2018 for no discernible reason. @Nicole Sharp seems knowledgeable enough on technical subject matter, but not on organizing it for an online dictionary. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Not natural language. There are literally millions of programming keywords, tags, and API class/method names. Equinox ◑ 23:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Just for the "keep everything" people (who begin with D): let's just look at "what's obsolete" (a very very short list of things that have been removed from the framework recently): DefineDynamicAssembly, ExecuteAssembly, ExecuteAssemblyByName, AssemblyHash, you may enjoy hundreds more on the page [45]. And this is just what's obsolete, in one specific software framework, at one point in time. And they don't have definitions. You may also want to investigate food colorants. Equinox ◑ 06:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

This user beginning with D is abstaining. DonnanZ (talk) 11:38, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Not a word in any language.  --Lambiam 11:06, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

<marquee>Delete</marquee>. Jberkel 12:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, I vote delete. — Sgconlaw (talk) 15:05, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep iff there are three uses in running text. Otherwise, delete. CitationsFreak (talk) 04:28, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

If not appropriate as a mainspace entry, then you need to move all HTML elements to a Wiktionary Appendix and create Wiktionary Appendices for other computer programming and markup languages as well. These are important terms that should be defined somewhere on Wiktionary if not in mainspace. Nicole Sharp (talk) 03:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

We do have a sister project called Wikipedia for such things … — Sgconlaw (talk) 06:12, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as not natural language. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:08, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

set-in sleeve

SOP set-in + sleeve? I don't know if other clothes things can be "set-in", and I'm not doing the donkey work to find out. P. Sovjunk (talk) 16:18, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

There are also “set-in pockets”.^[46] The adjective set-in has the synonym inset, just like built-in has the synonym inbuilt. I think the noun sense comes from using the adjective as shorthand for set-in sleeve, just like the noun built-in can be used as shorthand for built-in feature.  --Lambiam 16:08, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

WF, I worked hard on these sleeve entries. I don't like you to say "kill it because I am not doing the donkey-work". If you don't want to work, then leave it the hell alone. This should be sent to RFV anyway. I hate you so much. (Just kidding, I copied them all from the Wikipedia article about sleeves. But I do hate you.) Equinox ◑ 06:34, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Eq. CitationsFreak (talk) 18:31, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam. MedK1 (talk) 01:23, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Lambiam did not vote. DonnanZ (talk) 18:06, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Donnanz. PUC – 16:41, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

?? DonnanZ (talk) 20:00, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep per PUC.  --Lambiam 16:47, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

global conspiracy

It is a conspiracy and it is global. I don't see how this goes beyond SoP. Equinox ◑ 06:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• I favor deletion as it is currently defined, but if this is just a shortcut for globalist conspiracy I'd say it's no longer sum-of-parts. globalism is a specific ideology and not simply a cover term for all multinational political movements. —Soap— 13:24, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. PUC – 12:41, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP, though unfortunately we would include German Weltverschwörung, but perhaps the degree of idiomaticity is different. Fay Freak (talk) 16:44, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SOP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• RFD failed Denazz (talk) 19:13, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

red-green-brown alliance

red-green alliance was deleted, so maybe this too P. Sovjunk (talk) 10:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep per my arguments in the previous RFD ... from my point of view this is the exact same situation, so the same argument holds. I'd point out, though, that with the previous RFD there was an existing entry red-green to which users could go, whereas there is no red-green-brown entry, nor do I suspect there ever will be, as the term is unlikely to occur in any other context. My point being that even people who voted delete in the previous RFD might see a reason to consider this one in a different light. —Soap— 13:21, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Put another way, if we delete this, where would a person seeing the phrase red-green-brown alliance go to look this up? —Soap— 14:09, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep कालमैत्री (talk) 06:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• Keep, at least for now, since we have no political definition for brown. Wikipedia says brown can represent Nazism or fascism, but red-green-brown alliance says it represents ultranationalism (which is more precise from what I can tell). — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:40, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

deviated nasal septum

SOP: "nasal septum that is deviated". PUC – 15:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep obv कालमैत्री (talk) 09:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@कालमैत्री: Why "obviously"? I don't see anything "obvious" about this. PUC – 10:13, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

From: WT:SOP In rare cases, a phrase that is arguably unidiomatic may be included by the consensus of the community, based on the determination of editors that inclusion of the term is likely to be useful to readers.

It is not an ordinary SOP like broken thumb, mutilated torso. It should be kept same way we have lung cancer, it's a disease and a common one. कालमैत्री (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this an instance of WT:PRIOR? i.e. terms that have a specific technical meaning in a certain field. Theknightwho (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete, obv SOP.  --Lambiam 15:15, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 00:04, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

primiparous

Rfd-sense: "bearing a first offspring; having borne only one previous offspring", same as the senses "pregnant for the first time" and "having given birth to only one child" above. RcAlex36 (talk) 17:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

• I think the first sense also needs to be deleted or at least verified: a woman who just became pregnant for the first time is not a woman who has given birth to only one child. IMO only the second sense is correct, although I think it is better to define this sense as “Having given birth for the first time”. The definition of the third sense is off. Queen Hatshepsut gave birth to only one child, buy it would be ludicrous to write something like “Queen Hatshepsut was a primiparous Pharaoh”. And when María Josefa Pimentel gave birth to the second of her many children, she had borne only one previous offspring but was not primiparous. So I definitely support deletion of the third sense.  --Lambiam 16:07, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. A woman who is pregnant for the first time is primigravid. The first sense should perhaps be "giving birth for the first time" instead. RcAlex36 (talk) 01:28, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought of that, but when I read “At 10–11 months postpartum, primiparous mothers continued to be more attentive”,^[47] or “3 months postpartum, when primiparous mothers have become familiar with their infants”,^[48] the present participle is too present. In fact, all GBS hits I see for primiparous mother are about postpartum behaviour or offspring survival statistics.  --Lambiam 16:45, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

minor-attracted person

We should delete this as it arguably fails WT:SOP. But perhaps even more importantly, it should go per the reasons raised in its first English Wikipedia article deletion nomination: "it is undisputed in this discussion that this term is an euphemism intended to help legitimize pedophilia and related practices, which is at best a very WP:FRINGE view, and needs to be treated with the appropriate caution by Wikipedians." You can also see the second deletion nomination, and our own entry on NOMAP for how concerning/weird this topic can get. (Note that I haven't placed a template on the page, as it's restricted to autopatrollers.) The ed17 (talk) 13:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

What follows your "perhaps even more importantly" isn't a valid rationale for deletion. I guess what Wikipedians are arguing against is the use of this term in the body of the encyclopedia as if it were a neutral synonym of "pedophile"; that doesn't mean its existence shouldn't be documented, on the contrary. PUC – 14:02, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

The "perhaps more importantly" point appeals to the ideas around meta:Child protection and more generally basic human rights, but yes that's why I also said it fails WT:SOP—specifically the fried egg test. A pedophile is a pedophile, not a "minor-attracted person". The ed17 (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@The ed17 Those tests can't be failed in the way you seem to think - a term only needs to pass one of them. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a term that is (unfortunately) in use and thus needs to be documented. However, the page should have appropriate notes - the ones it currently has are inadequate. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 17:33, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep, the interest in the connotations and implications of this term show us that not even lacking idiomaticity beyond the sum of the term’s parts constitutes a sufficient argument to delete the entry. We give it as much exposure as it should have: while an entire encyclopaedia entry can create the impression that an idea is not fringe or marginal, this is not the case for a dictionary exposé. Fay Freak (talk) 16:42, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Some sexologists prefer the term minor-attracted person to avoid the stigma associated with a common abuse of the term pedophile. This abuse is also exemplified in the quotation above from the Wikipedia discussion: “intended to help legitimize pedophilia and related practices”.^[49] Pedophilia is a paraphilia, an experience and not by itself a “practice”. Among the people who experience sexual attraction primarily to adolescent under-age individuals the vast majority does not engage in “related practices”.  --Lambiam 18:07, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Lambiam: If someone wants to use pedophile in the strict, psychiatric sense of the term, what would they call a person who doesn't merely experience sexual attraction towards children, but also engages in sexual relations with them, i.e. acts on their sexual instincts? (This is a genuine question, I'm not insinuating anything.) PUC – 13:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, your comment makes me wonder whether the "euphemistic" label should remain as is. In the eyes of sexologists and psychiatrists, it isn't a euphemism, right? Just a less loaded term for one paraphilia / psychiatric condition among many others. PUC – 13:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Someone who abuses children can be called a sexual child abuser^[50][51][52] or, depending on their acts, a child rapist. Whether the term minor-attracted person is euphemistic depends on who you ask. The term was introduced by B4U-ACT, an alliance of therapists, researchers, and minor-attracted persons who advocate for the provision of professional services, in particular mental health services, for individuals who are sexually attracted to children and adolescents. The term is used in the professional literature by both sexologists and psychiatrists, but some call B4U-ACT a "pedophilia advocacy group" and will say these authors, by not forthright condemning people with such perverse attractions, are thereby also part of the pedophilia advocacy crowd and are guilty of using the term as a euphemism.  --Lambiam 15:53, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

This seems to be "the term" for the referent: I have not seen "child-attracted person" or "CAP", for example, but I've seen "MAP". So probably keep. Equinox ◑ 13:11, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep (per Surjection) as a term that's in use. To elaborate on what Equinox said, I also don't see that minor-attracted is used with any other noun ("minor-attracted man" for instance). PUC – 13:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Lambian and Equinox. Clearly the terms 'paedophile' and 'child molester' are not synonymous and MAP is a set phrase which isn't replacable with a possible synonym like CAP. A very obvious keep in fact. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 22:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep per everyone else. However, I could have sworn that this was a part of some trolling campaign, and not used outside of it. CitationsFreak (talk) 01:24, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

See the use by Scottish police that I mentioned on the talk page. Maybe you are thinking of 4chan's "clovergender". Equinox ◑ 11:12, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox I think it's like the ok sign: started off as a trolling campaign, but the attention it got meant some people started using it sincerely. Theknightwho (talk) 22:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it started from a trolling campaign. It was always real and in use in the scientific papers. But it has served as an element of the "LGBT+ SUPPORTS PEDOPHILIA" trolling. CitationsFreak (talk) 19:16, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It meets all the criteria for inclusion, and it would do so even if it is being used to promote paedophilia - which the evidence shows it isn't (at least exclusively). Thryduulf (talk) 00:54, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

• Kept per eeryone Seoovslfmo (talk) 14:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

unleavened bread

Survived RFD in 2013, when we were a little dumber. Still SOP P. Sovjunk (talk) 09:15, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

But now it is held by WT:THUB for its single-word translations. Fay Freak (talk) 09:47, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Keep for the reason given by Fay Freak. DonnanZ (talk) 16:48, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

• Keep but remove definition and explicitly mark as a translation hub. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:16, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

  Why would we remove definitions from translation hubs? Seems overly pedantic to me: "the entry is only being kept for its translations, therefore you can't have anything but translations in there". We can surely just keep the basic definition that is already there. This, that and the other (talk) 05:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  "Bread that is unleavened" is not a useful definition to have, it just looks silly. PUC – 09:18, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

  But then you put (This entry is a translation hub.) at the end, and the reader will go "ah, I get why the def is a bit silly, the entry is just here for translations". This, that and the other (talk) 11:29, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Speedy keep: Probably shouldn't have been re-nominated Purplebackpack89 22:58, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
• Keep as a THUB. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:44, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

• Kept again. I'll re-RFD in 2033. Denazz (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

school-age

Attributive form of school age, not a real adjective. We also don't want working-age alongside working age. PUC – 13:08, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Note that it excludes university (and probably kindergarten, if people want to split hairs). —Soap— 18:30, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster considers it an adjective, unlike other dictionaries I checked. In any case, I've added a noun alt form section since school-age is attestable outside of attributive uses. If the adjective sense is deleted, the translation table should probably be moved to school-aged. I also created schoolage (with a noun header), which seems to occur only attributively. Einstein2 (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think any purpose would be served by deleting this. DonnanZ (talk) 10:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete the hyphenated attributive sense, following precedent. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

fat lot of good

Noun: of no use or help

Apart from being a definition that doesn’t fit a noun, it’s definitely sum of parts: a fat lot (“little or nothing”, sarcastic) + of + good. Theknightwho (talk) 01:52, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Shouldn't a fat lot be moved to fat lot? As the RFD'd entry shows, it can be used without the article. Yes, it's probably omitted through a process of elision, but it still seems unnecessary to include in the headword. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:20, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Put together, the parts form an idiom. DonnanZ (talk) 08:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Maybe redirect to "(a) fat lot". This collocation is extremely common but "fat lot" ought to explain the meaning. Equinox ◑ 11:13, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I've heard "a lot of good that'll do" with only the context and tone of voice to convey the sarcasm, as well as substitution of things like "help" for "good". Chuck Entz (talk) 12:31, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

A more common collocation is fat lot of use, while fat lot of help is also common, so this is IMO SOP. I think a fat lot should actually be moved to a fat lot of, to be classified as a determiner (compare a lick of), to which fat lot and a fat lot can redirect.  --Lambiam 19:16, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Redirect to either fat lot or fat lot of, since other words can replace good. I would lemmatize the form without the a since it can be omitted: Citations:fat lot. - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

blue light

Rfd-sense:"Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum generated by an electronic device." Is this (sense 4) actually different from the &lit sense 5? I'm not sure. Ƿidsiþ 06:25, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Here is another sense: “Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum produced by the light of an incandescent light source passing through a blue colour filter”.^[53] Also, “Visible light towards the blue end of the spectrum emitted by the daytime sky, caused by Rayleigh scattering”.^[54] As sense 4 is merely “Visible light having the colour of the clear sky or the deep sea, between green and purple in the visible spectrum”, without specifying the light source, I imagine we can expect many more precisely specified senses. In other words, Delete.  --Lambiam 18:56, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

ballet school

"A school for ballet." Well, thanks for enlightening us ...P. Sovjunk (talk) 10:08, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

• Delete Per WT:THUB, two qualifying translations that are not word-for-word compounds are required. Currently there are zero. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:19, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SOP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:46, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

RFD-deleted This, that and the other (talk) 09:20, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

dussack

Moved, at least temporarily, to WT:RFVE#dussack.

November 2023

acquired characteristic

SOP: "a characteristic that is acquired (i.e. "Developed after birth; not congenital")". PUC – 17:34, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. According to the Wikipedia article, "Applying makeup, nail polish, dying one's hair, applying henna to the skin, and tooth whitening are not examples of acquired traits" (which is a synonym according to the same article). However, if a celebrity does their hair and makeup in a particular way, that can be said to be acquired + a characteristic, but not an acquired characteristic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:36, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
  • I think you're suggesting this should be kept per WT:FRIED. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free

Feels SOP-y to me, being from the river to the sea plus the rest of the words. It's not a set phrase, either, because there are some uses with "Palestine will be free" at the front. An example of this is in the 2014 essay collection Conversations in Postcolonial Thought, in an essay by Ronit Lentin, in which she writes "This forgetting [of the element of violence that made Israel] ... is precisely what pro-Palestine demonstrators say: Palestine will be free from the river to the sea." However, I will admit that this element seems like it makes up a large chunk of the uses of "from the river to the sea". CitationsFreak (talk) 22:39, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

• Redirect to from the river to the sea, the minimal idiomatic component, per nom. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:38, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

  And while we're at it, I think we need to improve the definition of from the river to the sea. The current Al-Jazeera‎ citation does not support the use of the phrase as a slogan, but rather as a literal prepositional phrase (of course, with fried-egg restrictions on which river and sea are being referred to). In fact, can we find any examples of from the river to the sea being used in isolation (without any complement) as a slogan? If so, then we should have two definitions here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Redirect. - -sche (discuss) 17:08, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

escrow

Rfd-sense 2: "In common law, escrow applied to the deposits only of instruments for conveyance of land, but it now applies to all instruments so deposited." That's not a definition. Whether something can/should be salvaged from it, I don't know. PUC – 22:12, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@PUC The whole entry's really substandard, and I strongly suspect it's verbatim copied from some old version of a Wikipedia page, since they're encyclopaedic explanations (e.g. "Money or other property so deposited is also loosely referred to as escrow.") rather than definitions. Theknightwho (talk) 22:18, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I've cleared this up: The state of property deposited with an escrow agent wasn't distinct from sense 1, so I've just deleted it, since the 2 quotations given for it are better explained by sense 1 anyway. Money or other property so deposited is also loosely referred to as escrow. was just wrong - we could RFV it, but I can't find any evidence for it at all. Theknightwho (talk) 22:25, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Actually, MW claims it can be used to refer to the assets held under escrow, so I've restored that. Theknightwho (talk) 22:42, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: Just FYI: here's an exact match, though the text in question was added to our entry in 2007 and this edition is copyright 2016. Normally I would hide the plagiarism in the edit history, but there's the matter of attribution for 16 years of legitimate edits... Chuck Entz (talk) 06:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz Thanks - it was added by @CORNELIUSSEON, who hasn’t edited in over 8 years, but seems to have been notorious for plagiarism, incompetence and a refusal to improve, if their talkpage is anything to go by. Theknightwho (talk) 07:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

role reversal

Sounds pretty SOP to me. PUC – 13:50, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree. delete Kiwima (talk) 19:16, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I disagree, keep. I am rather puzzled why PUC added a translation and then decided to RFD it. DonnanZ (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Why do you disagree? PUC – 19:31, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I think I considered SoP when creating the entry. I don't think the definitions at reversal cover this, which is more like a swapping of roles. DonnanZ (talk) 19:44, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Probably keep: it's strongly idiomatic (we don't talk about "part reversal", even though a role is a part and you can "take someone's part"), and the definition indicates that it usually means two people trading places, not a single person reversing their role (e.g. hero becoming villain). Equinox ◑ 20:59, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I do not buy this idiomaticity argument. One can also say, in a reversal of the roles^[55][56][57] or, the roles were reversed,^[58][59][60] so if there is some idiomaticity, it is not in the specific collocation role reversal. In most of these other combinations you cannot substitute part for role either, but how is this an argument for idiomaticity? It applies equally in many contexts in which the term role is used, contexts that do not involve some role swapping, e.g., the role of the acid in our stomach, the role of this gadget  or the role of this question.  --Lambiam 16:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

"How is this an argument for idiomaticity"? I thought that was what idiomaticity meant: the tendency to use one form when others would also make sense. Oh well, I don't care too much about what happens to this particular entry. Equinox ◑ 17:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The term idiomatic has several distinguishable meanings, as does the term idiom to which it relates. You are referring to our sense 1: “A manner of speaking, a mode of expression peculiar to a language, language family, or group of people.” However, as used in our NISOP non-inclusion criterion, it refers to sense 3: “An established phrasal expression whose meaning may not be deducible from the literal meanings of its component words.”  --Lambiam 15:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Equinox's first line up above. A naive reader wouldn't know what this means without already knowing what it means. —Soap— 07:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Lean keep per Equinox. I'm not convinced by Lambiam's reasoning above, e.g. "French kiss" is obviously idiomatic even though it can be rearranged in various contexts (e.g. "kissed him French style"). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:10, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning delete per Lambiam; a role reversal is a reversal ... of roles. OTOH, a number of other dictionaries (Cambridge, Collins, and seemingly the OED) have this, so meh. - -sche (discuss) 17:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

But it's not a reversal of one single role, even though it could be. Not hero to villain, predator to prey (unless the other entity also changes their role correspondingly). Equinox ◑ 19:05, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I added &lit in an attempt to cover that eventuality (hero to villain etc.) It can be reverted if inappropriate. DonnanZ (talk) 22:47, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per fried egg test. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

• Kept per all the criteria tests that we have Denazz (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Al Jazeera

Encyclopedic. The article was nominated 15 years ago with no consensus. [61] The only arguments seem to be for notability, which disagrees with our policy. brittletheories (talk) 16:04, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I've expanded the entry with three quotes that probably meet WT:BRAND. Einstein2 (talk) 18:05, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I don't see how the quotes support any kind of inclusion. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The quotes don't identify Al Jazeera as a television channel, see the examples at Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion/Brand names. Einstein2 (talk) 15:54, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they do. Humans are capable of metonymy and irony regardless of ideomaticity. You could substitute Fox News for any one of them, and that was deleted before. brittletheories (talk) 10:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Good to know that I can sell videotapes of beheadings to Fox News. :)  --Lambiam 15:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

If Al-Jazeera is used as a stand-in for somethimg, it should be explicated. For instance:

1. (informal) Any sensationalist media that publishes offensive or shocking content.

I'm not aware of such an association. As it stands now, the article doesn't name a single figurative use of the term. brittletheories (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that these cites are in reference to Al Jazeera being seen as a Muslim news source, and therefore must have beheading tapes on their newsfeed. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per the above. PUC – 12:44, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Brittletheories, any figurative sense ought to be stated explicitly to support inclusion and I don't see an obvious one here. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk)

Keep, but rework definition to explain quotes. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Weak delete. I'm not convinced by the cites; if a cite says someone could "talk to anybody about what she knew—even the Korean People's Army", does that make Korean People's Army idiomatic or is it still the province of an encyclopedia rather than a dictionary? I am thinking the latter. We have a lot of abbreviations of news media, like DW, BBC, MSNBC, CBS, but we don't have The Times, London Times, New York Times, Washington Post, British Broadcasting Corporation. - -sche (discuss) 17:06, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there any abbreviation for Al Jazeera? Ironically, I tend to use BBC instead of British Broadcasting Corporation, and so do the BBC. DonnanZ (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

by what right

This was just added, with a request for definition. But it is so very NISOP that it is hard to define. I notice that the translations added look pretty much like straightforward calques, so I don't think even the translation hub justification holds here. Kiwima (talk) 19:14, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. Compare by what criterion,^[62] by what entrance,^[63] by what feat of logic,^[64] by what means,^[65] by what mistaken magic^[66] &c. &c.  --Lambiam 16:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

white man

Rfd-sense "white people collectively; white culture"

taxpayer

Rfd-sense "All of the people, collectively, in a population who pay tax",

This is a general, non-lexical feature of English: "the criminal", "the law-abiding citizen", "the hunter-gatherer" ("The hunter-gatherer uses his culture, not so much to manipulate the ecology of the area where he lives, but to develop patterns of behavior in congruence with the ecology of the resources he will extract"), etc. can all be used in the singular with a collective meaning. PUC – 22:50, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed: "The lion is a noble beast" doesn't mean we need a separate sense at lion... Chuck Entz (talk) 01:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete such senses for the nominator’s reason. — Sgconlaw (talk) 04:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete the sense at taxpayer as non-lexical.

For white man the case is less clear. Does “the collectivity of individuals who are white men” include women? For the bare noun man we do list “All humans collectively” as a separate sense. Also, if verifiable, the sense “white culture” should make the term at least somewhat lexical. The term “taxpayer” certainly cannot be used in the sense of “taxpayer culture”.  --Lambiam 15:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• Whatever happens (I am not in favour of deletion of either), keep the quotations for both. One I entered (earlier this year) does point to taxpayer being used collectively. DonnanZ (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete the "taxpayer" one per the above. I agree with Lambiam on "the white man" being less clear but I'm not certain if this is really a specific sense or more to do with the semantics of "man", so abstain on that one for now. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:40, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

If deleted, we should also delete the equivalent sense at black man ("keeping the black man down", etc.), as the identical arguments apply. Equinox ◑ 14:23, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Also yellow man. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep - per Lambiam. Theknightwho (talk) 15:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Both? Or just white man? PUC – 16:18, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

@PUC Missed the second nom, sorry - just white man (and the coordinate terms mentioned above like black man etc). Theknightwho (talk) 16:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to delete taxpayer and yellow man; white man and black man have somewhat more history as syntagmas so I'm on the fence about them but wouldn't object to deleting them, too. You can do this with lots of things, e.g. "the lion" as pointed out above, or even things that don't require (but may optionally have) "the", like "Instead, Early Woman was herself an energetic and competent provider" and "When Neolithic man arrived". I am sceptical that "white man" can mean "white culture"; I might RFV the game of tag sense listed at black man, too, while we're at it. - -sche (discuss) 16:54, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep Definition 2, "white people collectively; white culture", which was (is?) a typical sense as far as I know. For example, Looney Tunes: Wagon Heels (1945) starts off "1849, when the west was young and the white man's march of progress was threatened by that mighty redskin Injun Joe, the Super-Chief!" I'm sure one could find plenty of historical examples to meet the usual standards of attestation. AP295 (talk) 14:08, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Undeletion of acter (in combination)

This was deleted per the one-acter RfD. There Wonderfool “suspect[ed] that the term one-acter was coined before acter”, and TheDaveRoss and Binarystep voted to delete and Equinox to keep, respectively, acter. For similar -er terms used in combination, see Category:English terms suffixed with -er (measurement) (e.g., decker, footer, master, valver, volumer). Alternatively, we would have two-acter, three-acter, four-acter, five-acter, six-acter, seven-acter, eight-acter, nine-acter (all sufficiently attested). J3133 (talk) 12:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Support undeletion. I created a few similar entries like worlder without knowledge of that RFD, and yes I agree it makes sense to have single entries qualified as "in combination" over loads of (number)-...er terms which are easily comprehensible sums of parts. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 13:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Support undeletion. Equinox ◑ 15:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Support. Theknightwho (talk) 15:53, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Support It was never officially deleted, merely removed. diff. DonnanZ (talk) 00:28, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Support. Weird that it was deleted in the first place. CitationsFreak (talk) 03:23, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

RFD-restored and changed the etymology to refer to sense 4 of -er as envisaged above. This, that and the other (talk) 00:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

work well under pressure

SOP, non-lexical usage notes, alt forms are not alt forms (the same way that better and best are not alt forms of well).

I could maybe see a case for creating under pressure ("to be under pressure", "to perform well under pressure"). PUC – 16:28, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per my TR comment. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:45, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete this and the alt forms. Equinox ◑ 18:19, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, maybe make "under pressure". MedK1 (talk) 21:59, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete this and its alt forms as SOP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 00:56, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

accessory before the fact

accessory after the fact

SOP of accessory + before the fact and accessory + after the fact? PUC – 16:40, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

H₂O

Specifically sense 1: "Water as a chemical substance". Duplication of Translingual sense 1: "Water, by its molecular formula..." CitationsFreak (talk) 03:26, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

But English is a different "language" than Translingual. I dont think this should be considered duplication. —Soap— 08:49, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@Soap: If H₂O-the-chemical-formula is translingual, i.e. used across multiple languages, then it definitely is duplication. We don't and wouldn't make sections for H₂O for the tens of other languages where chemistry is written about sufficiently enough. The only argument I see for it are grammatical differences, like the fact that it's uncountable in English whereas that might not be a distinction in other languages, but that falls apart to me pretty fast when you consider that that's the case for just about any chemical formula. There's no separate section for the number 17 in English and German just because one's pronounced sɛvəntiːn and the other ziːptseːn. Delete for me. Hythonia (talk) 12:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@Hythonia: We have the number in the English entry for 1, though not in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. J3133 (talk) 14:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That is also duplication, and should probably be deleted. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@CitationsFreak: See RfD below. J3133 (talk) 15:11, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap. There is one quotation (so far) for it (and IPA). DonnanZ (talk) 14:19, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete and move the quote (and IPA as * English: {{IPA|en|...}}) to the Translingual section. This, that and the other (talk) 01:08, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per above. brittletheories (talk) 20:52, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as a duplicate of the translingual. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 01:00, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

good boy, good girl

Seems to be SOP, just that it can be used sarcastically as in the given usage example. कालमैत्री (talk) 08:39, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. (And if a good girl is a female child, how can she "stand by her man"? Sounds a bit dodgy!) Equinox ◑ 09:15, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Not so fast. I think they are common exclamations. If so, amend and keep. DonnanZ (talk) 11:51, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is definitely use of both phrases as a sincere term of congratulations for a small child or for a pet, upon which the idiomatic use for adults is based. I think these pages should be expanded, but also support keeping the idiomatic usage, so my support is for adding your sense, not replacing the existing sense. —Soap— 12:52, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

As an aside, why does the nominator use an unreadable name? DonnanZ (talk) 12:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz Do you think a conspirator shall speak of his ways? कालमैत्री (talk) 15:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That's a counter-question, not a satisfactory answer. DonnanZ (talk) 15:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

To be fair, the definition reads as "An obedient female child, or someone who behaves like one"; I presume that's the part that applies in this usex. The definition should be split imo, because I was also confused at first. PUC – 20:18, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep, as I think these are plainly idiomatic. Is it not obvious that the use-example I chose describes a woman who obeys her male partner without question? And that most of us would consider such a woman to be excessively obedient? This goes far beyond the literal meaning good girl you would use to describe a five-year-old who shares their candy with neighborhood kids even when their parents didn't tell them to. Likewise, the use-example on good boy describes an adult man who avoids taking on a difficult adult responsibility, something we would never expect a literal child to handle.

I created these pages just two days ago, and I intend to add to them a lot more, but I prefer to work at a slow pace, hopping around from page to page, rather than focusing on getting a new entry to completion right out of the gate. I wasn't expecting an RFD so soon after creation. Nonetheless, the core of the content is there, and I see no reason to consider this a sum-of-parts definition. The fact that it needs so much explanation is a demonstration on its own that it's idiomatic. Best regards, —Soap— 12:32, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I think the wording of the pages is good as it is, but if I were to break the combined definitions apart so that the idiomatic sense was defined as something such as an excessively obedient (wo)man, would we still consider this to be sum-of-parts? If so, how could a naive reader coming across the phrase good girl in a context like the above use our definitions of good (7 senses just for people) and girl (10 senses) to put together that it means an excessively obedient woman? If this is going to be another one of those "they'll figure it out from context" RFD's, I'll just say as I've said before that the people who look things up in a dictionary are precisely NOT the people who can piece out an unpredictable definition from the context it's in. We don't write for people like us. —Soap— 12:38, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I hope you realise how pretentious and condescending you're sounding right now. PUC – 13:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't. In fact, I don't think I could be condescending if I tried. But that's irrelevant ... what matters to me is .... can anyone answer my question? —Soap— 13:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, SOAP. What next: good husband, good wife, good doggo? PUC – 13:20, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Can you show me idiomatic uses of those phrases? Particularly ones that are as far from a literal meaning as well-behaved child is from excessively obedient adult? —Soap— 13:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

The meaning of words are not idiomatic, as i said of the usage examples you have: they have been used (shallowly) in the context to taunt, to suggest excessiveness. Words like good father etc. can be used similarly.
Yes, a kid might not understand the use case, but many a satirical use cases are not always apparent.
And lastly i think red-green alliance should have been kept. कालमैत्री (talk) 15:10, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Re good doggo: note that we have good boi. J3133 (talk) 16:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep, but I think the example for "good boy" is really weird and should be changed. Honestly the context for the current example is unclear to me. I think a better example for idiomatic usage (use for an adult) would be something like

"I know how to cook dinner, Dave. Now be a good boy and go wait quietly with the kids." Or

"Be a good boy and give your mother a call. She's been calling every day for a week!"

something like that. AmbiguouslyAnonymous (talk) 14:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I don't think these are used only in cases where it would be natural to use "boy" or "girl." Also, I think a good test for idiomaticity is if a term can be translated literally. Is that the case here? Can you say "bon garçon" to a dog or a child in French? I'm not a native speaker, but I think something like "bravo" would be more likely. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:46, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

But the senses don't include the use as interjection, while that should be the case only then. Have you read the entries? Your French argument is not correct, a particular phrase can be used in one language, but might sound awkward in other even with literal senses. कालमैत्री (talk) 03:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

To clarify my vote: Delete noun but keep as an interjection. My translation-based argument doesn't prove anything, it's true, but it is still evidence, or at least an argument for making it a translation hub. But you're right, I neglected to read the entry and based on some of the above comments, thought we were talking about an interjection sense. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:59, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

bitch and a half

WT:SOP. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 15:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, bitch (senses 3 and 13, or maybe 10 and 12) + and a half (sense 2). ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:49, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Theknightwho (talk) 16:17, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, delete. You can use and a half for anything: a car and a half, a woman and a half. DonnanZ (talk) 12:16, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. MedK1 (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SOP. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 01:01, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Undeletion of ancient Greek

Deleted in 2014 with the rationale “This is a mistake not an alternative form. Hardly worth creating {{misspelling of}} entries for wrong capitalization.” Since then, there have been two sections on the talk page:

Not a mistaken form

Pace the editors above, lower-case ancient is more (not less) common when dealing with the people and adjective, with an established meaning very much more restrictive than simply the SOP of "anything very old related to Greece". Ancient Greek may be written either way, albeit it's increasingly common (as we learn ancient Greek less often) to give the name "Greek" to the modern form and instead describe ancient Greek as an all-capped thing-unto-itself.

Further, Ancient Greek is properly restricted to the Greek of antiquity. The phrase however is sometimes used (as in ISO 639) as inclusive of all Greek up to 1453, a sense where it should be lower-case (but still not SOP). — LlywelynII 22:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

ancient Greek

ancient Greek is definitely more common than Ancient Greek for adjectival use, which is actually the commonest use as well. See this ngram, and compare ancient Near Eastern, ancient Roman... which are also more common than Ancient Near Eastern ([67]) and Ancient Roman ([68]).

A core principle of the Wiktionary is Wiktionary:Descriptivism.

92.184.116.35 06:58, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

The Ancient Greek entry has a usage note for the noun, which correctly states, “Usually, ancient is not capitalized in this sense”, with a hidden comment linking to the Google Ngram Viewer. Both the adjective and the noun are more commonly ancient Greek. Further, MLA style states in its page “Does MLA style capitalize ancient when it precedes Greece or Greek?”, “No. We follow Merriam-Webster, which indicates that the terms ancient and classical are not capitalized when they are attached to names of languages or periods.” It is clear that this is not a “mistake”, as was stated in the RfD, and also, as mentioned above, inconsistent with having the entries ancient Roman (more common form of Ancient Roman) and ancient Rome (which is the form, e.g., Wikipedia uses) or ancient Near Eastern (“of the Ancient Near East”). J3133 (talk) 10:49, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete per nom. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 10:57, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

hadopelagic water

Rfd-sense: the adjective.

Boring, straightforward attributive use of the noun. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:33, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

This is not really a valid reason to delete, because most of the colors in the category also make straightforward attributive use of their nouns. Oliver201013 (talk) 23:26, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Send to RFV. The term is not attested in this sense. This, that and the other (talk) 01:05, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

intuiter

Word not found in dictionaries.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intuiter

Rubsley (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Not a valid reason to delete and the word looks trivial to attest. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 19:42, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

@Rubsley: we have many terms that are not found in other dictionaries. They may be included so long as they satisfy our criteria for inclusion—in particular, that they are used in permanently recorded media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year. If you feel that a particular term does not meet these criteria, it may be nominated for verification at "Wiktionary:Requests for verification". — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Rubsley (talk) 21:18, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Obviously keep. I've added 3 citations. @Rubsley, this is a dictionary, so clearly the word is found in a dictionary: this one. Obviously you can't make a good dictionary by just copying what older people did before you, and not include new real words too. Next time, google it. Equinox ◑ 19:03, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Where are the citations? "Intuiter" citations page is empty. Rubsley (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Rubsley You should see a small "quotations" button to the right of the definition, which will display them. We tend to prefer making the quotations readily accessible like this when they aren't too verbose. Theknightwho (talk) 09:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Speedy kept as it’s cited, and the initial request made no sense. The content of other dictionaries cannot be used to justify deleting a term. Theknightwho (talk) 04:24, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

Cites are for Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg and not Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg not asserted to be independent of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Delete an entry that is not a term, but is merely a part of another term. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

This should be an RFV then. Equinox ◑ 09:52, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I tried looking up some other placenames that only occur as the names of lakes and rivers, and have to admit it was more difficult than I expected. It seems that we typically just don't list these either in their bare form or with "lake" and "river" attached. The ones I did find were all used in more than one placename, e.g. Sligo, Cam, Magog, Champlain. If we move this to RFV I suppose the question would be about whether people can say Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg to mean the lake, since that is the only placename there is. I would expect that they do, though it seems at least some of the Google search results for the long name without the word "lake" are simply pages in other languages. —Soap— 11:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

My intent was not to search for three cites but to delete the entry without a search for three cites on policy grounds. If I brought this at RFV and wrote what I wrote above, I guarantee it would be said "take it to RFD, you bitch ass punk". I have now opened an RFV too, copy-pasting the above grounds but as a different petition. I want to run an RFD and an RFV on this term simultaneously. I would suggest closing this one and recommending RFV and closing that one and recommending RFD. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:19, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Nonsense. You are saying that "Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg" alone (minus "Lake") does not exist. The way to disprove this is to find 3 cites for it. Thus RFV is the correct venue per policy. Equinox ◑ 11:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I see the error of my petitions, but I am just totally unexperienced with the process. I wash my hands of both petitions and retract them insofar as I can. Please do not contact me about this. I have no ill will toward you Equinox. And what I realize is that I have never had a successful RFD before- though I have had about 5 to 10 successful RFVs. That's the page where I can have a more interesting and useful role; I really have no opinions about policy-related questions that will come up in an RFD. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:25, 22 November 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

sunflower seed

कालमैत्री (talk) 10:40, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

or it can be translation hub. कालमैत्री (talk) 10:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

To provide context for the request: it's being argued that this is a SOP. There was a rather heated discussion on the Discord server that began with whether we should make entries for translations of sunflower seed, which eventually evolved into whether this entry should exist at all. One argument presented for keeping it, as far as I understood it, was that you cannot deduce from the definitions on the pages seed and sunflower that sunflower seeds are eaten as a snack, used as bird feed, or in the manufacture of sunflower oil. I'm not exactly convinced by this — to me, this is not information that's necessary to understand that a sunflower seed is a sunflower seed, regardless of whether it's roasted or not. I don't imagine WT:FRIED applies, because unroasted sunflower seeds are also commonly referred to as sunflower seeds. Delete, unless it fulfills WT:COALMINE, in which case all I can do is shrug. Hythonia (talk) 10:57, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would keep this. Not only a popular translation hub (I entered solsikkefrø years ago), it can be used in recipes (Google sunflower seed recipes), you shouldn't use sunflowers themselves in recipes (!), not to forget bird food.

There are many other types of seed listed under derived terms at seed; I'm not sure why this one was singled out. DonnanZ (talk) 18:33, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

"You shouldn't use sunflowers in recipes" is not a lexical argument. We do not add or remove words based on the edibility of the referent. Equinox ◑ 22:34, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep as THUB. It might also be a case of WT:JIFFY (or WT:COALMINE), but THUB is likely the strongest argument (and I don't have the energy to look into the others). There are already a few non-compound-word translations there too. AG202 (talk) 23:42, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete as SOP (unless a term falls into WT:COALMINE, of course). MedK1 (talk) 15:17, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

@MedK1: Why did you add pumpkin seed below if it passes WT:COALMINE (pumpkinseed)? J3133 (talk) 10:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

The original poster didn't mention WT:COALMINE or anything, so I thought it would be relevant. It's pretty much the same discussion, so this might also prevent the page from getting RFD'd later. MedK1 (talk) 14:45, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Keep as THUB, not for the Norwegian word (which is a transparent compound of the words for sunflower + seed) but for the Russian word and its loans. While we're here, could someone who knows Russian please clean up the Russian entry in the translation box? This, that and the other (talk) 09:53, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

The point about transparent compounds is that we editors can work them out, but a casual passive user may not be able to. We shouldn't forget them. DonnanZ (talk) 10:29, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

WT:THUB is more restrictive than you would perhaps prefer: a "closed compound that is a word-for-word translation of the English term" does not qualify. This, that and the other (talk) 00:40, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole SoP argument is a murky and messy one. Would anyone RFD solsikkefrø, or Sunflower State, and I have a half-empty bottle of sunflower oil. In any case, with sunflowerseed this now complies with WT:COALMINE. DonnanZ (talk) 10:59, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

RFDing Sunflower State makes no sense as there's hardly any way for one to know it refers to Kansas specifically — I didn't know before clicking that link. ...Should we RFD sunflower oil? MedK1 (talk) 20:01, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Why? Just because I mentioned it? Are you RFD-happy? DonnanZ (talk) 09:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz I think the issue was that Sunflower State made no sense as an example. Theknightwho (talk) 09:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

It's still a derivative of sunflower, but a proper noun, and no one should contemplate deleting it. DonnanZ (talk) 10:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz That was never the issue. Theknightwho (talk) 10:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

sunflower oil meets THUB, but only barely: the Greek ("sun oil") and Chinese ("sunflower seed oil") seem to qualify. This, that and the other (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, loads of translations. The moral here is to not mention such terms in an RFD discussion, as someone seizes on them as RFD fodder. I never learn. DonnanZ (talk) 10:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Geez dude, it was a question. I didn't go around tagging it as RFD. Good to know the page meets THUB though. MedK1 (talk) 16:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@MedK1 Take no notice - DonnanZ takes RFD requests as some kind of personal attack. Theknightwho (talk) 17:58, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: Be careful, that is a personal attack, worse than being called a dude. DonnanZ (talk) 18:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Keep per COALMINE. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:53, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Denazz has struck the heading of this discussion without giving an explicit verdict. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 22:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

• Sorry, this is RFD pass per COALMINE, THUB and LEMMINGS. Denazz (talk) 11:17, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

pumpkin seed

Struck for the reason given by J3133. DonnanZ (talk) 15:44, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to strike sunflower seed as well. 2804:1B0:1900:9266:79CC:5FEB:7398:8022 21:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Nobody has created an entry for sunflowerseed yet. DonnanZ (talk) 12:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: I have created it. J3133 (talk) 20:59, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

sulli

Rfd-sense redundant???:a slang term used for Muslim females Seoovslfmo (talk) 00:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

This entry needs cleanup. What is "ethnic slang"? The usage note suggests that the term is derogatory, so perhaps "ethnic slur" is meant. This, that and the other (talk) 09:47, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deleted as an obvious duplicate. I've also cleared up the entry, since it was pretty unprofessional. The label "Islam" was also wrong, since it's used in South Asia to refer to Muslim women by non-Muslims, so I've changed it to "South Asia". Theknightwho (talk) 01:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

subbranch

Rfd-sense "part of a branch". How is this different from sense 1 ("branch that is itself an offshoot of a branch of something")? PUC – 18:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

If a part of a branch isn't an entire branch in its own right, it wouldn't meet the definition of sense 1. I suppose there might be a way to combine the two, but it would have to be worded differently than the current sense 1. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure whether such “non-branches” would be called subbranches, and even if they would, is there a way to differentiate them from actual smaller branches? In any case, I think one definition line is sufficient (maybe after a bit of rewording). Einstein2 (talk) 13:39, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Lulu

Rfd-sense. We shouldn't list given names as being from Chinese, they would either be anglicised (in which case indistinguishable from the other one listed above on the page) or transliterations (which we don't include for Chinese given names). – wpi (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

reincarnation

Rfd-sense "(uncountable) The philosophy of such a rebirth, a specific belief or doctrine on how such a rebirth occurs", with "Do you believe in reincarnation?" as a usex.

Why wouldn't this usex simply be an instance of sense 1? Compare "Do you believe in life after death?" or "Do you believe in hell?": we don't have senses at life after death or hell reading as "a philosophy which posits that life after death / hell exists". PUC – 10:52, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package

Not WT-worthy Seoovslfmo (talk) 13:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, WT:NSE. This, that and the other (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. I'm usually inclusionist when it comes to proper nouns, but wow that's niche. And it's SOP-ish to boot. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 07:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep - being niche is no reason to exclude something. Theknightwho (talk) 18:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Something for an encyclopaedia. Equinox ◑ 18:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete As Equinox said, this is encyclopedia material, not dictionary material. - -sche (discuss) 21:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, it's in Wikipedia, but the entry for ALSEP will need amending. DonnanZ (talk) 23:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

-un-

From Wiktionary:Tea room/2023/November § Systematic element name infixes:

(E.g., as in unbiunium (“element 121”).) We have both un- (prefix) and -un- (infix), both defined as standing for the digit 1, but -bi-, which would be the infix, is a redirect to bi- (“2”), the prefix. -nil- (“0”), -tri- (“3”), -quad- (“4”), -pent- (“5”), -hex- (“6”), -sept- (“7”), -oct- (“8”), -enn- (“9”) are also redirects to the prefixes. See the RfD for -oct-, per which I suppose -un-, the only infix, should also be redirected. J3133 (talk) 09:50, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

J3133 (talk) 18:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Support deletion; it should redirect to un-. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

1

Sense: “The number one (1).” From the RfD for H₂O:

@Hythonia: We have the number in the English entry for 1, though not in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. J3133 (talk) 14:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That is also duplication, and should probably be deleted. CitationsFreak (talk) 21:01, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

J3133 (talk) 14:00, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Support. CitationsFreak (talk) 16:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete, plainly redundant to Translingual whichever way you slice it. This, that and the other (talk) 00:20, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as redundant to translingual. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 18:30, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

BLEE BLAH BLEE BLEH

Sundaydriver1 tagged this entry with the "d" template. I believe the entry should be kept, as the phrase is verifiably used in multiple instances. CJ-Moki (talk) 09:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Just a note that citations are supposed to meet WT:CFI, i.e. not random net forums that may be deleted at any time. So send to RFV to find compliant cites. Equinox ◑ 09:18, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It has 1 single result on google Sundaydriver1 (talk) 09:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete. Doesn't convey any meaning; it's merely used as part of standard "it's so random" type of humor. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 13:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete this nonsense. It belongs in an "Encyclopaedia of Songs", perhaps. DonnanZ (talk) 14:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Delete per Surjection and DonnanZ. lattermint (talk) 14:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Speedy closed Denazz (talk) 21:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Deleted as not dictionary material. - -sche (discuss) 21:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

DKC2

Donkey Kong sequels. Per Talk:HP1 for Harry Potter. Equinox ◑ 11:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Support deletion for both terms. MedK1 (talk) 16:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

DKC3

Per DKC2 above. Equinox ◑ 11:42, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

W rizz

Nominated by @MedK1 with the comment “SOP. We don't have pages for W skills or W speech either. Why should "W rizz" and any of the pages linked in the Antonyms section get one?”. lattermint (talk) 19:16, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Should we have an adjective sense at W then?? Equinox ◑ 10:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

There is already an adjective sense at W, but it could also be interpreted as an attributive noun (sense 7) I suppose. lattermint (talk) 14:16, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

By the way, delete as SOP. lattermint (talk) 19:08, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

L rizz

SOP. lattermint (talk) 15:42, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete both as original nominator. It's a bit maddening that L rizz was even created considering its mention in the RFD reason for W rizz. MedK1 (talk) 00:25, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Undelete hurry-furry merger

I brought this up in the Discord and in User talk:DTLHS#Hurry-furry merger but it didn't get too far. @theknightwho seemed to agree with me though! I was able to find it in a few spots[69][70] and I've both seen it used and actually used it in conversations (see the talk page message for more). So yeah, I think the deletion was clearly unfair. There's no reason to think it was coined by Wikipedia or whatever. MedK1 (talk) 20:06, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete - the reasons given for DTLHS's out-of-process deletion were "I bet it came from some dumb Wikipedia list" and "sounds like bullshit". Theknightwho (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Recreate and send to RFV? I see plenty on the Web, not much in GBooks (though their search sucks these days). Equinox ◑ 09:50, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

The deleting administrator seemed to be in a bad mood on the day they were questioned about it and is no longer active, so I dont expect them to share an opinion here, but I agree with those above there's no reason this page should be omitted when cot-caught merger and similar pages are listed. —Soap— 12:28, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I've undeleted it. RFV it if needed, but as long as it's attested there doesn't seem to be any RFD-reason to exclude it. - -sche (discuss) 20:14, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

This is the name of a specific entity, just like the names Hjalmar Ekdal topology, Kurgan hypothesis, Lichnerowicz cohomology, twistor theory, and so on. When should we consider such names to have become lexicalized? We are lacking a criterion.  --Lambiam 20:40, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

December 2023

Michelangelo

"A painting by Michelangelo." See "Talk:Constable". — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:46, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete for the same reason I gave at Talk:Constable. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 01:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

On a balance, delete. Any artist's name can be used this way (see also: "a Beethoven and a Musard"). Although this sense can pluralize more readily than the artist's name can, the same is true of other things we've decided to delete, like selah#Noun or that#Noun "an instance of the word 'that'" as in "there were three thats and two thises in her sentence". But as pointed out on Talk:Constable, we have similar senses in several other entries which we should also delete. - -sche (discuss) 03:51, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I tend to think we should indicate the plurals of proper nouns, as there are many, many circumstances where they can be used, both in the literal sense of the proper noun ("There will never be any more Michelangelos born in this world", "I had lunch with the Rutherfords", "The men were the David Attenboroughs of their respective countries"), as well as metonymies like the impugned sense here. This is even more problematic in inflected languages; compare WT:RFVI#Oediporum. This, that and the other (talk) 09:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with that, and add the plurals of given names and surnames and placenames whenever I can find cites. - -sche (discuss) 13:53, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I think any and all uses like the above should be kept. (And the second quote in the Proper Name section implies that there is a non-literal meaning for this name.) CitationsFreak (talk) 20:14, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

OK, maybe not the Rutherford quote. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards keep. The plural certainly occurs, and it can apply to sculptures too, "some Michelangelos", as well as people who imitate Michelangelo, "budding Michelangelos". DonnanZ (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Watteau

Rfd-sense of the "a work by..." sense; for rationale, see above. I'm listing these others here so we can discuss them all at once, rather than one at a time. The only other entry in this vein that I was able to find is Plutarch#Noun, which seems more closely related to the distinct (but also IMO deletable!) phenomenon of authors' works being referred to by the others names, like "I'm reading Cicero", "I have a copy of Tolstoy on my shelf", etc. I still think, on a balance, that we should delete these, although I'm not 100% sure. - -sche (discuss) 06:08, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete all of such senses, as they are just a form of metonymy infinitely extendable to the name of any creator, as I mentioned in this discussion archived at "Talk:Constable". — Sgconlaw (talk) 10:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
• Delete all per the above. PUC – 17:41, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all. Re: author's works, that seems even more of a grammatical phenomenon to me. It's just referring to the author's writings as a corpus rather than a specific work. "Plutarch" is both the author and the sum total of the author's writings. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:24, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, since it's obviously just a colloquialism and doesn't belong in a formal definition. AP295 (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Huh? What does being colloquial have to do with anything? CitationsFreak (talk) 04:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a better argument in favor of deletion than yes it's attestable but we've chosen to delete other similar senses in the past and it could be applied to lots of other artists anyway. Isn't this exactly why it should be deleted? I suppose that's more a rhetorical question than anything else. Wiktionary enforces strict descriptivism, which sometimes results in absurd inclusions like this which really ought to be deleted but nobody can actually say why without contradicting dogma. If no exception to descriptivism is allowed then I would have to say this sense must be kept. AP295 (talk) 04:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Almost everyone here is in favor of deletion. CitationsFreak (talk) 05:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

As am I, for the reason stated. AP295 (talk) 05:06, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@AP295: we’re on the same page but for different reasons. I feel that “it applies to lots of artists anyway”, as you put it, is a good reason for deletion because this is simply an example of one of the ways the English language works. The same feature applies to the name of any creator of a work, so it is a redundant sense. As has been pointed out above, we made a similar decision with respect to senses like “an occurrence of the word the” (for example, “there are two thes in that sentence”), otherwise we’d have to add that sense to every entry in the dictionary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:15, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Clearly though "A Michelangelo", "A Rembrandt", etc. are salient uses and one wouldn't use the phrase to refer to the work of any ordinary artist. It's easier to justify the deletion if it can be dismissed as a colloquialism. That's the most obvious and sensible reason but doesn't quite jibe with descriptivism in the strictest sense. Frankly I think most other colloquialisms and slang should be jettisoned as well, perhaps with a few exceptions in cases that really merit inclusion for some or other reason. AP295 (talk) 05:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Why? Slang and colloquialisms are a part of our language, and excluding a term because it's "slang" or "colloquial" feels wrong to me. CitationsFreak (talk) 15:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

They've been permanently banned, but it's probably worth pointing out (for the benefit of those who aren't aware) that they were just being a snob. Theknightwho (talk) 16:04, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Good thing we have actual criteria of inclusion in place so your opinion as to what should or should not be included is irrelevant. lattermint (talk) 16:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete the rest of these per my vote on Michelangelo above. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 22:12, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

mean time

Redundant to mean and time. A westman (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I assume sense 2 applies here. It doesn't seem to match the definition in my Oxford and Collins, where both refer to it being the short form of mean solar time, as referred to in the entry for Greenwich Mean Time. DonnanZ (talk) 17:39, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. It's an alt form of "meantime" ("The time spent waiting for another event; time in between") which uses no sense of mean that is obvious to a modern speaker. Equinox ◑ 15:43, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• @A westman Did you mean to nominate both senses? — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
• Keep sense 1 (the alt form). Delete sense 2 as SoP to mean etymology 3, adjective sense 1 ("average"), which is far from being obscure or obsolete. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:41, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  @ExcarnateSojourner: Sense 2 could be kept as {{&lit}}. J3133 (talk) 17:46, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  • Oh, good point. Let's do that. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 18:15, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

second opinion

I know it's a common collocation and there's even a Wikipedia article about it, but it still sounds completely SOP. Compare third opinion, opinion of a second X. PUC – 11:22, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to delete this. Firstly, amongst the meanings for second, it is an ordinal number; as for opinion, Oxford describes this as a "statement of advice by an expert on a professional matter: if in doubt, get a second opinion". Besides the fact that a second opinion may agree with the first one, we don't seem to cover that definition. So, keep. DonnanZ (talk) 16:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

"amongst the meanings for second, it is an ordinal number": yes, but what's your point? PUC – 17:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

My main point, which you obviously missed, is concerning the definition of opinion. DonnanZ (talk) 22:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

I think what he's saying is that a "second opinion" may in fact be identical to a first opinion, which would seem (according to the definition of opinion) to make it a single opinion. Yet we would still call it a "second opinion" if it came from a second person. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:01, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Well. that's an interesting (and apt) analysis, but what I was really driving at is the Oxford def: "statement of advice by an expert on a professional matter". Do our definitions cover that? I don't think so. DonnanZ (talk) 00:17, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep per WT:FRIED & possibly WT:PRIOR. It's also in MW & Collins, and seems to be listed in the OED (I unfortunately do not have full access). AG202 (talk) 22:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The term second opinion means “the opinion of another expert”, which cannot be readily inferred from the parts of the term. In the context of healthcare, the diagnosis or treatment plan of the first professional consulted appears not to be referred to as their “opinion”, even when a “second opinion” is being sought.  --Lambiam 18:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Lambiam. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep per AG202 and Lambiam. lattermint (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep: I found this online: "In my case, I got two second opinions, one from a surgeon and one from an oncologist." This person would not have said "I got a second opinion from a surgeon and a third from an oncologist." Equinox ◑ 20:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Kept by a landslide. PUC – 17:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

rotten to the core

SOP: rotten + to the core. PUC – 11:54, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

It's an analogy with apples. It's not sum of parts. —Soap— 12:26, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

And the 2nd definition could be idiomatic. Keep. DonnanZ (talk) 17:22, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

rotten alone already means "cruel, mean or immoral". PUC – 17:27, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Weak delete. Lemming test: this idiom has entries in Merriam–Webster (“very bad or dishonest”) and dictionary.com (“Thoroughly bad”). The latter adds: “The idiom was first recorded in 1804.” It is a rather transparent idiom, though – especially if we add “corrupt, dishonest” to the figurative senses of stand-alone rotten. There are also plenty of uses of honest to the core,^[71][72][73] so listing rotten to the core as a common collocation should IMO suffice.  --Lambiam 17:51, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

It is possible that WT:JIFFY applies here, in other words, rotten to the core predates the shorter form to the core. The earliest non-literal uses of "to the core" that I have been able to find are "knowing himself to be rotten to the core" (1741) and "this government ... is rotten to the core" (1766). (Note, I also found this which purports to be from 1729, but since it is an account of a basketball match I am sure the date is wrong.) This, that and the other (talk) 12:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Having said all that, the real question is, would rotten to the core have passed RFD in 1750? I have my doubts. It's a fairly straightforward metaphor. Nobody would have any trouble understanding its meaning by looking up its constituent parts, even if used in a metaphorical context.

. This, that and the other (talk) 13:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

We're not writing a dictionary for people of the 18th century, TTO! Denazz (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, WT:JIFFY does explicitly ask us to evaluate whether the term "would have passed at some point in the history of the English language", so perhaps we are. (Sadly JIFFY doesn't then say we should write the def in authentic erly moderne Englisshe...) This, that and the other (talk) 06:37, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete unless it passes WT:JIFFY. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep, unless it can be demonstrated that "to the core" was used prior to "rotten to the core". Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:26, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Fird

Misspelling of Ford

This strikes me as a typo rather than an actual misspelling, and an uncommon one, at that. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:51, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

hond

Misspelling of Honda

As above Chuck Entz (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Never mind Honda, it could be a misspelling of hound. DonnanZ (talk) 17:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

rhe

Misspelling of the

As above Chuck Entz (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete all. — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all of them. These are clearly just typos. 2804:1B0:1901:5FD7:6060:15B5:AFC5:BD81 13:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all. Theknightwho (talk) 17:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

rhe is very easy to do on a QWERTY keyboard. DonnanZ (talk) 21:19, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete all as typos. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 17:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

cyka blyat

English? Russian eye dialect/Volapük, whatever. Kill with fire. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev: Note that Dictionary.com has an entry. J3133 (talk) 11:48, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep - it's used humorously. The current labels aren't sufficient, though. Theknightwho (talk) 19:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

We don’t keep terms on the basis of being funny. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Atitarev But it’s used in English humorously, which was my point. Theknightwho (talk) 16:10, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• Send to RFV to search for unambiguously English cites? This, that and the other (talk) 07:55, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

suka blyat

As above. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

zinc-bearing

SOP? Synonym is probably zinciferous, if we have translationsDenazz (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

carros por puestos

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/Italic#carros por puestos.

Someone marked it "for imminent deletion" so I am making this post here to discuss. I think it can be a useful phrase to add but it is also my first entry so I don't know if/how it should be decided. RayScript (talk) 00:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

@RayScript: this is a Spanish entry, so I've moved your post above to the correct page. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:54, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

foregoing

Rfd-sense

Etymology 1, the adjective. This seems redundant to Etymology 2, which is the present participle and gerund of forego. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:58, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep: It is a recognised adjective in Oxford and Collins, and probably others. The verb is apparently archaic, but it is also a variant of forgo. DonnanZ (talk) 00:50, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

unrequited love

SOP: "love that is unrequited". I don't believe "even though reciprocation is desired" should be part of the definition. PUC – 09:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

• Love here is specifically romantic love (etymology 1, noun sense 2.3). If a mother loves her daughter but the daughter does not love her in return that would not be called unrequited love. Could WT:FRIED apply here? — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 18:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  I did find a couple of counterexamples (unrequited love of a mother for their child: [74] [75]) but they were picked out from a sea of examples that related to romantic love. I don't know what to make of it from a SOP point of view though. I'd lean keep but not strongly. In the event the term is deleted, translations should be moved to unrequited. This, that and the other (talk) 06:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Many of the translations are similarly SOP (imo) and not worth entries. PUC – 20:58, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Undelete tacit collusion

Tacit collusion is not SoP, see Wikipedia:Tacit collusion and https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/101362/1/684816040.pdf. Shortly after I made the entry and started working on it, the user PUC deleted it, and they appear to have signed off. I don't think it would have been too much trouble for them to google the term before deleting my entry, but I digress. May I re-create the entry or must I wait for a sysop to restore it? AP295 (talk) 11:23, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at User talk:PUC. AP295 (talk) 14:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

@PUC Would you object if I re-created the entry? AP295 (talk) 22:03, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Undeleted so there can be a proper discussion. Feel free to tag the entry with {{rfd|en}} and open a fresh discussion here if you feel this is SOP. This, that and the other (talk) 11:20, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

please restore adult diaper

I believe the adult diaper page should be restored, per the argument I made in August here. More succinctly, if our deletion policy is leading us to delete well-established terms as sum of parts, while continuing to list scarcely-used synonyms for those terms simply because they're not sum of parts, I think the policy needs to be reformed. —Soap— 17:05, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

You created this: entire definition was "Any diaper sized to be worn by adults". I deleted it as "Non-idiomatic sum-of-parts term: please see WT:SOP: adult Adjective: Intended for or restricted to adults rather than children due to size". I think that deletion was sound. Equinox ◑ 09:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

A synonym of incontinence diaper, I suspect. DonnanZ (talk) 20:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep due to it being synonymous and more used than "incontinence diaper". (Maybe make it a THUB?) CitationsFreak (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Saying "Keep" is misleading when you want to change the definition. Maybe "Recreate and rewrite"! Equinox ◑ 14:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

No, I think we should give "adult diaper" its definition, and replace "incontinence diaper" with "synonym of adult diaper". CitationsFreak (talk) 15:43, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep as a synonym of incontinence diaper. Theknightwho (talk) 14:21, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Saying "Keep" is misleading when you want to change the definition. Maybe "Recreate and rewrite"! Equinox ◑ 14:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Support restoration as a synonym. DonnanZ (talk) 15:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I can't see any difference between adult diaper and incontinence diaper from a SOP standpoint. "A diaper for adults" vs "a diaper for incontinence". There's no other sense at adult that could realistically apply. This, that and the other (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

European Research Group

Not dictionary material. Jberkel 20:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

anchovy salad

SOP. Wonderfool was probably trolling or drunk when they made thisDenazz (talk) 22:19, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete: yes you probably were. Equinox ◑ 09:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delete as SoP. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 21:01, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

pizza

Rfd-sense all adjectival senses: not adjectives, but attributive uses of the noun. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete sense 1. I could potentially be persuaded on sense 2, since it’s transformative. Theknightwho (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Hmm... to me, it seems easier to view pizza bagel (or pizza breadstick, etc) as also still using the noun pizza attributively to attribute the flavours or elements of pizza to the bagel; if we view this as transformative, a lot of other words are used the same way — does that mean garlic bread is an adjective "With the toppings of garlic bread." in garlic bread bagel, and everything bagel is an adjective in everything bagel hot dog? (What about e.g. ranch in ranch ice cream?) I would sooner view these as all still attributive uses of the noun, though I admit language is a bit fuzzy. - -sche (discuss) 15:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

That's a good point - I hadn't heard of either of those, but they make it pretty clear that it's an attributive noun. Theknightwho (talk) 16:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Either delete both, or move both, lock, stock and barrel, to the noun as attributives. It's not an adjective, not in this form anyway. DonnanZ (talk) 21:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

-prone

Not grammatically a suffix. Equinox ◑ 14:27, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, delete, prone is a standalone adjective. Category:English terms suffixed with -prone also needs deletion, after its contents have been revised. DonnanZ (talk) 15:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

This seems like a seriously unhelpful approach, given that terms like floodprone exist. Theknightwho (talk) 15:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Floodprone is a compound of flood + prone, alternatively "prone to flood / floods". DonnanZ (talk) 16:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

(e/c) Isn't that still just flood + prone? Compare e.g. google:"floodswollen", "birdcage" or "heatresistant"/"heat-resistant", from which I don't think we should assume suffixes -swollen, -cage, -resistant. - -sche (discuss) 16:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

maneater exists but -eater is clearly not a suffix. Equinox ◑ 19:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

This one was invented by a non-native speaker a few months ago. DonnanZ (talk) 20:08, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, not a suffix. PUC – 15:05, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

To make the !vote implicit in my comment above explicit: delete. - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

El Camino Real

WT:NSE requires figurative senses for individual roads, but we do not have any for this one. Previously nominated as a member of cat:en:Named roads. I'm making a separate request for the Spanish term. See also #Colon Street above. — excarnateSojourner (ta·co) 23:52, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Just for background: this was a route in California during the Spanish period connecting the missions in the region. It no longer exists in its old form, but it's symbolic of that period, and roads/highways that cover parts of the same route are often officially designated as part of it to empasize their connection to history. I think it's significant that "El" is capitalized, since it just means "the" in Spanish and it shows that the term isn't understood as the sum of its parts (I wonder if it makes any sense to have a Spanish entry at that capitalization). In fact, the term was probably not used for the modern concept during the mission period (any official route was so designated), but civic boosters in the past century or so resurrected it as a way to promote tourism by connecting their communities to what they portrayed as a romantic bygone era. I suppose it might be analogous to the Silk Road or the Royal Road, which we do have entries for, or the Appian Way, which we don't. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Maybe we should compare Spanish camino real (camino construido a expensas del Estado) with King's highway. Oxford, for Queen's highway (published before QEII died), a mass noun by the way, says "the public road network, regarded as being under royal protection". Thus not roads owned by the monarch, although they can use them. DonnanZ (talk) 11:32, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Keep: Purplebackpack89 19:08, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

quarter-

Not grammatically a prefix. Compare -prone above. Equinox ◑ 12:40, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I believe you're right, and we should also look at half-.

There is also Category:English terms prefixed with quarter-. Collins and Oxford don't seem to list quarter as an adjective either, just the noun and verb, but Merriam-Webster does make a brief mention of an adjective. Anyway, delete this. DonnanZ (talk) 14:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I'll have my eye on half- if this one gets deleted; but, baby steps. It seems clear to me that "quarter-" doesn't morphologically merge into the following item. Equinox ◑ 18:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

An exception to this is cross-, which is a recognised combining form. DonnanZ (talk) 19:17, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@Donnanz: Let's keep it brief because this thread is about quarter-, but: recognised by whom, as what? Hope it ain't the "it's not in the dictionary!" argument. An interesting counter-argument for cross- might be: if it's morphological, why must I say cross-state and not crosstate? They are separate words. Equinox ◑ 22:28, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

It seems like some of the words in Category:English terms prefixed with half- (e.g. halfter or halfway) seem to be legit examples of this suffix but in most of those words (e.g. half-finished or half-open) the "half" part is not grammatically a suffix. A Westman talk stalk 22:56, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@A_westman: You can't trust the category though. Casual editors will add and remove things to/from categories based on feelings, not necessarily on grammar. You need to use strong arguments to defend or refute the membership. Equinox ◑ 00:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

That's kind of what I meant... A Westman talk stalk 00:32, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

do want and do not want

SOP. A Westman talk stalk 20:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. They are not grammatical and would not make sense otherwise: compare my bad. Equinox ◑ 22:08, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Some of the verb inflections given for do want are rather suspect. DonnanZ (talk) 00:30, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep because "do not want" has an acronym tied to it. I'd absolutely say "delete" otherwise. We don't keep a special sense at am for cutesy slang like "am smol child" (where the subject is ungrammatically omitted), so I don't think @Equinox's reasoning to keep these is good reasoning. MedK1 (talk) 00:33, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

because reasons

SOP. We could instead put this meaning in reasons. A Westman talk stalk 18:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

It's actually already given as an example at because. (Saying "because X", rather than "because of X", seems to be recent net slang.) Equinox ◑ 18:05, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Not to mention that "for reasons" is also used. So this meaning should be moved. A Westman talk stalk 22:52, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep, since it refers to reasons that are "tangential, dubious or unknown", so it's not SOP. Perhaps "for reasons" is also used (I've never heard it), but I don't think other collocations are possible. Theknightwho (talk) 01:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Well: "for reasons" and "due to reasons" and "owing to reasons" obey traditional grammar. "Because reasons" doesn't. Anyway, your point about the "tangentiality" is something separate. Equinox ◑ 02:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

The disobedience of grammar is already documented at because so I don't see the point of this. A Westman talk stalk 02:13, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

@Equinox: time to take a step back and tone down the snappiness, I think. — Sgconlaw (talk) 05:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep. I don't think this is simply a special use of because. In my experience, it's usually said with a pause between "because" and "reasons", with the "reasons" meant to be a humorous replacement for actual reasons that one does not want to elaborate on (or that don't actually exist). So instead of telling my friend I didn't go to the party "Because I didn't feel like it", I might say "Because, reasons...", which is perhaps a way of verbalizing "Because [reasons]". Which is not an SOP phrase and not dependent on the grammar of either word involved. I'm just speculating here, but this may also be the original phrase which gave rise to the Internet slang sense of because. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

twelve hundred

sop? similarly, eleven hundred, thirteen hundred etc. Word0151 (talk) 04:36, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete, yes, dumb. Equinox ◑ 04:58, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I think WF has chosen the weakest link in the chain. There are entries for every hundred between two hundred and twenty-three hundred, including twenty hundred (for 24-hour clock), but no ten hundred for the 24-hour clock. It's pointless deleting this one without removing the others. DonnanZ (talk) 11:31, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Delete all the number senses. WT:CFI (established by this formal vote) is clear on this: "Numbers, numerals, and ordinals over 100 that are not single words or are sequences of digits should not be included in the dictionary, unless the number, numeral, or ordinal in question has a separate idiomatic sense that meets the CFI." The numerical use of eleven hundred, twelve hundred, and so on is already explained in "Appendix:English numerals". However, I think the 24-hour clock sense can stay. I am undecided on the year sense (leaning towards delete) as this is an infinite series—we should discuss this further. It may be better to explain this in a new appendix under "Appendix:Time". — Sgconlaw (talk) 12:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

non-English: Undeletion of "not English" sense

Deleted sense:

• Not English; not from England; not of English ancestry or origin.

  Synonym: un-English

Sense in entry:

• Not in the English language.

  Synonym: un-English

Compare non-Japanese, which was kept, as @-sche pointed out recently. If not as a full sense, then at least as {{&lit}}, indicating that non-English does not only refer to language. J3133 (talk) 13:05, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Support: You can have non-English food, for example. It was a silly RFD. DonnanZ (talk) 14:10, 19 December 2023 (UTC)