text:
Wiktionary:Translations

This describes how to handle foreign translations of English words in the English Wiktionary. It is an extension of.

Project scope
Translation tables are to be given for English words only. In entries for foreign (i.e. non-English-language) words, an English translation is given instead of a definition.

Translation between two foreign languages is handled on the Wiktionaries in those languages. For example, a reader who wants to translate a Hindi word to Japanese should have some command of either language and look in the Hindi or Japanese Wiktionary. There is one exception to this principle: we do provide translations of idioms that exist in several non-English languages, but have no natural English equivalent. These translations are located at subpages of Appendix:Terms with no English equivalent.

English inflected forms will not have translations. For example, will not, as it is the plural and third-person singular of. Where these entries contain additional meanings, these non-inflected (lemma) forms should have translations. For example, the noun should have translations, but the present participle of  will not.

Organization
Each “Translations” section is nested within a part of speech header. For example, in a  section, the translations section begins with the heading.

The translations are separated into divisions for each sense of the English headword. creates a collapsible navigation box whose heading shows a gloss (summary) of the translated sense – if this is not provided, the word “Translations” is shown by default. For entries with only a single sense, adding a translation gloss is of little use. For entries with multiple senses, including topical labels in the heading (in plain text, not by using lb) besides the glosses can greatly increase navigability and is thus advised.

Within each box for a translated sense, the languages for which translations exist are listed by their English names in alphabetical order.

is used on the line after the last translation.

You can copy and paste the next code in the entry:

====Translations====

Here’s an example for a word with a noun and a verb definition. Other sections may be included. The order of these sections is explained in Entry layout and English entry guidelines. The order of the translation boxes should correspond to the order of the senses. ==English== ===Noun=== ====Translations==== * Abkhaz: example 1 * Afar: example 2 ===Verb=== ====Translations====
 * 1)  First  definition.
 * 2) Second definition.
 * 1) Third definition.

Redundancy
Reducing the number of redundant translation boxes is strongly recommended. In the case of perfect synonyms like and, the template  shall be used without exception. For close synonyms, it should be decided on a case-by-case basis whether or  is more appropriate; see for instance.

In cases where both an English term and its abbreviation exist as standalone articles on Wiktionary (as is the case for for instance and ), abbreviations of the translations of the unabbreviated English term are not eligible as translations of the unabbreviated English term and vice versa; as an example,  (initialism of ) belongs in the translation box of  and is not allowed as a translation of.

Which translations to add
Only lemma forms are eligible as translations, because including all inflected forms in the translation table would render them almost unnavigable. Consequently, adjectives typically shouldn't be labeled with their grammatical gender even in languages that decline adjectives. Possible exceptions to the first rule are proper nouns that cannot be attested in their lemmatized form and phrases that grammatically don't allow lemmatization. In a similar vein, instead of inventing unattestable protologisms, the template no equivalent translation or not used should be employed. If there are multiple paraphrases in the target language for an English term but no direct translations, one such paraphrase may be provided after no equivalent translation. However, if there is only one idiomatic way to express the idea that is conveyed by the English term even be it a paraphrase, it may be added directly without the use of this template.

Many translation boxes have a header that summarizes the key points of the corresponding sense's definition. However, it is usually not sufficiently precise to base one's translation solely on it. Instead, the whole sense definition has to be yielded consideration, especially the sense's labels. A good test in general is to (in one's mind) translate an English sentence where the word occurs in the right sense and see which target language terms best correspond to it.

The aim of translation boxes is to provide as precise as possible translations and not as many as possible. If a term already has a perfectly fitting translation in a target language, then adding more terms that are merely semantically related but not synonymous in the target language is heavily discouraged, especially if the English term with a parallel semantic relation already has its own entry.

Using the "Add translation button"
In addition to the VisualEditor (which is accessed at “Preferences” under “Editing”), you can add translations in a visual way, employing the “Add translation table button” in the Translations section.

After clicking in the “show” element (generated by the template), you should see a line at the end of the table something like
 * Add translation       :                      Preview translation More  ◻ masc. ◻ masc. pl. ◻ fem. ◻ fem. pl.

 * The first box is the ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-3 language code (for common languages, you can put in the language name, and it will give you the code).
 * The second box is the translation to add. This should normally be one word, if you attempt to add many separated by commas you will get a warning. If you want to request a translation set the word to.
 * The second line contains gender check boxes, normally only one should be ticked. Though occasionally more are needed. The gender tick-boxes are normally only needed for nouns, “common gender” tends to be used for languages where male and female have combined into one class, whereas “neuter” is a separate gender that is neither male or female.
 * Clicking “More” opens the extra options (really intended only for advanced users)
 * Clicking “Preview translation” will try to make the edit, and display the “Save changes”, “undo” and “redo” page buttons in the top left. You can click in the “Save changes” button to store the translation or click in the “X” to cancel.

Editing the source
In wikitext, for each translation into a foreign language, the language name is preceded by a bullet (generated by  * ) followed by the translations into that language, each linked to the main entry for the foreign term in the English Wiktionary (blue link if entry already exists; red link if it doesn’t). Language names are not to be wikified (i.e. the name should not link to the language definition page).

 * Use with an ISO 639-1 or ISO 639-3 language code to create a link to the English Wiktionary entry for the foreign word and a link to its entry in the Wiktionary of the target language:
 * * Esperanto:
 * Esperanto:
 * If the foreign term uses a script other than the Latin (roman) alphabet and no auto-transliteration is available, indicate the Latin (Roman) transliteration with tr=, Japanese kanji may also have the reading indicated with hiragana:
 * * Japanese:
 * Japanese:
 * If the foreign term has a grammatical gender, specify it:
 * * Latin:
 * Latin:
 * To specify the pronunciation, detailed grammatical information, usage notes, or literal translations of idioms back into English, use the foreign term’s entry rather than the English term’s Translations section. For example, when translating  into French, do not follow this with the literal translation back into English of “elephant’s feet”:
 * French:
 * German translation of “”:
 * German: nicht dein Bier
 * If the translation there is more than one translation option, give a concise English explanation of the options with full translations for each rather than abbreviations. For example, for, an abbreviation such as *(Fuß-) Knöchel is not recommended, as it is liable to be misunderstood. Rather:
 * German:, Fußknöchel
 * If you are uncertain about a given translation, replace by  or  by  so a native speaker or expert translator can check the translation.
 * * Spanish:
 * Spanish:
 * When a translation in the target language is not a lemma form, use parameter to display the translation but use lemma-forms as the page name, e.g. the Russian translation of  links to the Russian verb  but displays спя́щий, which is an equivalent of.
 * * Russian:
 * Russian:
 * Where no idiomatic translation exists, a translation may be given as separate, square bracketed links inside the templates. For example, in the verb, which has no literal equivalent in French:
 * * French: tenir le rôle principal
 * French: tenir le rôle principal
 * Nesting translations under other translations is achieved using the wikisyntax *:. Nesting is done for languages that are considered subclasses of another language, or languages with multiple scripts, such as the Latin and Cyrillic forms of Serbo-Croatian.
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: на̀ра̄нџа, помо̀ра̄нџа
 * Roman: nàrāndža, pomòrāndža
 * Roman: nàrāndža, pomòrāndža

Example
Here is an example (a shortened version of the entry for ) illustrating some of the conventions:

Noun

 * 1) The fruit of the orange tree.
 * 2) The reddish-yellow colour of an orange.

Translations

 * French: orange
 * German: Orange
 * Japanese: オレンジ
 * Russian: апельси́н
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: на̀ра̄нџа, помо̀ра̄нџа
 * Roman: nàrāndža, pomòrāndža

 * German: Orange
 * Hebrew: כתום
 * Latvian: oranžs

That produces:

 * 1) The fruit of the orange tree.
 * 2) The reddish-yellow colour of an orange.

 * Translations

 * French: orange
 * German: Orange
 * Japanese: オレンジ
 * Russian: апельси́н
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: на̀ра̄нџа, помо̀ра̄нџа
 * Roman: nàrāndža, pomòrāndža

 * German: Orange
 * Hebrew: כתום
 * Latvian: oranžs

Translations to be checked
If it is not clear which sense applies to a given translation, create a “Translations to be checked” table using and :

* Spanish:

 * Spanish:

The header =====Translations to be checked===== is not needed, and should not be used, this table immediately follows the others in the Translations section.

Translations
After creating the section or putting the trans templates, you can add translations using the “Add translation table button”:
 * Add translation       :                      Preview translation More  ◻ masc. ◻ masc. pl. ◻ fem. ◻ fem. pl.

title: Wiktionary:Translations


text:
Wiktionary talk:Translations

=Archives= Earlier page: Language considerations

Archive of discussion copied from Beer parlour - 22-May-2005=== then modified.

When a discussion becomes inactive, move it if necessary and link to it below.

 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Whether non-English words should appear in English Wiktionary or not
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/If present, what foreign word articles should contain
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Hiding translations
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Usage Notes
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Link to a PART of a foreign Wiktionary article
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Homographs
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Policy policy
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Multilingual Meta Policy
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/"Translations to be checked" - a proposal
 * Wiktionary talk:Translations/Translation of meanings is misleading

Following are forked discussions. When one becomes inactive, remove it from here and move just its link up above.

= Wiktionary talk:Translations/Translation into lemma only =

= Wiktionary talk:Votes/2007-10/Translation into lemma only =

= Wiktionary talk:Translations/Noting lemma forms in WT:ELE =

= Wiktionary talk:Votes/2007-10/Lemma entries =

= Wiktionary talk:Votes/2007-11/Lemma entries 2 =

=Other discussion=

Including grammatical gender
Hello, everyone. I would like to include a link on this policy to the policy about including gender with language translations. (See Languages with more than one grammatical gender.) This policy about the inclusion of gender could use some discussion, as well. Anyone who can comment on this policy should please leave a message on its talk page. Thank you.--El aprendelenguas 21:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Managing complex translations
Most good foreign dictionaries will contain explanations on certain words such as "if" or "the" which are difficult to tranlsate into foreign languages (especially those of non-Indo-European origin). However, there is no room to do that in the present Wiktionary style for translations.

I propose having complex translation entries look something like this:

if
 * Japanese: もし…なら、たら、ば、と (moshi... nara, tara, ba, to) (more)

where the if/jp page would provide a detailed description of how to translate English "if" into Japanese, in English. Thoughts?

Lots of points to consider
Here are some points that might need to be included in a policy like this:

 * As far as Wiktionary jargon goes, language and dialect are synonymous. The more common languages, such as the Chinese dialects, have standard names to appear in language headings and translations sections.
 * In full dictionary entries, Translingual and English are listed first, in that order, and all other languages are alphabetized.
 * In translations sections, all languages/dialects are listed alphabetically at the same level.
 * Inflections should be provided in the entry for the foreign word, not for the English equivalents. Short, irregular forms that do not share a root are exceptions.
 * Gender labels apply to the grammatical gender of the word, which varies between languages and is defined in the appendix.
 * Transliterations are parenthesized and unlinked, and for each language Wiktionary chooses only one standard for the Translations section. This is generally the most common transliteration in modern use. If there is some ambiguity, those that have the simplest diacritics are preferred.
 * They aren't pronunciations, for goodness sake! Only in rare cases should additional information be given, such as when no gender-neutral term exists. (See cousin.)
 * For foreign entries, each sense of the word or phrase should have a separate definition line, just as it would on the foreign-language Wiktionary.
 * Usually translations match fairly closely. Even so, we need to be sure to indicate which sense of the word is meant if there could be ambiguity. (More often than not, there is.)
 * It's necessary to be more thorough when translations do not match. In some cases there may not be a direct translation of the foreign word. In the opposite case, a single sense of the foreign word may apply to more than one sense of the English word.
 * Any standard transliterations may be entered as entries, not just the ones we prefer.

And for Christ's sake, could we please archive this page! I mean, that this is a multilanguage dictionary is pretty much set in stone right now, unless we were to just throw the better half of it away. Why do we have to draw attention to that aspect by making the page live again? DAVilla 04:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Some lay-out questions from a beginner
Copied from the Tea Room 20 Oct 2006

Hi all,

I recently discovered Wiktionary and am enthousiastically adding Dutch translations wherever I know them. However, I come across big layout differences between pages. So here are some questions: Expect more questions of this sort. Are there more explicit guidelines? henne 15:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * In disambiguating between different meanings, the translations are listed in several, , groups.  Often, the meaning is mentioned above it in bold, sometimes it is given as a parameter to  .  Which is preferable?
 * Sometimes language names are themselves wikified. Is this desirable?
 * In Dutch, a lot of words are both masculin and feminin. Can I make my own  template?

 * The translation sections should be disambiguated by a bold heading at the top of each group. Older entries have numbers, which should be phased out.  The new system used in some entries uses a different, ,  format whereby the heading exists as a parameter to .  These templates will probably supersede existing layouts.  Language names should only be wikified if they are unusual or not generally known – that obviously doesn't apply to Dutch.  As for gender, I'm not aware of any m/f template, so I see no reason why you shouldn't create one.  There is some more info at WT:ELE and Translations.  Widsith 16:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

 *
 * The use of a parameter in is still considered "experimental" at this point.  It would be better to follow the bolding convention until the new format has the various kinks worked out.
 * Language names that might be construed as "exotic" are wikified. Basically, if the country name doesn't match the language name, it might be considered "exotic" to an English speaker.
 * Please use for those.
 * Entry layout explained goes into pretty good detail regarding the current conventions. This is a fine place to ask similar questions.  --Connel MacKenzie 16:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks both.  is what I was looking for, as is the template index.  How can I know where the discussion about the  or  templates is leading? henne 10:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

 * There is also for "common gender", which I know is standard in Swedish, and I have heard used in reference to Dutch as well. --EncycloPetey 18:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, Dutch dictionaries usually avoid the problem in that they only say ‘de’, i.e., the common article for m and f, and if it is explicitly m or f, then they add (m) of (f) after ‘de’. I am not sure what the right thing to do is.  You are probably right that c is more appropriate, as they are referred to by masculine pronouns.

Ok, one more style question that wasn’t answered by the ELE: When subdividing the translations into groups corresponding to different meanings, a description of the meaning is to be given. Is there a style guide for this? Should it be concise, telegram-style, should it contain articles, should it start with a capital letter?

 * Not yet, but there's active discussion beginning on Translations to work out basic policy and standards, which could then be used to update/modify the ELE. --EncycloPetey 18:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Is that right? I was under the impression that we have always recommended entering a short gloss, containing enough common words from the definition above to link them unambiguously.  --Connel MacKenzie 18:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

 * That's right, but there's still no written style guide. I'm thinking that I may help DAVilla assemble information on the Translation section, including format, style, and content information. She's already assembled a great new page for handling the Translations to be Checked, but we still need more than we currently have on the standard section itself.  And what relevant info we have on the ELE is not well organized, in addition to missing some key points. --EncycloPetey 19:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Templates and
I have taken liberties with these. They both do almost exactly the same thing, so trad is now a redirect to t.

Note that no policy decision on the use of these has been made. Some people like them, but we may end up subst'ing the lot.

Template t takes three parameters: the word in language, the language code and the gender. The gender must be one of f, m, mf, c, or n. (Note that indicators such as pl are not supposed to be in the tables, the pointer is to the singular lemma form. All other information is at that entry in the en.wikt, and in the other wikt!) Robert Ullmann 12:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

 * strike that, we have lots of plurals, and there isn't any present reason to make them go away; 4th parameter is s or p. Robert Ullmann 15:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Community Portal
Shouldnt the community portal be linking to this page instead of the translation of the week?

Bearingbreaker92 03:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, it's the project of the TOW that should be linked. However, the link name should be changed to be less confusing. I'll take care of that. --EncycloPetey 03:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks, it looks better. Bearingbreaker92 04:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Improvements to the policy page
I suggest add in Translations, 3:

 * This yields the pleasing result of:

 * French: cacher les traductions
 * Japanese: 訳語を隠す yakugo o kakusu

 * Korean: 역어를 잠추기 yŏgŏ rul jamch'ugi
 * Portuguese: esconder as traduções

Add a new 4 point :

4. If no sure about some translations, use:

=====Translations to be checked=====

Finally, include these links in the see also section:

 * How to check translations and Template:checktrans
 * Modular Wiktionary
 * Machine translation.
 * Policy - Transliteration
 * Translations of the week
 * Translations/Wikification
 * Languages with more than one grammatical gender
 * WikiSaurus: WT:ELE
 * Translation
 * Schemes.

--Mac 16:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

 * This looks good, and then we can finally do away with translations.--Williamsayers79 23:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Translations for verb forms?
Hi, I don't remember how I got this information but, whatever, I've been believing that there should be verb translations only on the page of the infinitive form (for says, see say; for is, see be), so I have been removing them, informing "verb translations only on the page for the infinitive". So, what's the established policy here to be followed? Or is there any? -- Frous 11:38, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes mostly, only the lemma form of the verb should have a translation to English. Other inflected forms should identify the inflection and point to the lemma.  However, the lemma is not always the infinitive.  In Latin and Ancient Greek, the lemma is the first-person singular present active indicative.  Part of the reason for this is that Classical language dictionaries use that form as the verb headword, another reason is that Latin has six different infinitive forms (and the infinitives tend to function grammatically as nouns). In any case, there shouldn't be translations given for non-lemma forms of any verb, noun, adjective, etc. --EncycloPetey 16:34, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I misundertood your question. You were talking about Translation sections on English pages, yes?  In that case you are correct.  A translations section should only appear on the page for the English infinitive, since that is the lemma form for English. --EncycloPetey 16:36, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, I meant the English verbs. So I haven't done that much disaster when deleting translations of e.g. third-person singular present indicative forms, thank God... ;) -- Frous 20:37, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Rename
I would call this plage Wiktionary:foreign word definitions --77.210.55.105 06:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Animate noun gender inflection

 * The following was moved here from Wiktionary talk:Votes/2007-10/Translation into lemma only. Rod (A. Smith) 18:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

The following references support the classification of words like as a non-lemma forms of lexemes with lemma forms like. If anyone can find some references that support the opposite position (i.e. that words like are distinct, gender-specific lexemes), please add them. Eventually, some of these may befome references list for Languages with more than one grammatical gender: Rod (A. Smith) 01:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 2003, Luis D. Casillas Martínez, Gender Mismatches in Spanish and French N1/A de N2 Affective Constructions: Index agreement vs. Morphosyntactic Concord :
 * An important distinction that I must make before delving into these constructions at depth is that between inherent gender classification and gender inflection.
 * An inherently gendered lexeme comes from the lexicon with a fixed gender value. Most inanimate common nouns in Spanish and French are of this kind—but there are exceptions.
 * An inherently ungendered lexeme does not have lexical gender. It may be inflecting, with a form for each gender, or noninflecting, with a unique, gender-unselected form.  Many animate nouns are not inherently gendered, and show distinct inflectional forms; e.g. Sp. amigo ‘friend (.M, .F)’.  Some ungendered adjectives and nouns don’t inflect (e.g. Fr. imbécile and idiot).
 * 2004, Spanish Concise Dictionary, Harper Collins, Grammar reference page 192:
 * As in English, male and female are sometimes differentiated by the use of two quite separate words, e.g.
 * mi marido  mi mujer
 * my husband  my wife
 * un toro una vaca
 * a bull  a cow
 * There are, however, some words in Spanish which show this distinction by the form of their ending:
 * Nouns ending in -o change to -a to form the feminine → [1]
 * If the masculine singular form already ends in -a, no further -a is added to the feminine → [2]
 * If the last letter of the masculine singular form is a consonant, an -a is normally added to the feminine* → [3]
 * 2005, Greg Kobele, Agreement Bottlenecks in Italian :
 * :Nouns in Italian also vary their form depending on their number. Moreover, there are also roughly two classes of nouns, with respect to the forms they take in the singular and the plural. A class I noun is one which inflects like a class I adjective (holding gender constant), and a class II noun inflects like a class II adjective. (striken as unclear Rod (A. Smith) 23:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC))
 * 2007, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Against nominal class features in Spanish :
 * §14 Theme vowels are involved in exponence of gender, but are not predictable from gender:
 * e.g. masculine nominals belong to the o-class by default, but the o-class also contains
 * feminine nominals man-o (F) ‘hand’
 * dual-gender nominals el testig-o (M), la testig-o (F) ‘the witness’
 * neuter demonstratives est-o (N) ‘this’, cf. est-e (M)
 * feminine nominals belong to the a-class by default, but the a-class also contains
 * masculine nominals dí-a (M) ‘hand’ [sic. Bermúdez-Otero gives “hand” instead of “day”]
 * dual-gender nominals el artist-a (M), la artist-a (F) ‘the artist’

 * The 2003 cite is quite clear, and the 2004 cite almost as clear.

 * However, I think you're misreading the 2005 cite; I think it's implying that a noun has exactly one gender. This is more clearly implied later on, where it says "In GAgr, each inflectional form of every adjective and noun is treated as a separate lexical item, which means that for every adjectival root there are four lexical items, and for every noun root there are two." (I think it's clear that at this point, the author considers adjectives to have four forms — ms/fs/mpl/fpl — and nouns to have only two, either ms/mpl or fs/fpl.) However, the article later goes on to say, "This grammar allows us to view class I pairs like zio/zia (uncle/aunt) as inflected forms of the same lexeme, zi." In other words, while the author by default considers these to be pairs of nouns, he says that his proposed approach makes it possible to treat them as single nouns. All told, I think this can be considered a reference for both points of view.

 * Similarly, I don't think the 2007 really goes either way; it uses the phrase "dual-gender nominal" to denote nouns that have a single form regardless of gender, and the phrases "masculine nominal" and "feminine nominal" to denote nouns that have a single form for a specific gender (regardless of whether there's an opposite-gender counterpart). Unless I'm missing something about the word "nominal", the implication seems to be that "artista" is one word regardless of gender, while "chico" and "chica" are separate words; but it's not a terribly strong implication, as, due to the topic of the paper, the author might simply have chosen the interpretation that lent itself best to his purposes (as should we do).

 * —Ruakh TALK 18:49, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Hmm. I was surprised to ready your interpretation of the 2005 quotaton, but rereading the work, I see that the author isn't exactly clear about “whether grammar should be able to describe such ‘meta-paradigmatic’ relations”, saying such questions are “best resolved by the ability to account for psycholinguistic data”.  In the area I and you quoted, he is discussing the general case of nouns (giving  and  as examples, which he later describes as “inherently gendered”) in the context of why GAgr is “in a sense the worst possible case, and thus [only to] be adopted after all other avenues are explored.”  He doesn't even mention animate nouns until further on, where he says, “we can represent non-inherently gendered nouns like zi in the manner shown below.”  In the grammar he seems to prefer, he views  and  as two gender-inflections of *.  In any event, he is not terribly clear, so I have stricken the example.

 * In the 2007 example, though, I cannot credibly imagine that "dual-gender nominals" to mean "pairs of lexemes that vary in gender". Rather, it almost certainly means "individual lexemes, each of which has two genders".

 * Since I struck the 2005 example as ambiguous, I found another couple of references:
 * 1977, William J. Ashby, Clitic Inflection in French: An Historical Perspective ISBN 9062034691, page 14:
 * For inanimate nouns, which are arbitrarily either masculine or feminine, the use of the determiner to mark gender serves only a classificatory purpose. For some animate nouns, however, gender is more meaningful, in that it may reflect the sex distinction.  For a number of animate nouns there exist both masculine and feminine forms, which are distinguished by contrastive pairs of suffixes or by the addition of a suffix for one of the forms only. Examples are le fermier (masculine) - la ferière (feminine); le marquis (masculine) - la marquise (feminine).
 * 2002, Mark Harvey, A Grammar of Gaagudju ISBN 3110172488, page 149:
 * As is virtually universal in systems which mark gender, human nouns take concord according to the gender of their referent. Thus, a noun such as biibi ‘MF, MFZ’ will take Class I or Class II concord depending on the gender of the referent.
 * 1999, Francis Cornish, Anaphora, Discourse, and Understanding: Evidence from English and French ISBN 0198700288, page 129:
 * Gender, unlike number, is a lexical category for which most nouns in French are inherently specified. The a French NP's gender value derives from that of its head noun. Gender is therefore a category which, although ostensibly arbitrary—at least in the case of inanimate nouns—is related to the sense of the lexeme for which it is marked,15 and only derivatively to its reference; or, more accurately, to the reference of the entire NP of which the noun in question is the head, since nouns cannot on their own refer, but only denote.  The main exceptions to this generalization consist of human-denoting nouns whose gender is not lexically fixed, but is rather determined by the lexeme in question's occurring as head of an NP used to refer to a male or female person: examples are nouns like concierge ‘caretaker’ and secrétaire ‘secretary’.
 * I also found this reference, which supports the position that in German, the gender-differentiated animate nouns are distinct lexemes:
 * 1997, Marion Kremer, Person Reference and Gender in Translation: A Contrastive Investigation of English and German ISBN 3823349376, page 86:
 * Most human lexemes are gender-differentiable in German, whereby the male-denoting and grammatically masculine lexeme is typically the morphologically simpler member, and the feminine counterpart is a more complex derivative marked by the suffix -in (cf. (Id)).
 * Anyway, it's obviously not a cut and dry area of lexicography (or psycholinguistics for that matter). We should probably just consult existing dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual) and follow the majority treatment for each given language.  Rod (A. Smith) 23:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Re: 'In the 2007 example, though, I cannot credibly imagine that "dual-gender nominals" to mean "pairs of lexemes that vary in gender". Rather, it almost certainly means "individual lexemes, each of which has two genders".': I completely agree with this statement, but I'm afraid I don't see what point it makes? He uses "dual-gender nominals" in reference to things like "artista" (which can be either masculine or feminine), but not — so far as I can tell, anyway — in reference to things like "chico–chica" (where each has one gender). But regardless, to me this seems irrelevant: there's a lot of variation, as different papers use the interpretation that best serves their purpose. Wiktionary, too, should use the interpretation that best serves our purpose. —Ruakh TALK 00:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Calques/word-for-word translations?
How should one indicate or notate calques (word for word translations)? For instance, staircase wit is a calque from French l'esprit d'escalier, hence I've listed the etymology as "Calque of French l'esprit d'escalier." Is this exemplary, or is a different form preferred?

If so, we should gloss & template calque, as it is technical.

Nbarth 02:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Saying "calque of/from ... " is just fine. --EncycloPetey 23:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikilinking to foreign phrases
In translation sections, sometimes the foreign translation of an English term is a phrase. Sometimes that phrase is a Sum of Parts where an entry shouldn't exist for the whole phrase, just for each word in the phrase. In this case, we should wikilink each word instead of the phrase (See comment WT:RFD). Should someone just use plain links, or ? I'd like to mention this general case in the main page, as whole phrases will get picked up by User:Tbot (or clicking newbies) and made into their own articles that shouldn't exist. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Chinese translations
I created two templates recently:
 * produces: trad., simpl. (pinyin: Zhōngguó)
 * produces:

Please consider the suggested methods for Chinese Mandarin:

2 examples of translations with the suggested result:
 * Chinese: trad., simpl. (pinyin: Zhōngguó) (this entry has different traditional and simplified characters)
 * Chinese: (this entry has identical traditional and simplified characters)

I suggest to use "Chinese" as a default language for Chinese languages/dialects. Everything else, separate by *:, e.g. *: Cantonese, *: Min Nan, etc. Anatoli 04:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * We don't have a language header called ==Chinese== so why would we want to list translations under that word? If the language header is ==Mandarin== then the translations should likewise be listed under * Mandarin . All of the languages/dialects are listed alphabetically, not grouped topically. There are languages much more closely related than Min Nan is to Cantonese that are listed separately. Why does everyone who enters Chinese translations have to think that they're an exception to that? DAVilla 06:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Wiktionary like any dictionary works with the written forms. If I need a translation into Chinese, then it is in Chinese characters, identical in 95-100% across all the Sinosphere. Once the characters are given, then subgroups may follow under the heading Chinese: as :Cantonese, :Min Nan. The characters will be the same in most cases, if pronunciation is known can be given. So, 中國 and 中国 is in Chinese, applies to all dialects. Mandarin is the default standard pronunciation in China and Taiwan, that's why I suggest to omit the word Mandarin. The large differences in pronunciation across the dialects are less of imprortance, if the written form is the same and they have identical entries.

Currently:

 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese: entry in Chinese characters (Cantonese pronunciation)
 * Mandarin: entry in Chinese characters (Mandarin pronunciation)
 * Min Nan: entry in Chinese characters (Min Nan pronunciation)
 * Wu: entry in Chinese characters (Wu pronunciation)

OR less often:

...
 * Cantonese: entry in Chinese characters (Cantonese pronunciation)
 * Mandarin: entry in Chinese characters (Mandarin pronunciation)
 * Min Nan: entry in Chinese characters (Min Nan pronunciation)
 * Wu: entry in Chinese characters (Wu pronunciation)

Suggested:

...
 * Chinese: entry in Chinese characters (pinyin this is based on Mandarin or Standard Chinese)
 * Cantonese: Cantonese pronunciation, add Chinese characters in Cantonese if different (rare)
 * Min Nan: Min Nan pronunciation
 * Wu: Wu pronunciation

This is not unsimilar to, even if the Arabic dialects usually differ more in writing, compared to written Chinese:

 * Arabic:
 * Egyptian:

Anatoli 06:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Do not use these templates. Use template properly.

Do not enter anything on a line starting with "Chinese:", "Chinese" is not a language, it is only used to introduce the grouo (if used). Use "Mandarin"

Language lines within a group start with ** not *: (and use the full language name, e.g. would be "Egyptian Arabic" above)

If grouped, it is like this (the same standard as all other languages).

* Chinese:
 * Cantonese: (word)
 * Mandarin: (word)
 * Min Nan: (word)
 * Wu: (word)

Do use : and :  as qualifiers where needed.

Translation sections in non English entries (Translingual)
The WT:ELE states that "Variations for languages other than English... the translations section should be omitted."

The About Translingual says nothing about translation sections.

My parser have been found several words with the translation box within Translingual section, namely: @, Felidae, unununium, Iris, Hymenoptera, Ericaceae, =, Cetacea, Bluetooth, Corvidae, Lycopodiaceae, Equidae, E440, SAAB, titanium oxide, Russula adusta.

So I have the following question: should we remain it "as is", or these entries should be changed? -- Andrew Krizhanovsky 09:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess the logic is that Translingual entries are by extension usually English words as well. But since they're translingual, in theory the translations should mostly be the same word! @ is blatantly wrong however, translations moved to at-sign. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:39, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the fast reply. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky 10:04, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

source-targetLanguages (or sclang)
We could use for translations in Wiktionary. --Diamondland 10:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Options
I suggest an option in User's preferences, to show mainly the translation(s) to an specific language, the default elected by the user in the options.--Diamondland 10:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Qotations
I suggest the user can also translate to a target language the quotations related with an specific entry.--155.54.178.240 07:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Translation subdivisions
With the ongoing discussion at WT:BP, I think it would be good to see if we can add a section on this page about subdivisions of languages. It would be good to have common or desired practice in writing after all. Right now, the following languages are commonly split (I may have missed some):

 * Albanian
 * Gheg
 * Tosk
 * Arabic
 * varieties of Arabic
 * Chinese
 * Cantonese
 * Mandarin
 * Min Nan
 * etc.
 * Norwegian
 * Bokmål
 * Nynorsk

I propose to add the following (at least), but we'd eventually want to include all possible cases? Please suggest more!

 * Armenian
 * Old Armenian
 * Dutch
 * Middle Dutch
 * Old Dutch
 * English (older forms) - should this always be the first translation listed, in the same way that we list English first on pages?
 * Middle English
 * Old English
 * French
 * Middle French
 * Old French
 * Anglo-Norman? - I don't think this belongs here... but maybe someone else does?
 * Frisian - Like Chinese, not a language!
 * North Frisian
 * Saterland Frisian
 * West Frisian
 * Old Frisian
 * German
 * Middle High German
 * Old High German
 * Irish
 * Middle Irish
 * Old Irish
 * Primitive Irish
 * Low German
 * Middle Low German
 * Old Saxon
 * Occitan
 * Old Provençal
 * Persian
 * Middle Persian
 * Old Persian
 * Portuguese
 * Old Portuguese
 * Spanish
 * Old Spanish
 * Welsh
 * Middle Welsh
 * Old Welsh

How is this? 16:29, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

 * I think that Anglo-Norman certainly does belong under French, since it was always was and still is frequently referred to as "French". --WikiTiki89 17:08, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I can understand that, but it might confuse users because it doesn't have French in the name so they won't expect to find it there. When looking for candidates I always wondered to myself "is it likely that someone will look under one of the other words in the name"? So Old French might be considered "French, Old", but with Anglo-Norman that isn't so clear. Then again, maybe Old Provençal shouldn't be listed there either, nor should Old Saxon... 17:21, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * But people who are looking up translations for Anglo-Norman, Old Provencal, and Old Saxon are very likely to know of their connection to French, Occitan, and Low German, respectively, and will likely attempt to look there. Also, if it is not their first time looking for it, they will already know where it is and finding a subsection is much easier than searching through a list of Old XYZs that are all alphabetized to the same place. Another thing is that most of these languages have a plethora of other names and the only constant is their modern-day equivalent. --WikiTiki89 17:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not so sure. Some editors who did a lot of work here a long time ago seemed to think that Dutch descends from Old Saxon... On the other hand, we could just call Old Provençal Old Occitan, couldn't we? That is the name Wikipedia uses after all. 18:06, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Isn't Old Provençal just one dialect of Old Occitan, but the best attested one? Then it's like Old Icelandic, which is sometimes considered a synonym of Old Norse, but more precisely is just the best attested dialect of Old Norse. And speaking of Old Norse, where does it go in the list above? My preference would be to alphabetize it as "Norse, Old", but others may disagree. As for older forms of English, I say put them in alphabetical order under E, not at the top. —Angr 22:20, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't exactly know what Old Occitan is, but the Wikipedia article treats them as synonyms. The alphabetization could be changed but I would prefer to discuss that separately as it's a different issue that doesn't directly affect this one (although they both affect where languages are found in the list). 22:30, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Custom sorting order for certain languages
Following on from the discussion above and in BP, I wonder if it is desirable and/or technically feasible to implement sorting keys for certain languages, so that they are not sorted by the first letter of their name. It could place, for example, Old Norse under N. This idea is separate from the one above, so even if we decide not to make subdivisions we could still decide to sort Old English under E and Middle Dutch under D. 22:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Personally, I would prefer to continue using the alphabetisation we use now, where "Old Norse" is after "Occitan" and before "Portuguese", etc. If we don't group languages, either generally or specifically, I oppose changing their sort orders: so for example, if "Middle High German" were not grouped as a *: -sublisting under "German", I would oppose sorting it as a * -listing as "High German, Middle" (though I also don't think this is being suggested), and I oppose sorting Old Norse as * Norse, Old . Given that sorting "Middle High German" next to German as * German, Middle High is just another way of grouping the Germans, I might not oppose it, but I would prefer *: -type grouping. But a language like Old Norse, which can't be grouped (because it is just as much a predecessor of Icelandic as it is a predecessor of Norwegian, etc), should continue to be sorted by its (full) name, IMO. (I'm aware that Old/Middle English is as much a predecessor of Scots as of English, but we also don't have "English" in translations tables, so OE and ME are special cases anyway.) - -sche (discuss) 03:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't suggest that we change the names of the languages, only their sorting order. So it might look like this: 03:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * * Galician
 * * Georgian
 * * German
 * * Middle High German
 * * Old High German
 * * Greek
 * * Ancient Greek
 * * Greenlandic
 * * Guaraní
 * * Guaraní

 * I object to that. My personal preference is to list "Middle High German" completely separately from "German", with other M-languages; but I'm O.K. with listing and sorting it as "German, Middle High", or even with listing it as "Middle High German" but nested under "German". (The reason I don't like the latter is that we use "German" to mean "Modern German", so nesting Middle High German under German would imply that Middle High German translations are Modern German, just as nesting Mandarin and Cantonese under Chinese implies that Mandarin and Cantonese translations are Chinese, and nesting Cyrillic under Serbo-Croatian implies that Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic translations are Serbo-Croatian. But despite my dislike, I could accept it.) What I'm not O.K. with is listing it as "Middle High German" but sorting it as "German, Middle High". That is very confusing. Someone looking for Greek should not have to recognize that it comes after Middle High German; they should be able to just scan the first letter of the language-names to find what they're looking for. —Ruakh TALK 03:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

 * "Literary Chinese" is already grouped under "Chinese" in many (perhaps all? IDK) entries, such as helium, although Literary Chinese is a predecessor of modern Chinese, not a form of it the way Mandarin (which is also grouped under it) is. I think users looking at any translation, whether nested or not, need to have at least the minimal knowledge of what the name of the lect/variety they're looking at means (or need to look it up upon encountering it). - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Re: first sentence: We don't use ==Chinese== as an L2 header. We only use it in translations tables, and only as a group-heading for languages nested inside it. So even though Literary Chinese is qualitatively different from the modern topolects, I don't see a problem with including it under the "Chinese" umbrella. ==German==, by contrast, has a specific meaning here, and we define it as not including Middle High German.  Re: second sentence: Absolutely. "Imply" may not have been the best word-choice; I wasn't expressing concern that someone would be misled, but simply that it would be wrong. No one would be misled by nesting Japanese inside German, but it would be wrong, because Japanese isn't German. Likewise, Middle High German isn't German, at least as we use the term "German". —Ruakh TALK 04:22, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

 * I agree with Ruakh that listing as "Middle High German" but sorting it as "German, Middle High" would be a needlessly confusing bad idea. - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Countries
Can we use after a translation? Like:,   for  ? If so, could this be added to the doc ? --Jerome Potts (talk) 22:09, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Assited Cyrillic Uzbek
Assited Cyrillic Uzbek seems to get added under Serbo-Croatian. See synod, agrobiology, oncology. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 20:31, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've tested the tool. It seems to work OK. These are probably typos of .Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 20:40, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've found that the tool works most of the time, but sometimes I do find this happens and will fix it if if I notice. Obviously, I didn’t notice these. Thanks, DPUH (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Number of translations per language
Perhaps it escaped me, but: is there a limit to the number of translations per language? A problem of this nature has occurred at el.wiktionary (anon habitually adds more than 10 translations for English) and I was wondering what the general policy is. sarri.greek (talk) 05:19, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
 * There is no policy about this here. Because of the division in senses here there are rarely more than 4-5 terms per language. In other wiktionaries translating to english you might find that english has a whole lot of near-synonyms for many concepts leading to more than 4-5 terms per sense.--So9q (talk) 15:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you So9q. Translators would be delighted with 20 options, but a limit-5 seems sensible. sarri.greek (talk) 15:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

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

title: Wiktionary talk:Translations


text:
compiere

Etymology
From.

Verb

 * 1)  to finish, to complete
 * 2)  to turn
 * 3)  to turn out, to be realized
 * 4)  to be fulfilled
 * 1)  to be fulfilled
 * 1)  to be fulfilled

title: compiere


text:
compound word

Etymology
🇰🇲

Noun

 * 1)  A word composed of two or more stems.
 * 2) * 1700, A. Lane, A Key to the Art of Letters
 * A Compound Word, is that which is Compounded of two or more Words; as a Book-Seller, Compounded of Book and Seller; a Watch-man, of Watch and Man.
 * 1) * 1858, Charles Peter Mason, English grammar:
 * A word is a compound word when it is made up of two or more parts, each of which is a significant word by itself; as, apple-tree, tea-spoon, spend-thrift.
 * 1) * 1994, James R. Hurford, Grammar: A Student's Guide:
 * Compound words contrast with words built up by the use of affixes. Thus, for example, re-use, substandard, hyperventilate, prehistoric and pro-communist woud not usually be counted as compound words ...
 * 1) * 2014, Kelly Hackett, Compound Words--Banana Splits Literacy Center:
 * Some important vocabulary words your child needs to study are compound words. A compound word is made when two words are joined together to form a new word. For example, the word rainbow is made using the words rain and bow.
 * 1) * 2018, Dale D. Johnson, Words: The Foundation of Literacy:
 * As stated above, compound words are formed by joining two words into one word. Some compound words retain elements of the meanings of the two words. Examples include sunlight, flagpole, flying fish, and bridge-builder.
 * 1) * 1784, Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English language
 * A compound word is formed of two or more simple words; as, country-man, gold-smith, ink-horn; or of a simple word and a preposition; as, over-come, with-draw, dis-engage.
 * As stated above, compound words are formed by joining two words into one word. Some compound words retain elements of the meanings of the two words. Examples include sunlight, flagpole, flying fish, and bridge-builder.
 * 1) * 1784, Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English language
 * A compound word is formed of two or more simple words; as, country-man, gold-smith, ink-horn; or of a simple word and a preposition; as, over-come, with-draw, dis-engage.

Usage notes

 * Compounds are hard to define exactly, especially since it is difficult to distinguish compounds from phrases.

Translations

 * Armenian:
 * Azerbaijani:
 * Belarusian: скла́данае сло́ва
 * Breton: ger kevrennek, liesger
 * Bulgarian: сло́жна ду́ма
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin: ,
 * Czech:
 * Danish: sammensat ord
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto: kunmetaĵo
 * Estonian:
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Georgian: რთული სიტყვა, წარმოქმნილი სიტყვა, კომპოზიტი, შედგენილი სიტყვა
 * German:, ,
 * Greek: σύνθετη λέξη
 * Hindi:
 * Hungarian:, összetett szó,
 * Icelandic:
 * Indonesian:
 * Ingrian: yhissetty sana
 * Interlingua: parola composite
 * Irish: comhfhocal
 * Old Irish: comṡuidigthe
 * Italian:
 * Japanese: ,
 * Kannada:
 * Khmer:
 * Korean: ,
 * Lithuanian:
 * Malay:
 * Malayalam:
 * Manx: co-ockle
 * Maori: kupu pūhui
 * Norwegian:
 * Bokmål:, sammensatt ord, kompositum
 * Nynorsk: samansetjing, samansetning, samansetting, samansett ord, kompositum
 * Persian: هَمساخته,
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese: palavra composta
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:
 * Sanskrit:
 * Scottish Gaelic: facal fillte
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Roman:
 * Slovene: sestavljenka
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:, , sammansatt ord
 * Tagalog: salitang tambalan
 * Tamil:
 * Telugu:
 * Thai:, ,
 * Tibetan:
 * Turkish: ,
 * Ukrainian:
 * Uyghur: بىرىككەن سۆز
 * Vietnamese:
 * Volapük:
 * Walloon:
 * Welsh: cyfansoddair, gair cyfansawdd

title: compound word


text:
closed compound

Noun

 * 1)  A compound word without spaces in it.

Translations

 * Finnish: (yhteenkirjoitettu) yhdyssana
 * Hungarian: egybeírt összetétel

title: closed compound


text:
ringgit

Etymology
.

Noun

 * 1) The currency of Malaysia

Translations

 * Arabic: رِينْغِيت
 * Hijazi Arabic: رِنْقِت
 * Balinese: ᬭᬶᬗ᭄ᬕᬶᬢ᭄
 * Central Dusun: ringgit
 * Central Melanau: rigit
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin: ,
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * German: Ringgit
 * Hindi: रिंगित, रिंग्गित
 * Indonesian:
 * Japanese:, リンギ
 * Javanese: ꦫꦶꦁꦒꦶꦠ꧀
 * Khmer: រីងហ្គីត
 * Korean: 링깃
 * Lun Bawang: rigit
 * Malay:
 * Jawi: ريڠݢيت
 * Rumi:
 * Norwegian: ringgit
 * Portuguese: ringgit
 * Rohingya: ringgít
 * Russian:
 * Spanish:

Noun

 * 1)  (the currency of Malaysia)

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * : The currency of Malaysia.
 * 1)  the two-and-a-half silver guilder; two-and-a-half rupiah.

Noun

 * 1) notch, serration.

Etymology
From, from , referring to the edges of the Spanish dollar.

Adjective

 * 1) jagged

Noun

 * 1)  currency
 * 2) The Brunei or Singapore dollar

Noun

 * 1)  currency unit of Malaysia

Noun

 * 1)  currency unit of Malaysia

Noun

 * 1)  currency unit of Malaysia
 * 2)  Spanish dollar former currency unit of Spain; piece of eight

Etymology
.

title: ringgit


text:
assumere

Etymology
, from +.

Verb

 * 1)  to take on, assume
 * 2)  to employ, hire
 * 3)  to consume

title: assumere


text:
Wiktionary:Usage notes

Sometimes, it's useful to put the same usage note on several entries. When that happens, the usage note is made into a template in a "U:" pseudo-namespace (compare reference templates' "R:" pseudo-namespace), like this: Template:U:[language code]:[brief identifier].

title: Wiktionary:Usage notes


text:
esplodere

Verb

 * 1)  to fire
 * 2)  to explode, to blow up
 * 3)  to fire (a weapon, shots, etc.)

title: esplodere


text:
Wiktionary talk:Usage notes

Usage
Is there / should there be a usage subsection for each definition ( for which it would be worthwhile). I'm thinking Fowler - Modern English usagem abd & Partridge, Usage and Abusage. --Tagishsimon Well, we sometimes add a usage note underneath a definition; often like this See, for two examples, Scotch SemperBlotto 16:54, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Note: This word is often used wrongly etc
 * When clearly needed, I use . --Connel MacKenzie 02:26, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

-

Usage articles
 I'm beginning to feel pretty strongly that we should have "articles" for multi-word usage issues, rather than merely usage notes, so that we can nail the usage description without restricting ourselves to information relevant to only one of the articles. This is especially so for synonyms or words with similar, overlapping, or hierarchical meanings. We really ought to have articles, for example, to compare the usage of book, tome, volume, text, manuscript, etc. Such an article could never be adequately addressed on the pages of one of the words, and it would be silly to reproduce the whole article on all of them. But before I do this, I want to see what others think, and I want to develop a consistent approach for doing this, particularly in the article naming (anything that involves article namespace needs communal discussion). dictionary.com's (really American Heritage's) approach is to put the usage not at one of the articles, and put a "see usage note at" on each of the other articles. I think it would be better, however, to give separate articles (which bartleby.com's version of American Heritage does). We could, in the example above, have an article named something like Usage notes:Types of books, or we could go a little better and do something like Usage notes:Words for bound texts. Or just Usage:

Any thoughts?

 * I quite like this idea, just the other day I was wondering about a similar usage problem, the exact nature of which now escapes me. I'd personally go for 'Usage:', because it generally seems better to have a one word namespace (especially considering the talk pages, 'Usage notes talk:" just doesn't seem as appealing as 'Usage talk:'), and also, the pages are likely to be much more than notes after a while as this idea opens up the opportunity for some quite lengthy discussions on prescriptivism and prescriptivist views of language. A tidy place for a caveat about using naturalised English plurals on Latinate words and so on, perhaps. I agree with you that a standard needs to be developed, including a template for how to link to these articles from relevant word entries, for example, at the end or the beginning of the article? If there is a usage notes header, do we put the link there?
 * In a similar vein, the entry layout article and so on would also need to be updated to show this. Incidentally, I think the entry layout guide needs more clarity, to help answer such questions as in which order to put verb definitions, noun definitions and so on, or explaining more explicitly to new users that they don't need to include headers if they can't put any content in.
 * Back to the topic at hand, putting it simply, I second this motion. --Wytukaze 18:08, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Good idea. I think it was you who, quite a while ago, made similar proposals to improve the Synonyms section (was it synonyms? Example at the time was song and tune, air, etc.). There is a now archived thread "Discussing words pairwise" which I started but only got two or so posts in response. Not surprisingly since the matter is complicated. However, it would be good if someone could give an initial impulse by starting to create such pages. Hopefully other people will join subsequently. Ncik 06 May 2005

 * I don't like the idea of branching from a dictionary to an ESL guide. The examples you provide should (disclaimer: I have not checked them, I'm only asserting that they should) provide sufficient differentiation in each of their own definitions.  On the other hand, it is a neat idea.  I'd lean towards Style:articlename or Usage:articlename.  But I think that Usage talk:articlename would have to somehow be changed to Usage flamewar:articlename.  :-)  Neat concept - I also (like User:Wytukaze) would like to see this proceed, perhaps to an experimental phase.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:46, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

 I'm happy with the fairly positive response here, so I decided to set out with English usage:Dieresis. I realized that there was no value in merging all the various-language usage notes into a single namespace, and it does leave the possibility of confusion. I fully expect y'all to make edits to my beautiful new stub, and in case there is disagreement with the name, or with its existence altogether, I held off on implementing links to it across the board. I restrained myself by touching only a few. Does this seem like a good start?

Note to Connel: I'm not really intending this as an ESL resource, which is why I expect that, for a perfect Wiktionary, there would be many more such usage articles for any given foreign language than there would be for English. This is mainly to clear up confusing issues that affect more than one word—issues that need more space than would comfortably fit in the section of a word.
 * Cool. Thanks for the disclaimer.  I think you should proceed with a single experiment for all to review.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Um, didn't we just discuss using the pseudo namespace Usage: not English Usage:? I prefer the former for a variety of reasons.  --Connel MacKenzie 19:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Um, I just edited your link above to point to English usage:Dieresis. I think this is an even worse example of what you are after here...the diaresis disclaimer should be a template that is included in each of these (much like is done with  .  I would like to see a different, better example, as I do think you are on to something good here...but dieresis isn't it.  --Connel MacKenzie 21:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

It is not possible, for example, to have a clear understanding of the distinction between coöperate and cooperate (i.e., it's not just a spelling variant, it's part of a system) based on the definitions there, and most of the information provided to that effect would have to be reprinted on reëxamine, reëlect, and the others. On a smaller scale, there is an important usage note to be created that will cover the terms they, them, their, and themself, regarding their use as a gender-unspecific third-person pronoun collection. You could put a usage note under they, and say "see usage note at they", but that seems inelegant when we can have an article for it and link to the article. Additionally, you can make references to usage articles with relevant information (in this case, an article on the use of he as a pronoun for someone of unspecified gender would be highly relevant), which would seem excessive on a word article.
 * I consider myself a reasonably erudite layman, but to me there is no coöperate in English, so how can there be a different English usage between coöperate and cooperate. There are times when I believe the "academics" on this project have their heads in the clouds, and try to be far, far too technical. Just stick with the one English word - cooperate.--Richardb 06:30, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

As for synonyms, I think it's very hard to capture the difference, particularly in usage, between the various words that have overlapping meanings in a small word definition (small in the sense of at most a couple lines). This is by no means restricted to people learning English. I'm sure there are many native speakers of English that would be enlightened by a quality article on the differences between use, utilize, employ, and put to use. The article format is even more appropriate for such difficult and contentious groups of terms as tsunami and tidal wave or opera, oratorio, and musical. As no three people can agree on the distinction between an opera and a musical, and most people upon learning the word oratorio would have a hard time differentiating it from opera (there exist oratori that are performed with costumes and acting, and operas that are not. There are also secular oratori and religious operas). In such cases it becomes necessary to frame various arguments (some would say Evita is an opera. Others would say it is not) and speak of senses (oratorio is generally used for religious-themed, unacted works, but there are cases where this is not true, particularly in times when it was a dominant form.  It is very rare, on the other hand for an opera to be written with the intention that it not be acted.  On the whole, the term used is likely to be based on the composer's preference, or at least what he wrote on the top of the score, unless the composer is Andrew Lloyd Webber). Such articles hardly belong in the main entries, and yet they are entirely suitable for the Wiktionary.

 * Note that the talk page for Usage:articlename is Talk:Usage:articlename, not Usage talk:articlename. Uncle G 13:27, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I respectively disagree, on the grounds that such an assertion is wrong :P Clicking the 'discussion' tab above a page leads you to "Namespace_Talk:Article_name", unless there is no namespace, as it is a content page, and then you'll find "Talk:Article_name". As a test, I tried typing http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary:Beer_parlour in my browser, and it leads to a creation page -> Talk:Wiktionary:Beer_parlour, whereas Wiktionary_talk:Beer_parlour is perfectly functioning. --Wytukaze 15:54, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * It has just occurred to me what Uncle G is referring to. Although as a namespace, Usage will enjoy the same talk page URL formatting as all the other namespaces, it will not yet be a namespace per se. This is because it must be formalised, and in the meantime it will be treated by the MediaWiki software as a regular article. So, until such a time as it is formalised, Uncle G is correct in his assertion. This counts as an apology, I suppose. --Wytukaze 18:03, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * For the interim, can we just use a redirect from Talk:Usage:Diaresis --> Usage_Talk:Diaresis so we can see what the idea looks like? Um, wait a sec.  Does anyone know who or where to ask for a new namespace?  Is such a thing possible without developer intervention?  --Connel MacKenzie 19:13, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
 * If you want a new namespace, request it at Bugzilla, and/or talk to a developer on the #mediawiki channel. I found out the hard way that most of the pages that collect requests on meta don't generally get watched. (BTW, this wouldn't be the first wiktionary asking for an additional namespace.  bg: also requested one at 1902, though it doesn't seem to have it yet.)  —Muke Tever 16:19, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Is WikiSaurus relevant
WikiSaurus is there for you to group words with similar meanings. You could have an entry WikiSaurus:Book. The content of a WikiSaurus entry is not rigidly defined. Often words, in the list of similar words in a WikiSaurus entry, have a note against them to indicate specific usage.--Richardb 10:11, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Why use a namespace ?
My understanding is that we are limited to having 16 namespaces, without any prospect of upping this number. I looked into it a bit after using WikiSaurus as a pseudo namespace.

Why not just use sub-pages ? Eg: a page called Dieresis/usage notes, with the sub-page title of "usage notes" being used consistently for any extended usage notes associated with a word. --Richardb 10:21, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Naming scheme
A naming scheme was established in 2014, see Beer_parlour/2014/June. - -sche (discuss) 17:53, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

title: Wiktionary talk:Usage notes


text:
trampoline

Etymology
From and/or ; in English, a genericized trademark based on the Spanish word trademarked in 1936.

Noun

 * 1)  A gymnastic and recreational device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric or rubber stretched over a (usually steel) frame using many coiled springs as anchors.
 * 2)  A competitive sport in which athletes are judged on routines of tricks performed on a trampoline.
 * 3)  Any of a variety of looping or jumping instructions in specific programming languages.
 * 4)  Any of a variety of indirection techniques in specific programming languages.
 * 1)  Any of a variety of indirection techniques in specific programming languages.

Translations

 * Arabic: مِنَطَّة
 * Hijazi Arabic: نطنيطة
 * Armenian: ,
 * Bashkir: батут
 * Bulgarian: батут
 * Catalan: llit elàstic,
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese: 彈床
 * Mandarin:
 * Czech:
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto:
 * Finnish:
 * French: ,
 * Galician: cama elástica
 * German:
 * Greek: τραμπολίνο
 * Hebrew:
 * Hungarian:
 * Icelandic: trampólín
 * Ido:
 * Indonesian:
 * Irish: trampailín
 * Italian: trampolino elastico
 * Japanese: トランポリン
 * Kazakh: серіппе, батут
 * Korean: 트램펄린
 * Kyrgyz: батут
 * Latin: desultorium n,  trampolinum (New Latin)
 * Lithuanian: batutas
 * Maori: tūraparapa, turapa
 * Norwegian:
 * Bokmål: trampoline
 * Nynorsk: trampoline
 * Plautdietsch: Hupsbad
 * Polish:, batut
 * Portuguese:, cama elástica, pula-pula
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:
 * Slovak: trampolína
 * Slovene: trampolín
 * Spanish: cama elástica, brincolín
 * Swedish: ,
 * Tagalog: trampolin, trampolina
 * Tamil: வீழ்தடுப்புறை
 * Turkish: trambolin
 * Ukrainian: бату́т
 * Vietnamese: giàn nhún, nghệ thuật nhún giàn
 * Welsh: trampolîn

 * Polish:

Verb

 * 1)  To jump as if on a trampoline.
 * 2)  To rewrite (computer code) to use trampoline instructions.
 * 1)  To rewrite (computer code) to use trampoline instructions.

Etymology
Borrowed from either or  (itself from Italian).

Noun

 * 1) A.

Etymology
or. See also 🇨🇬.

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * a

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * a

title: trampoline


text:
User:Gliorszio/Italian irregular verbs

essere / avere

A

 * accendere
 * accludere - concludere, intercludere, recludere
 * accorgersi - raccorgersi
 * addurre - condurre, dedurre, indurre, introdurre, produrre, ricondurre, ridurre, rintrodurre, riprodurre, ritradurre, sedurre, tradurre, trasdurre
 * affliggere - infliggere
 * alludere - colludere, preludere, proludere
 * andare - riandare, trasandare
 * annettere - interconnettere, riflettere
 * apparire - comparire, disparire, riapparire, trasparire
 * ardere - riardere
 * aspergere - cospergere
 * assistere - coesistere, consistere, desistere, esistere, insistere, resistere, sussistere
 * assolvere - risolvere
 * assumere
 * attingere
 * bere - imbevere, ribere, strabere

C

 * cadere - riaccadere, procedere, ricadere
 * cedere - precedere, procedere, recedere, ricedere
 * see also: concedere, retrocedere
 * cernere
 * chiedere - richiedere
 * chiudere - conchiudere, illudere, includere, racchiudere, richiudere
 * -cidere: see coincidere, concedere, decidere, incidere
 * cingere - recingere, ricingere, succingere
 * cogliere - accogliere, raccogliere, riaccogliere, ricogliere
 * coincidere
 * see also: decidere, incidere
 * compiere - ricompiere
 * comprimere - esprimere, imprimere, reprimere, sopprimere
 * concedere - succedere
 * conoscere - preconoscere, riconoscere
 * consumere
 * contundere
 * convergere
 * correre - concorrere, discorrere, intercorrere, precorrere, ricorrere, rincorrere, trascorrere
 * costruire
 * crescere - ricrescere, rincrescere, sopraccrescere
 * cucire - ricurire
 * cuocere - concuocere, ricuocere, stracuocere

D

 * dare - ridare
 * decidere - intercidere
 * see also: coincidere, incidere
 * difendere - offendere
 * dipingere - ridipingere
 * dire - interdire, predire, ridire
 * dirigere
 * discutere
 * distinguere
 * dividere - condividere, suddividere
 * dolere
 * dovere
 * -durre: see addurre
 * elidere - collidere
 * emergere - immergere
 * ergere
 * esigere
 * espellere - repellere
 * esplodere - implodere

F

 * fare - confarsi, putrefare, rarefare, sopraffare
 * figgere - infiggere, prefiggere
 * fingere
 * flettere - inflettere, introflettersi
 * fondere - diffondere, profondere, radiodiffondere
 * frangere - affrangere, diffrangere, infrangere
 * friggere
 * giacere
 * giungere - aggiungere, ingiungere, raggiungere, sopraggiungere
 * godere

I

 * incidere - precidere
 * indulgere
 * intridere
 * intrudere - protrudere
 * invadere
 * ledere
 * leggere - rileggere

M

 * mettere - commettere, compromettere, dismettere, immettere, inframmettere/inframettere, intermettere, intramettere, intromettere, permettere, premettere, pretermettere, promettere, radiotrasmettere, riammettere, rimettere, smettere, soprammettere, trasmettere
 * mordere
 * morire - premorire
 * mungere
 * muovere - commuovere, promuovere, rimuovere
 * nascere - rinascere
 * nascondere
 * nuocere
 * offrire - aprire, coprire, riaprire, ricoprire

P

 * parere
 * percuotere
 * perdere - riperdere
 * persuadere
 * piacere - compiacere
 * piangere - compiangere, rimpiangere
 * piovere
 * porgere
 * porre - comporre, deporre, discomporre, disporre, esporre, imporre, interporre, posporre, preporre, presupporre, proporre, ricomporre, riesporre, riporre
 * potere
 * prediligere
 * premere
 * prendere - comprendere, riprendere, sorprendere
 * presumere
 * -primere: see comprimere
 * proteggere
 * pungere - interpungere

R

 * radere - dissuadere
 * recidere - succidere
 * redigere
 * redimere
 * reggere - correggere, ricorreggere
 * rendere
 * retrocedere
 * ridere - irridere, sorridere
 * rifulgere
 * rilucere
 * rimanere - permanere
 * rispondere - corrispondere
 * rodere
 * rompere - corrompere, irrompere, prorompere

S

 * salire
 * sapere
 * scegliere - trascegliere
 * scendere - condiscendere, ridiscendere, trascendere
 * scernere
 * scindere - rescindere
 * sciogliere - prosciogliere, ridisciogliere
 * scolpire
 * scorgere
 * scrivere - coscrivere, inscrivere, prescrivere, soprascrivere, trascrivere
 * scuotere - riscuotere
 * sedere - possedere, soprassedere
 * seppellire - disseppellire
 * -sistere: see assistere
 * soddisfare
 * solere
 * sorgere - insorgere
 * spargere - cospargere
 * spegnere
 * spendere - dipendere, riappendere
 * spingere - respingere
 * stare - soprastare
 * stringere - costringere
 * struggere - distruggere
 * svellere - disvellere, divellere

T

 * tacere
 * tendere - disrendere, intendere, pretendere, protendere, stendere
 * tenere - intrattenere, rattenere, ritenere
 * tergere
 * tingere - ritingere
 * togliere
 * torcere - rattorcere
 * trarre - protrarre, retrarre

U

 * uccidere
 * udire
 * ungere - disungere
 * uscire - riuscire
 * valere - avvalersi, invalere, prevalere
 * vedere - intravedere, prevedere, provvedere, ravvedersi, rivedere
 * venire - avvenire, riconvenire, rinvenire, prevenire, sopravvenire
 * vincere - riconvincere
 * vivere
 * volere - disvolere, rivolere
 * volgere - disvolgere, involgere, ravvolgere, rivolgere

title: User:Gliorszio/Italian irregular verbs


text:
open compound

Noun

 * 1)  A compound word with spaces in it, for example,, , or.
 * 2) * 1951, English Journal, Volume 40:
 * Two-word compounds--named open compounds in Edward N. Teall's Meet Mr. Hyphen--are in fact very common.
 * 1) * 1966, Ladislas Országh, Deficiencies of Modern English Dictionaries in English Studies Today, Fourth Series:
 * Thus such words, to give only a very few examples, as pismire, baise-mains, favonian, hearstling, happenstance, chanticleer, and open compounds like guardhouse lawyer,sidewalk superintendent and slush fund are registered without any kind of status label ...
 * 1) * 1971, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Volume 5:
 * Further, the language permits open compounds, as indicated above, so that we might conjecture such spellings as "battlecry, battle-field, battle ground, battle-piece and battlewise."
 * 1) * 1981, Jewish Language Review:
 * Should the Yiddish noun ris-uf 'start' be written as an open or a hyphenated compound? The MEYYED gives it as an open compound ( ris uf ) in the English- Yiddish ...
 * 1) * 1992, Sheila Davis, The Songwriter's Idea Book:
 * The examples also exemplify the three forms that compound words take: 1) open compound (snail mail); 2) hyphenated compound (eagle-eyed); and 3) solid compound (bookworm).
 * 1) * 1996, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law:
 * A subentry is an open compound (e.g., express contract) whose major element is the noun (contract at whose alphabetical place the subentry is entered.
 * 1) * 2008, Oxford American Large Print Dictionary:
 * In an open compound, the component words are separate, with no hyphen (well fed; wagon train).
 * 1) * 2011, Language-independent Compound Splitting with Morphological Operations:
 * Some compounds are written as space-separated words, which are called open compounds (e.g. hard drive), while others are written as single words, which are called closed compounds (e.g. wallpaper). In this paper, we shall focus only on closed compounds because open compounds do not require further splitting.
 * 1) * 2011, Language-independent Compound Splitting with Morphological Operations:
 * Some compounds are written as space-separated words, which are called open compounds (e.g. hard drive), while others are written as single words, which are called closed compounds (e.g. wallpaper). In this paper, we shall focus only on closed compounds because open compounds do not require further splitting.

Usage notes

 * Compounds are hard to define exactly, especially since it is difficult to distinguish compounds from phrases.

Translations

 * Finnish: erikseen kirjoitettu yhdyssana
 * Hungarian: különírt összetétel

title: open compound


text:
age-old

Adjective

 * 1) Very old; having existed for a long time; ancient or well-established.

title: age-old


text:
Комитет государственной безопасности

Proper noun

 * 1) the former Soviet "State Security Committee": the KGB

title: Комитет государственной безопасности


text:
кагебешник

Etymology
From (phonetically: ) +.

Noun

 * 1)  an employee of the KGB, agent of the KGB, KGB operative

title: кагебешник


text:
Indo-Iranian

Proper noun

 * 1) A branch of the Indo-European language family, including the Indic and Iranian languages.

Noun

 * 1) A member of any peoples speaking such a language.

Adjective

 * 1) Of or relating to such a language or member.

Translations

 * Armenian: հնդիրանական,
 * Dutch: Indo-Iraans
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Hungarian:
 * Persian:, هند-ایرانی
 * Urdu: ہند ایرانی

title: Indo-Iranian


text: asking for it

title: asking for it


text:
pony up

Etymology
Originally often poney. US early 19th century. According to Michael Quinion, probably not from the monetary sense of and instead from Latin "Legem pone mihi Domine viam iustificationum tuarum" (“Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes”) in reference to March 25th, a traditional day of debt settlement. This etymology has been accepted by the American Heritage Dictionary.

Verb

 * 1)  To pay (usually a bill, debt or due).

title: pony up