Is "historicopous" the correct spelling of this term for trigger finger, and if not, what is the correct spelling? I saw this word listed at our entry on Trigger finger and found only a few Google hits for it. I am skeptical that this is the correct spelling, because a noun would end in -us, not -ous -- unless the O were pronounced separately, as in Cabassous. A Google search for the next obvious spelling, "historicopus", has not turned up anything either. 2601:644:4301:D1B0:643F:95BF:431:1282 (talk) 20:40, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it's just a piece of vandalism that slipped through and entirely made up. It was first inserted by an anon IP editor in 2016, without an explanation and under a false edit summary [1], and then moved from the lead sentence into the infobox by User:Doc James in 2017 [2]. Doc James is of course a competent and good-faith editor on medical articles, but this one may well have slipped his notice. @Doc James: maybe you can comment here? Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:36, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I took it out, as there appears to be no such word. If someone finds a valid source and/or valid spelling, they could consider reposting it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:17, 9 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree remove... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:01, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pub names says: "Pig and Whistle: a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon saying piggin wassail meaning "good health"." Is this really true? There is no source given there. Thank you. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 10:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See WhistlePig, [3] and [4]. 2A00:23D0:E69:7B01:38B0:2063:2E0B:8F4B (talk) 11:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some further discussion here. Piggin/ Pig and wassail would rather mean "drinking container (i.e. cheers), good health", but it's likely a folk etymology, anyway. [5] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that article link is very helpful, sorry, as it says nothing about the origin of the name. Looks just like random promo/advertising. But the other sources are very interesting, thanks. I don't see much about Anglo-Saxon there. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 11:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I added these to the entry at Pub names and amended the entry. But the second source has been removed as not being WP:RS. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 10:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are some more explanations, about the pub name origin, in this source [6] but I don't know if that is a WP:RS or not. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 12:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Scottish National Dictionary, "pigs and whistles" (the traditional stock in trade of a tinker) is another way of saying "odds and ends". "Pig" in this context means "jug" or "pot". This seems like a much more plausible origin for the pub name than a fictitious Anglo-Saxon toast. Zacwill (talk) 19:47, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I realise that this may be unanswerable (or at least have no answer beyond "language development is arbitrary"), but I'm wondering if there is any explanation for this pattern (or rather lack of pattern) that I've noticed:

• We have several words relating to fear or similar emotions: fear, dread, fright, awe.
• We have several compound words formed by combining these with suffixes -some, -ful, -ed.
• But there is inconsistency in how these are used:
  • Fearsome and awesome are common words, but dreadsome and frightsome are rare/dialectal (most dictionaries I've looked in don't include them, although my browser spellchecker at least does recognise them, unlike "frighted").
  • Dreadful, frightful, and awful all mean "causing fear/fright/awe" (or more loosely "bad"), but fearful usually means "experiencing fear". (I was taught that the latter only means experiencing fear, and is incorrect to use to mean causing fear, although having checked the dictionary I see that both are valid, and indeed the original usage was consistent with fear/fright/awful).
  • "Feared" and "dreaded" refer to something that causes fear or dread, but "frighted" and "awed" refer to something that is experiencing fright or awe.

Does anyone know of a reason for these differences? Iapetus (talk) 11:21, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which suffixes can be combined with which words is generally entirely idiomatic and not governed by some rule. Something can be diresome, but it can't be *awfulsome. It can be bleaksome and drearisome, but not *palesome or *drabsome. There is no logic to it.

Feared, dreaded, frighted and awed are the past participles of the verbs to fear, to dread, to fright and to awe. These have different meanings. Compare:

• the little child feared the giant dog     =  the giant dog frighted the little child
• the little child dreaded the giant dog  =  the giant dog awed the little child

So these are completely as is to be expected.  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:16, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As is the case with much of modern English's illogicalities, this is mostly a consequence of its complex historical development. The Romance languages, for example, all descended from a single progenitor (Latin) over a similar span but in different regions, resulting in some local consistency, but regional differences due to linguistic drift and influences from different non-Romance neighbors.

By contrast, English was formed within Great Britain following the Sub-Roman period by the merging together of the several different Germanic languages (Anglic, Saxon, Jutish, Frisian, Frankish, 'Danish' and probably etc.) of the continental migrants and later invaders, which though sometimes close to mutually intelligibility had already accumulated many differences since diverging from their Proto-Germanic origins. This merging was not orchestrated by literate scholars (who somewhat controlled Latin, which continued to live alongside its developing vernacular offspring), but by the general populace who came up with their own ad hoc choices from and modifications to this goulash of tongues, including a 'Column A/B/C' approach to pronouns. Throw in minor Celtic influences (Brythonic, Welsh, Cornish), Latin from the Church and from later proscriptive philologists, and imposed Norman-French from the most recent invaders, and the grammatical result is a working but illogical mess of pottage. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 16:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Elves are terrific. They beget terror." Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 11:37, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Amusing, awful, and artificial." Apocryphally attributed to King Charles II praising Sir Christopher Wren's new St Paul's Cathedral. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which makes me think of how the French use terrible nowadays.Ce n'est pas terrible (lit. "This isn't terrible") has come to mean "This isn't very exciting" or "This isn't really great". On the other hand, the English this isn't terribly exciting already goes into the same direction. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor is that individual terms sometimes experiences changes to their connotation, sometimes small enough that they can retain their denotation, but sometimes large enough that the denotation be forgotten. Older translations of the Bible sometimes speak of God as being "awful", with a meaning comparable to "awe-inspiring", and the sycophantic first paragraph of the preface to the King James Bible addresses King James as "most dread Sovereign". Nyttend (talk) 09:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. Are there any words in English where ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced as /f/ before ⟨t⟩?
2. Are there any place names in English where ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced at the end of word?
3. Are there any other Germanic languages than English which have different forms of possessive determiner and possessive adjective?
4. Does English ever use VSO word order to emphasize verb?
5. How is an indirect question which does not have a question word constructed in languages that use question particle or intonation and not invert word order, such as in Slavic and Romance languages?
6. In English, do obstruents assimilate in voicing if the next word begins with obstruent?
7. Why Cyrillic letters with acute accent are not available as precomposed characters in Unicode?

--40bus (talk) 20:15, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

1. draught. Double sharp (talk) 20:16, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

and laughter. Xuxl (talk) 12:57, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

and roughtailed —Tamfang (talk) 20:24, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2. Pittsburgh. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:50, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

6. Not sure what you're getting at, but I wonder if World's Series would be an example? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:53, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

6. Listen to world cup pronounced /wɜɹld.kʌp/ here by a speaker from Milwaukee: .  ​‑‑Lambiam 22:04, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

4. Yes. [7] Modocc (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

5. Where English uses a relativizer (that, if ) to connect the relative clause to the main clause, Turkish nominalizes the relative clause by adding the particle -dik to the stem of the verb, plus an appropriate possessive suffix to replace the subject. The resulting noun phrase then becomes the object of the main clause, so in most cases the suffix of the accusative case will also be added, all subjected to vowel harmony. The verb of the main clause then makes clear this is a question. For example:

• Çocuk yürebilir. — The child can walk.
• Yürebilir misin diye adam çocuğa sordu. — The man asked the child, Can you walk?
• Adam çocuğa yürebildiğini sordu. — The man asked the child if they could walk.
• Evet, yürebilirim, dedi. — They said, Yes, I can walk.
• Çocuk yürebildiğini söyledi. — The child said that they could walk.

 ​‑‑Lambiam 07:16, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2. In the north of England, yes. See Brough, East Riding of Yorkshire and the very meagre selection of northern place-names in Clough, pronounced to rhyme with stuff, given at Clough (disambiguation)#Places. There are countless other small steep-sided valleys which use that word in their names. --Antiquary (talk) 08:19, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see a ⟨t⟩.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:31, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're confusing questions 1 and 2. --Antiquary (talk) 11:59, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Still on 2, there's Burgh by Sands and Edinburgh, Indiana. I believe I can also add (though our articles don't give any pronunciation) Plattsburgh, New York, Hamptonburgh, New York, and Newburgh, New York. --Antiquary (talk) 12:24, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And if place-names are allowed for question 1 then there's Aughton and Claughton. Again, we're in the north of England here. --Antiquary (talk) 20:48, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

5. At least some Slavic languages use the question particle *li and its descendants. You can see some notes about the sentence structure and word order in ли. —Amble (talk) 19:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Polish the same question particle czy is used in both direct and indirect questions. It's optional in the former case (using only intonation to indicate a question), but obligatory in the latter.

Czy jesteś w domu? / Jesteś w domu? (Are you home?)

Chciałbym wiedzieć, czy jesteś w domu. (I'd like to know whether you are home.)

— Kpalion^(talk) 07:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

7: In Russian at least, acute accents are used only in dictionaries and the like, as far as I know. —Tamfang (talk) 22:20, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Corréct. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:46, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Many English speakers use /ŋd͡ʒ/ when pronouncing the word longevity. So, in a sense, the same single letter g can be heard doubly, first as part of the digraph ⟨ng⟩, a voiced velar nasal (/ŋ/), then as a voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ʒ/.

Can this be found in other English words? (According to Wiktionary, e.g., longitude is not pronounced with a voiced velar nasal. Note: I'm not just looking for other words with /ŋd͡ʒ/, such as "longjaw", but ones where that sound is represented only by the letters "ng" in writing). Thank you in advance!---Sluzzelin talk 17:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A variant doubling: Languish. Modocc (talk) 17:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bangle. Modocc (talk) 17:38, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Finger? Modocc (talk) 17:42, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tangent. Modocc (talk) 17:55, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for, but New Yorkers are noted for pronouncing "Long Island" as "Long Guy Land". Deor (talk) 17:59, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant /ŋd͡ʒ/ in particular, not /ŋɡ/ for example. Is tangent really ever pronounced //ˈtæŋ.d͡ʒənt//? Anyway, thanks for your examples, Modocc and Deor. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:09, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard tangent pronounced that way. One example that does come to mind is the song "Jingle Bells", which almost everyone pronounces "Jing-gle Bells", but Bing Crosby's rendition is perhaps the "right" way: "Jing-le Bells". Then there's the Beatles drummer, which everyone (including himself) pronounces "Ring-go". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Bugs! Again, I expressed myself ambiguously. I'm looking for words including "ng" + vowel (or "nj" + vowel, see Jack below) in their spelling, but the same sound "ng" + "j" you find in "long jump" for example. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm nobody, then. Because I say "Ring-O"--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:35, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Almost everyone. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some may say "ingest", "dingy/ier/iest", "enjoin", "enjambment" that way. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:25, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Jackster, I wouldn't have expected it in those examples! ---Sluzzelin talk 11:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome, Sluzzmeister. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:49, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have heard one or two Englishpeople say /lɔŋɪtuːd/. —Tamfang (talk) 21:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:londgitude says that is a "more traditional" British English pronunciation. In my experience, very rare these days but a valid example. Alansplodge (talk) 11:46, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:longitude has "(UK, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈlɒnɡɪtjuːd/, /ˈlɒnd͡ʒɪtjuːd/ (more traditional), /-tʃuːd/ (yod-coalescence)". Wikipedia:Longitude has "/ˈlɒndʒɪtjuːd/, AU and UK also /ˈlɒŋɡɪ-/". There is no example of /ŋd͡ʒ/.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:10, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the accidental gap article, I started to wonder — in general, does this concept include the singular forms of pluralia tantum? I started wondering because I can't imagine a fundamental reason for English lacking nouns such as "clothe" or "outskirt". Nyttend (talk) 03:55, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is a fuzzy concept. Can we call the absence of a word *premostulation from the English lexicon an "accidental gap"? It is allowed in the phonological system of English, but it is hard to imagine a serious author giving this as an example instead of, say, *braff or *murt. All I can say is that this referring to a plurale tantum as an accidental gap be unusual, but take moslings, meaning "shreds of leather shaved off while dressing skin". It may be the case that no one used the term *mosling for a single shred of shaved-off leather for no other reason than that there was no need to refer to it. Or, perhaps, even while curriers used this singular, no one ever recorded the use. This would make the no-show of this singular in the English lexicon an accidental gap. (BTW, AFAICS, moslings is a dictionary-only word.)  ​‑‑Lambiam 06:16, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Technically or historically, I guess the singular of clothes is "cloth", although it isn't used to refer to a single piece of clothing. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:11, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Middle English, the singular form cloth could be used (like in modern English) as a mass noun meaning "woven fabric" and as a count noun meaning a piece of such fabric, but additionally with the meaning "garment", "the clothes someone is wearing": An al þat werieþ linnene cloþ – And all that wear linnen clothes.^[8] The latter sense of singular cloth was lost in modern English.  ​‑‑Lambiam 13:47, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This archaic 'garment' meaning is preserved as 'clout' (in Scotland, 'cloot') in words like 'breechclout' and in the proverb "Cast ne'er a clout 'til [the] May be out" (meaning 'Don't discard any clothing until the Hawthorn has blossomed'). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 18:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The singular of clothes is garment. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:33, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Clothes" was originally the plural of "cloth", but things evolved.[9] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:05, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does Quebec allow English-language outdoor signage, at least in areas which have large number of English speakers, such as Montreal West, Westmount and Nunavik? And if there can be English street names with French prefixes, such as Rue King, can there also be English street name suffixes such as King Street? Can traffic signs have English text below or even above French text? I once thought that Eastern Townships is just like that, and being English-speaking. --40bus (talk) 05:56, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Google "are there english road signs in quebec" and you'll see that the answer is "Yes and No". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:00, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One can use English (or other languages) on public signs as long as "French is markedly prominent". See here [10] The Eastern Townships (a name that is largely anachronistic by now) have not been majority English-speaking for a long time (see Estrie). And didn't you ask this question before, because I remember providing a similar answer. --Xuxl (talk) 14:30, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can there be English-first public signs, at least in Anglophone-majority areas?

--40bus (talk) 21:49, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. The official language of Quebec is French. See the link I provided above. The exceptions are buildings and sites owned by the Federal Government (e.g. airports) where the signage is bilingual with both languages given equal status, in accordance to the Official Languages Act (Canada). Xuxl (talk) 13:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Has Quebec as a whole ever had English-speaking majority, and could it become such in the future? And are there any bilingual municipalities there? --40bus (talk) 20:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why you are eager to see the disappearance of the French language in Quebec. It has had a majority French population since colonization started with the founding of Quebec City by Samuel de Champlain in 1608. It is still 80% French-speaking today. There have been small pockets where the population was majority English-speaking over time, but these have tended to move around (for example there was once a sizeable English-speaking community in Quebec City itself, but that has largely disappeared). The major source of tension was that the small English-speaking community tended to wield disproportionate political and economic power due to various factors. And lest you think there was some nefarious plot to drive out the English-speakers, you can find a similar but reverse phenomenon in other parts of Canada: for example, both Alberta and Manitoba used to be majority French-speaking. but that has not been the case for a long time. Xuxl (talk) 14:10, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some signs in Quebec have French and Algonquin text.I'm not certain, but I suspect that in 1608 there were more Algonquin speakers in the area than French speakers.  ​‑‑Lambiam 15:33, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At the time, New France was basically Quebec City and a very small area around that. Within a couple of decades, it would expand to most of the St. Lawrence Valley. French was the majority language in the area physically controlled by France. The modern borders of the province are not relevant to that period. Xuxl (talk) 13:44, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The question was about "Quebec as a whole", not "the historical core of Quebec". Also, on the Plancius/van Doetecom map of Nova Francia, published in 1592, the area labeled NOVA FRANCIA is several orders of magnitude larger than the compound with a few hundred settlers that was to become Quebec City.  ​‑‑Lambiam 19:54, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See [11]. 2A00:23C7:2B43:5D01:79B0:19BD:3435:7910 (talk) 15:48, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And for a second opinion, see here. It's not clear cut and there's a lot of politics around the issue. Xuxl (talk) 13:44, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How come people say they "shatter" an ego or "break" a bad habit? Why those specific words? TWOrantula^TM (enter the web) 03:19, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? People are free to choose a more appropriate word, e.g. bruise and deflate an ego, crack or get rid or get out of a habit etc... Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:53, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The verb shatter suggests breaking into pieces; used metaphorically, it implies an utter destruction of something that was (metaphorically) fragile. Note that fragile ego is a common collocation, whereas fragile habit is not a thing. Bad habits are tough. The verb break is preferentially used for a rupture of a continuity, as in the connection was broken or the committee broke for lunch. The notion of a bad habit as something enduring but vanquishable by an interruption makes break a good choice for carrying the message.  ​‑‑Lambiam 09:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:break has under the verb form; "3. (transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to lose spirit or will", so perhaps breaking a habit is similar to breaking a horse? Alansplodge (talk) 11:39, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They're called idioms. Not unlike clichés, they're standard forms of words that get used a lot. Other words are certainly possible but they would tend to mark the speaker as a non-native. For example, a great amount of wealth or a disproportionately large salary are often said to be "obscene", but there's no reason why they couldn't be described as something else. A soft surface might "break" one's fall from a height, but why couldn't it crush or destroy or snap or smash one's fall? They all mean roughly the same thing, but no native speaker would ever say those words in that context. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:31, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It could make sense to say something "brakes" one's fall. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:02, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Side comment: the spelling "brake" (for the device) did not replace "break" until the late 19th century. For example, see this accident report from 1887 where "break" is used consistently. --142.112.221.85 (talk) 06:45, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What route did the driver take to get from Mansion House to Broad Street via Dalston? You can work them both in. On Magic Radio last night Jim Davis asked:

Did you put the Easter egg in the freezer last night to maximise the snap when you broke the chocolate?

2A02:C7C:3764:A900:C0B1:A53B:AF3A:4D58 (talk) 17:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have an LNWR timetable for 1887, but presumably it was the Outer Circle route. And I have no comment on Easter eggs. --142.112.141.35 (talk) 04:24, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]