Language desk
< February 3	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 4

Etymologically isolated native words

Is there a term for any language's words whose etymology hasn't been definitely traced to any language family (and possibly invented natively rather than by borrowing)? E.g. Russian угрюмый - grim (according to my etymological dictionary, lacks equivalents in other Slavic and Indo-European languages). Brandmeister^talk 11:16, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary has a category English terms with unknown etymologies, but does not seem to use a particular term for such words. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:24, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By no means is the English noun almond an etymological isolate. It can be traced to Middle English to Old French to Latin to Ancient Greek ἀμυγδάλη (amugdálē). There the trail ends. Yet is included in this Wiktionary category, which is apparently much wider. --Lambiam 21:47, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Almond? Tell Wiktionary the trail goes straight through Greece, and doesn't end until Sumer. https://imgur.com/a/ntQz8lf https://imgur.com/5XxXdcq ^[1] Sumerian ama.gal, "Big Mama." Or more traditionally, "Great Mother." ^[2] Temerarius (talk) 01:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC) Temerarius (talk) 01:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are neologisms, but they tend by their nature to be quite new, even if the creation might have been similar. "Paelologisms" or "paeloneologisms" might possibly feel confusing. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Lieberman, Stephen J. (1977). The Sumerian Loanwords in Old-Babylonian Akkadian. Brill. ISBN 978-0-89130-122-6.
^ Taylor, Joan E. (1995). "The Asherah, the Menorah and the Sacred Tree". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 20 (66). SAGE Publications: 29–54. doi:10.1177/030908929502006602. ISSN 0309-0892.

Median, mean, and average

We all know the difference between median and mean. Median refers to the middle and mean refers to the total divided by the number of items.

I'm searching for Internet sites talking about the third word here, average. Specifically, sites that say that it is incorrect to say:

The average Wikipedian makes 20 edits per day.

and that we must say:

Wikipedians make an average of 20 edits per day.

More generally the rule is that average must refer to the quantity and not the person. I don't know what the best search terms are here. Georgia guy (talk) 19:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Wiktionary entry for the adjective average lists various senses, one of which is illustrated by the sentence, The average family will not need the more expensive features of this product. Wiktionary is descriptive and this is a common use of the term. You're looking for a prescriptivist site in which some self-appointed language czar pronounces their edicts. --Lambiam 21:36, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I gather you're just looking for a reference that takes this position, regardless of whether it's a good rule to follow. That seems like a fair question. Here's one book that advocates only using "average" for things that can be numerically averaged: [1]. --Amble (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Average" is an umbrella term. In high school, they taught us that there are three important types of averages: mean, median, and mode. In a perfect bell curve, they are all the same value. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It also has a specialised meaning. If you insure your house against fire, for example, and you underinsure and your policy has an "average" clause, what happens is this:

Total value of house (say) 500,000 pounds

Sum insured 375,000 pounds

Value of loss or damage 1,000 pounds

Amount you get paid 1000 x (375 000/500 000) = 750 pounds. 2A00:23D0:50F:2A01:5149:B933:296F:2903 (talk) 16:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And sometimes the specialized meanings can give rise to strange terms like mean average precision. --Amble (talk) 17:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Steinesque

In a review of Georgia O'Keeffe's art exhibition in 1940, Time magazine wrote the following:

Critics agreed that Georgia O'Keeffe was still tops among U. S. woman painters, mused over her Steinesque catalogue note: "If my painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me, I may say that these paintings are what I have to give at present for what three months in Hawaii gave to me.""Pineapple for Papaya". Time. 35 (7): 42. February 12, 1940.

There's no indication in the linked article as to what "Steinesque" refers to here. Could it be Leo Stein, Gertrude Stein, or someone else? Viriditas (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Gertrude Stein is the likeliest referent: she was both active an as art collector, and as as poet was renowned for perplexing (some would have said nonsensical) poetic utterances, hence the limerick:

"A wonderful family is Stein,

There's Ep and there's Gert, and there's Ein,

Ep's sculpture is junk,

Gert's poetry's bunk,

And nobody understands Ein."

{The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.208.215 (talk) 22:03, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. It's still confusing to me since O'Keeffe wasn't really being "Steinesque", and was known for being a very straight forward, matter of fact, kind of person. Also, the review is written somewhat oddly, as if the writer were drunk when they composed it. Viriditas (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1) The particular sentence by O'Keeffe which is quoted there resembles many of Stein's in being kind of flat and loose-jointed and favoring parataxis. See further Gertrude Stein#Literary style.

2) In its early years, Time magazine often used a kind of distinctive conventionalized journalese, summed up by the parody quote "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind". You can read a little more about it here... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's incredibly helpful and explains a good deal of my confusion. As you may or may not know, in addition to being an artist, O'Keeffe relied on her own unique writing style which favored dashes instead of commas. Jennifer Saville described it as a "stream-of-consciousness style of phrases and dashes". My guess is that the catalogue note was revised from her style, but I haven't had a chance to look at the original just yet. In her own style, it would have read like this: "If my painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me—I may say that these paintings are what I have to give at present for what three months in Hawaii gave to me." Viriditas (talk) 00:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My wife and I were fortunate enough in 2011 to see a comprehensive exhibition of the life and works of Gertude Stein at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. You can read a detailed description here. Stein was a fascinating and often infuriating figure, especially when you look into her activities in France during the German occupation. We also visited the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe in 2008. Highly recommended. As for the Time quote, it may be a riff on Stein's enigmatic and often misunderstood "there's no there there" quote, describing her childhood neighborhood in Oakland, California. Cullen328 (talk) 00:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"often infuriating figure, especially when you look into her activities in France during the German occupation". As a Jew she should have been rescued during the War. As a collaborator she should have been hanged after it. DuncanHill (talk) 00:34, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's surprising how common support for strongmen, fascists, and authoritarians was among writers and artists in the 1930s, presumably before the extent of their behavior was more widely known to the public. Although I never added it to her biography, Ella Young is a good example. She supported Stalin and Hitler in private, and talked about her desire for a dictatorship, very similar to how the far right in the US talks about it today. It's been a while since I went back and reviewed the sources, but I do remember that Gavin Arthur tried to make Ella Young see reason on this, but IIRC, she was quite stubborn and unwilling to change her mind. Viriditas (talk) 00:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Funny how none of the people clamoring for a dictatorship ever give any thought to the possibility that they would wind up on the bad side of the dictator. Or that they might be in the way of the guy who wants to become the next dictator. They just never seem to learn that the leopards don't really care whose faces they are eating.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:16, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I read an article about this a while ago. It proposed that the reason some people think like this is because it allows them to delegate tasks and responsibility to others. They might be lazy thinkers or just unwilling to think deeply about consequences. The article also said that they liked the idea of a strongman that could cut through bureaucracy (and laws) and "get things done". It's basically a fantasy they have about how government should work. They believe there is too much talk and not enough action. What they don't consider, is that they are being told what they want to hear, and that when the authoritarian comes to power, they often turn on their supporters through a series of endless purity tests that weeds out anyone who is perceived as disloyal to the leader. It's a nightmarish scenario that they don't really think about. There's a disconnect between what they think should happen and what often does. It's hard for them to bridge that gap. I see it as part of a larger phenomenon related to a long-term thinking deficit we see in the business community, but that's my own pet theory, and I don't think others have written about it. Viriditas (talk) 20:36, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The dash thing may just be a little old fashioned -- in Victorian times, there was a well-known discrepancy between people using dashes in place of much other punctuation in letters and hand-written manuscripts, while printers would usually clean up many such dashes (substituting more formal punctuation marks) if these manuscripts came to be published. AnonMoos (talk) 01:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you; super interesting. Viriditas (talk) 03:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[Lieberman_1977_p.-1] Lieberman, Stephen J. (1977). The Sumerian Loanwords in Old-Babylonian Akkadian. Brill. ISBN 978-0-89130-122-6.

[Taylor_1995_pp._29–54-2] Taylor, Joan E. (1995). "The Asherah, the Menorah and the Sacred Tree". Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. 20 (66). SAGE Publications: 29–54. doi:10.1177/030908929502006602. ISSN 0309-0892.

[1]

[2]