Talk:boae

RFV discussion: July–September 2022

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boae

Plural of boa. Clearly used in New Latin taxonomy, but not seeing results for this being used as a plural in English of the common noun boa. For example, seaching "boae are" yields nothing, with the only remotely relevant result using it as part of K. boae, which is a type of parasite that lives in the intestinal tracts of snakes. Google Scholar shows the same sort of thing. Theknightwho (talk) 16:41, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I was able to find a lot of similar forms, but not exactly boae. I suppose the capitalized ones are using it as a taxon.

• "Boæ": Mantell (1848), Russell (1801), Gray (1789).
• "boæ": British Critic (1804), Encyclopaedia Americana (1844) (italicized), 1852 (1852)/[1],
• "Boæ" and "boæ": Pliny translation (1848), National Encyclopædia (1879)
• "Boae": Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia (1861)/[2], Hansard (mention)

It could be out there somewhere, if anyone wants to look harder. 98.170.164.88 18:21, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Just after posting this I found one use of the exact form boae: [3] (idk why this is only snippet view, it's apparently from 1810). 98.170.164.88 18:28, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

These are all a bit fuzzy, but IMO mostly translingual or Latin. The translations and discussions of Pliny are referring to a specific type of snake that may or may not be a boa in the modern sense, and in those cases it may be code-switching: using the presumed Latin plural of the Latin term that Pliny used, in order to make it clear that the referant is the thing Pliny called a boa, and not what is called a boa in modern times.

As for the taxonomic uses, those seem to be referring to the genus Boa, or rather the members of that genus. It would more clearly translingual if the other genera such as Python were cited using their Latin plurals, as in the "Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia (1861)" passage, but not the others. Still, I would argue that this is somewhat like "Boidae" in "species of Boidae": embedded in an English sentence, but probably translingual. In the early days of Linnaean taxonomy the distinction between taxonomic nomenclature and just plain Latin wasn't that clear-cut, and educated people mostly knew and used Latin.

As for the specific epithets with that spelling, parasite names are often formed from the genitives of the taxa that they're parasites of- definitely not the nominative plural referred to in the challenged definition. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:40, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

RFV-failed This, that and the other (talk) 05:51, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

• I have added a Translingual entry. DCDuring (talk) 16:37, 15 September 2022 (UTC)