Wiktionary

Wiktionary is a free, online dictionary that most internet-connected adults can contribute to. I have a user page there because I edit Wiktionary, but saving random, funny things you find on your user page is not quite within the guidelines, so I save them here instead.

Quotes

how does the first cousin marriage work? are there risks involved with the kids if cousins marry. For example marrying mother's sister's daughter?

—An anonymous user (12.47.208.50) in 2006 on the discussion page for first cousin. The user may have been suggesting the entry should contain this information (rather than asking because they actually wanted to know the answer), but even then it would be encyclopedic information which Wiktionary is not meant to contain. This discussion page was (un)fortunately deleted after I linked to it in a discussion regarding another discussion page.

We don't need a new namespace, Dave. WF can only mean one thing here.

—Genecioso in 2018 on Requests for moves, mergers and splits. "WF" refers to Wonderfool, a notorious editor.

It begs the question: How much wood would a woodswallow swallow if a woodswallow swallowed wood?

— Notusbutthem (believed to be Wonderfool) in 2022 on the discussion page for woodswallow.

Boston Mess became named Boston Mess when an anonymous juggler who had practiced the trick (he called it skyscrapers) demonstrated it in Harvard Yard on July 5, 1988, and said that it was called Boston Mess. I know this because it was me.

— An anonymous user (2605:A601:AC15:7600:711A:4304:6196:7665) in 2022 on the discussion page for Boston Mess.

I've somehow always overlooked this page. I don't think I've ever even been here before. I now notice it's in the bar at the top, but I guess I just always skimmed over it.

— Alexis Jazz (who went by W3ird N3rd at the time) in 2017 regarding Requests for moves, mergers and splits (RFM) on that very page. I think this RFM-blindness is somewhat pervasive among editors of the English Wiktionary, contributing to the staleness of many open RFM discussions.

farewell, imp-pole, may you be the name of a thrash metal band one day

— Wonderfool (as Skisckis) in an edit summary about an hour after the deletion of the entry imp-pole.

See also

• Wiktionary:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

Superlatives

• The longest discussion ever: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified Serbo-Croatian

  I searched (using a Python script) for level 2 sections in all talk namespaces and in projectspace (the Wiktionary: namespace), manually excluding projectspace pages that were not discussion pages.

  I've learned that because of history and politics the classification of Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin as one language (Serbo-Croatian) or multiple is controversial. The Wiktionary vote failed due to a lack of consensus, meaning editors continued to treat them as multiple languages. Wikipedia, however, says they are four "standard varieties" which are all based on a single subdialect of the one language Serbo-Croatian.

• English term with multiple etymology sections that has the longest spelling: lash oneself to the mast.

See also

• Wiktionary:Statistics

Collective nouns

A collective noun is a term for a collection of a particular type of thing, like pride in "a pride of lions".

Wiktionary had three different lists of collective nouns, so I combined them. But the lists included many terms that were very unlikely to actually be used outside of trivia, and would still be very esoteric even if they were. These are a few of the least believable ones I found.

• a tabernacle of bakers

• a holiness of donuts

• A swirl of paisleys

• A malapertness of peddlers

Last significant modification on 2023-06-19.

Created on 2022-09-21.