Talk:black beetle

RFD sense 2013

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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black beetle

rfd-sense X 2:

1. (colloquial) A common name for many species of beetle that are black in color.
2. When capitalized, this name refers to Black Beetle, a fictional character, a comic book supervillain published by DC Comics (cf. other superheroes named Blue Beetle).

The first seems to me to be {{&lit|black|beetle}}. The second shouldn't be at this capitalization and probably not at any capitalization. DCDuring TALK 18:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Terminate with extreme prejudice. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Delete. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 19:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I have speedily deleted the superhero: bad caps, let alone the usual arguments against pop-culture proper nouns. The rest remain for discussion. Equinox ◑ 21:30, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

This may be a pain, but if there are specific species of beetle for which the local common name actually is "black beetle" (such that between two beetles that are black, only one would properly be considered a "black beetle"), then we should have those senses. Of course, this would be particularly applicable with respect to insects that are not actually beetles, or are not actually black. However, absent evidence of such species, I would delete. bd2412 T 04:57, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree conceptually, but I would expect that often we would find that there are definitions that included specific beetle species or genera (or subspecies or subtribes or subgenera etc) to be added, as I added the NZ species. It would be difficult to attest the general phenomenon that you mention and distinguish it from both {{&lit|black|beetle}} the taxonomic definitions. DCDuring TALK 14:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not really a sense of its own, but an umbrella for a number of potential senses. I've added a few species as subsenses that are referred to in Google Books hits without a qualifier. I also removed the translation section for this sense, since each species would have its own translations. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:23, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Including example species names makes the entry richer, but are they best presented as subsenses or as examples of the general phenomenon? Or, do they mislead?

I'm still not sure how to capture the phenomenon that I think BD is referring to. How often does someone referring to a black beetle "really" mean something specific?

This harkens back to dual uses of vernacular name. It seems to both mean a name that is used by normal folk and a name not in scientific Latin (Translingual) that nevertheless is in exact correspondence with a taxonomic name.

One of the items that might be useful for wiktionary to have in the definiens of species that are known to normal (non-scientific), especially rural-living, humans is the geographic range. That would enable us to have some targeted translation requests. If the translation tables are at the level of ambiguous names such as this, I doubt that they will be very useful. We can use the scientific "vernacular name", where it exists, as the site for the translation requests, but I'm not at all sure that such names will be the ones that will best facilitate filling the translation table. Shouldn't the translation tables be at the Translingual entry rather than any corresponding English entry for all species names, not just those that have no exactly corresponding English entry ? DCDuring TALK 16:23, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

For information, Wikipedia recognizes black beetle as a phrase applicable to a number of different species, and distinct from black-beetle: see w:Black Beetle. The issue is not simple, and I think that this page should be kept. Lmaltier (talk) 09:44, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Tentatively keep the "beetle that is black" sense now that it is the parent of a set of subsenses. - -sche (discuss) 04:27, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

• Keep, now that lines have been provided for specific species so designated. bd2412 T 14:02, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Kept. Sense cleared. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)