Talk:invocation

RFV discussion: December 2018–January 2019

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invocation

Sense 3: "Enforcement to the implementation & application of a right or liberty of just justification." I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Note that sense 2 already covers a judicial call or summons. Equinox ◑ 17:45, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Our entry seems, erm, dated.

MWOnline has four definitions including: "an act of legal or moral implementation: enforcement". I don't really understand that definition, but it does seem to be in English. The contributor (User:X8BC8x, last contribution: July 2016) was interested in law, especially human rights. This may make more sense to someone familiar with such law and/or with the Napoleonic Code. DCDuring (talk) 21:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm wondering if it might be covered by a missing sense having to do with use as a sort of alternative past participle or gerund of invoke. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:07, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Searching for uses that might shed light on this arcane definition I find numerous cases where “invocation” of a legal rule or right apparently means appealing to that rule or right in the course of an argument or presentation before a court or other body. Like when someone invokes the right to remain silent, it is an invocation of the Fifth. Might that be the intention here? This sense is not covered by any of the other current senses.  --Lambiam 01:39, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

That could be covered by generalizing our first sense and making the religious use an "especially". Does anyone understand the sense of implementation in the MW definition above? That definition strongly reminded me of the definition being challenged, partially because of the use of implmentation. DCDuring (talk) 04:55, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree that there is a relationship with sense #1, and that the commonality can be defined as “an act of appealing to a higher power”. I strongly suspect, though, that the current sense #1 is the original one, in which the higher power is a supernatural entity, and that the sense of appealing to legal or moral rights is the result a later generalization. French has an idiom sous l’invocation de which means so much as “under the protection of”, usually under the protection of some specified saint. Le Trésor notes that an extension to human rights such as égalité and fraternité is by analogy with the religious sense. As to the occurrence of implementation in some definitions, the sense of implementation in this context may be essentially the same as given on Wikipedia in the “industry-specific definition” of the term for political science, namely, “the carrying out of public policy”. Community standards, whether set by the law or by custom and sense of morality, need to be maintained by some process of enforcement, or they will dissipate. Enforcement needs a justification, and that justification is then an appeal to (invocation of) the standards being enforced.  --Lambiam 10:29, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with what Lambiam said. I think we are missing the basic sense of "an act of invoking something", and that the torturous sense 3 is just a specific instance of the act of "appeal[ing] for validation to a (notably cited) authority" (invoke, sense 2). — SGconlaw (talk) 05:58, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

See also my comment above. Indeed, not only tortuous but even most tortulous. French invoquer has a similar range of meanings as English invoke. Also for this word, Le Trésor gives the appeal to supernatural higher powers as the original one, and the others as derived by analogy or extension.  --Lambiam 10:29, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Good points. As a historical dictionary we should have a separate definition if a given definition was historically limited in its application. (Ideal would be having {{defdate}} information that allowed a user to see what senses a word could have had at a particular time.)

Is such limitation actually true of invocation? That invocatio was apparently so limited (ie, to the gods) is supportive, but not conclusive. DCDuring (talk) 14:34, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Had a look at OED Online. The entry has not been updated (1900), and is just as out of date as ours. It lists four senses which are, briefly: (1) an act of invoking or calling upon (God, a deity, etc.) in prayer or attestation; (2) a form of invocatory prayer during a religious service; (3) an act of conjuring or summoning a devil or spirit by incantation; (4) in admiralty prize procedure, the calling in of evidence or papers from another case. On the other hand, the more up-to-date Oxford Dictionaries Online includes the "act of invoking something" sense which I mentioned earlier. — SGconlaw (talk) 15:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Good old facts. Thanks. I still wish someone could explain the MW definition I gave above, which they apparently thought different from "act of invoking (something)".

I am legally trained, but the definition is not clear to me (particularly the reference to "moral implementation"). My understanding of invocation in the legal context is the act of relying on some authority (for example, a statutory provision, a legal rule, a contractual clause, etc.) in support of one's position. I'm not sure whether I would describe this as "implementation" or "enforcement". — SGconlaw (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

MWOnline also has as one of their 6 definitions of invoke: "to put into effect or operation: implement" DCDuring (talk) 17:20, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

We have a computing sense ('invoke a subroutine') that seems like a specialization of the MWOnline sense. DCDuring (talk) 17:23, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Apparently in law, at least for judges, and in computing, invocation is tantamount to implementation. DCDuring (talk) 17:42, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In computing, an implementation is a computer program – or system of cooperating programs – created by software engineers/programmers/coders. The activity of creating an implementation (countable) may itself be called “implementation” (uncountable). Usex: We need to hire qualified personnel for the implementation of the new algorithm. On the other hand, invocations are actions performed by the running code (and by metonymy, the snippets of code responsible for such invocations may also be called invocations, in the same way that the formula 239 × 4649 denoting a multiplication may itself be called a multiplication). Usex: This was the last invocation before the fatal exception was raised.  --Lambiam 19:05, December 8, 2018 (UTC)

Yes. To be devil's advocate: it's even possible to (try to) invoke something that hasn't been implemented (e.g. a pure virtual function call), which would usually crash the software. Equinox ◑ 19:19, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Precisely. That’s what triggered the fatal exception.  --Lambiam 23:05, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, Webopedia has "Invocation means the execution of a program or function." which fits my (remote) understanding. I thought that a programmer can say that his program had several invocations of a subroutine, referring to the instances in the code that call the subroutine. But at the execution of the program each instance (eg, inside a loop) of (called) execution of the subroutine would also be an invocation.

But MWOnline's definition (of invoke "to put into effect or operation: implement") is not restricted to computing. The challenged definition seems to be related to this. Consistent with this definition of invoke is MWOnline's definition of invocation ("an act of legal or moral implementation: enforcement") is consistent with their definition of invoke.

I am unfamiliar with such usage and have yet to find another dictionary with the definition. Does anyone have any good ideas about how to search for the usage? DCDuring (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

I have reworded the definition to simplify it and cited it. Kiwima (talk) 06:47, 10 January 2019 (UTC) RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 20:57, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions for translations

to German: invocation [1] = de:Anrufung, invocation [4] = Funktionsaufruf (as it is used in de Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funktion_(Programmierung) ), Prozeduraufruf. Please check carefully whether I am right. --Himbeerbläuling (talk) 18:19, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

In some of the meanings subsumed under [2], the German translations may be de:Vorladung or de:Einbestellung or de:Ladung [4], see de Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladung_(Recht) . --Himbeerbläuling (talk) 18:44, 6 March 2022 (UTC)