Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 May 19

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May 19

Thomas à Kempis

There appears to be an unresolved naming dispute on the talk page stretching back 15 years, having gone through multiple page move discussions. There’s also an unreferenced description of the dispute in the current lead section:

His name means "Thomas of Kempen", Kempen being his home town. While the form Thomas à Kempis (with a faux-French accent on the à) is often found, it is actually incorrect. The correct Latin should be Thomas a Kempis (... from Kempen), as borne out by surviving contemporary mentions of his name.

Given that his common name is Thomas à Kempis, the page title appears to be stable for now. However, is the unsourced bit up above correct, and if so, should it be in the lead section or a footnote instead? Viriditas (talk) 00:10, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Why do you call it "unresolved"? There was a 2005 Requested move discussion at the top of the talk page, with sensible arguments on both sides, which ended up in favor of the à, and a shorter 2021 RM which reaffirmed the consensus from the first. The à apparently comes from an obsolete Latin form, but was preserved in his English moniker.
I'm going to remove that passage from the lead – while a sourced sentence or two would certainly be welcome, it's completely inappropriate per WP:WEIGHT. No such user (talk) 10:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. I referred to it as unresolved because the requested moves keep coming, with the last one in 2021 per the talk page. Viriditas (talk) 10:48, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Twice in 16 years is not "keeping coming". --Jayron32 11:39, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. It appears I have a tendency to exaggerate unnecessarily. I will work on that. Viriditas (talk) 08:06, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

A similar affectacious "à" sometimes appears in Thomas à Becket, which was certainly his common name when I went to school. We were misinformed. Alansplodge (talk) 14:32, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

These sorts of affectations are common throughout history; often reflecting whatever, at the time, it was culturally or politically favorable for the person in question, or for later historians, to align with. You get things like Robert the Bruce who's name was actually Robert de Brus; the Anglo-Norman nature of his ancestry being inconvenient to highlight while trying to establish himself as legitimate King of Scotland in opposition to the overlordship of England.--Jayron32 15:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I have added a referenced sentence at Thomas à Kempis#Life which I hope is helpful. Alansplodge (talk) 15:14, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I think it is not an affectation, but an issue of Latin orthography. I you take a look at this late 17th-century edition of De Imitatione Christi, you'll see that à is not only used in the name of the presumptive author, but in all occurrences in the text of the book of the Latin preposition a, an apocopic form of ab. Similarly, è is used for e, an apocopic form of ex. Likewise in this early 18th-century edition. The accent does not denote an elision, though; it basically means these are long vowels, which modern scholars would denote by ā and ē. Compare the form form verò seen here, and see also porrò on Wiktionary. Later authors may have copied the old-fashioned form used in these texts for the author's name while not understanding its intention. For example, this concordance uses à in à Kempis, but just a everywhere else; to indicate vowel lengths it uses macrons and breves.  --Lambiam 20:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

All we need now is a reference to support that. Alansplodge (talk) 09:19, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Inevitably, Apex (diacritic). Oh but that's acute, not grave. wikt:a#Latin mentions the grave accent, but Wiktionary doesn't do references. Here's a page about accents in Latin from Distributed Proofreaders, which gives a different reason for à to mean ab.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:12, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Weird symbol on Ancient Egypt-related articles

On my iPhone 8, I see a symbol on some articles related to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This symbol is not a hieroglyphic itself, but a rectangle consisting of six horizontal lines stacked on top of each other. What can I do in order to see the symbol that’s actually there? Primal Groudon (talk) 03:35, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Get a better phone? --Viennese Waltz 07:53, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Can you see all the the hieroglyphs at Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Unicode block)? I'm assuming not, and that the default Apple fonts therefore don't cover them fully, and that the solution is to install a font that does, raising further questions like which font and how. I wouldn't be surprised though if the problematic glyphs are outside of that set, because who makes a half-assed hieroglyphic font that covers nearly all the unicode block but misses some out? Help:Special characters suggests a font called Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs, anyway.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:08, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Is waxen a real word?

As you may know, yesterday's Wordle answer was WAXEN. It's not a word that I know, though it looks like something I would've come across from time to time. Is it more like a Scrabble word or am I just missing something in my vocabulary? Thank you. 74.64.73.24 (talk) 12:30, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that these days, you are more likely to come across it in poetry than anything else, though it is a real word:

Till swollen with cunning of a self-conceit,

His waxen wings did mount above his reach,

And, melting, heavens conspired his overthrow

From Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe

Such poets probably used 'flaxen' too... AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:57, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

"Waxen" can be an adjective meaning "made of wax" (as in "a waxen image") or, less commonly, a verb meaning "to grow in size" (cf. "a waxing moon"). See wikt:waxen. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Wiktionary also has a list of 76 similar -en words. You're probably comfortable with the existence of wooden? I see that one of them, linen, became the noun (it means "made of line", a name for flax). Golden is in use a lot, yet silvern isn't at all. Treen is used by antique dealers, and dwarven has some currency in Tolkein-related circles.  Card Zero  (talk) 13:30, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

A more recent example than Marlowe (d. 1593, allegedly in a pub fight):

"In a pool of sun old Dan lay. His face was transparent white and waxen, and heavy black veins puffed out on his cheeks."

John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle [1] (1936).

Alansplodge (talk) 14:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

And even more recent...

"Harry saw Bellatrix bearing down upon the werewolf, the sword of Gryffindor gripped tightly in her hand, her face waxen".

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [2] (2007)

Almost all the modern uses that I found seem to be exlusively a metaphorical description of people's skin. Alansplodge (talk) 14:25, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

From the title song from Hair: "Gimme a head with hair / Long, beautiful hair / Shining, gleaming / Streaming, flaxen, waxen..." --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:38, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

D'oh! Proved wrong again! Alansplodge (talk) 14:40, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

So, a pomade?  Card Zero  (talk) 14:43, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, every list of solutions to Wordle that I can find lists yesterday's word as scour, which accords with my memory. I certainly haven't used waxen as a solution in the NY Times Wordle.--Phil Holmes (talk) 14:41, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I was beginning to doubt my memory. It wasn't WAXEN today either, but I'm not telling. Alansplodge (talk) 15:25, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm guessing the OP was visiting a Wordle clone; there seem to be a lot about now. Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

My mistake. It was from yesterday's Octordle. 74.64.73.24 (talk) 00:14, 20 May 2022 (UTC)