Category talk:English terms suffixed with -est

RFD discussion: May 2019–February 2023

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Category:English terms suffixed with -est

Category:English terms suffixed with -eth

This contains non-lemmas, and we do not categorise nonlemmas by etymology. Compare Category:English terms suffixed with -s, which does not contain all plurals and third-person singular forms, and Category:English terms suffixed with -er, which does not contain all comparatives. —Rua (mew) 19:34, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Delete. It's not really accurate to say they're suffixed anyway. Ultimateria (talk) 21:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC) Update: see below. Ultimateria (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

@Ultimateria: oh? Do explain – I’m intrigued. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:56, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I believe the point I wanted to make but failed to elaborate was that if we're not going to provide etymologies for most non-lemma forms, it doesn't make sense to categorize them by etymology. Ultimateria (talk) 06:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ultimateria: righto. — SGconlaw (talk) 07:47, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

As an aside, the Category:English terms suffixed with -s category mentioned above also has some simple plurals in it which need to be gone over, if they are not supposed to be there... - -sche (discuss) 23:37, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: a bot has created “Category:English terms suffixed with -s (regular plural)” … — SGconlaw (talk) 04:54, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I guess if the -eth and -est categories fail, that one should also be RFDed. - -sche (discuss) 00:22, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Particularly weird is oxes, which was categorized as having the regular plural '-s', but it doesn't: historically it comes whole from Middle English, and by surface analysis in has '-es'... truly, Category:English terms suffixed with -s (regular plural) is odd... - -sche (discuss) 20:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

No opinion - but I would like to see Category:English plurals not ending in s, now that would be useful for both newbies and veterans of the language. Cheers! Facts707 (talk) 04:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Facts707: we have “Category:English irregular plurals”. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:52, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks SGconlaw! I wonder why I have't come across this before. Can you set me straight though - these are plurals of English words that don't make a "regular" plural? So plurals ending in ... would be a different category? Also it seems there are a lot of terms that are in both e.g. "Category:English irregular plurals ending in "-i"" and in the base category “Category:English irregular plurals” such as abaci and abaculi. Is this intended? Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 05:34, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Facts707: Note that this category (and its subcategories) are very incomplete (hundreds are missing) as they have to added manually. J3133 (talk) 05:41, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that the template for creating irregular plural forms dumps all of them into the parent category. What is needed is an "ending=" parameter for that template to indicate specific common irregular ending cases, and categorize terms accordingly. bd2412 T 03:23, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Note: I have proposed this at Template talk:en-irregular plural of#Add a parameter to subcategorize?. bd2412 T 03:36, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

• Keep but depopulate of all nonlemma forms, keeping only things like shooketh, which is using the suffix not in its canonical grammatical function but as a humorous archaicism. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:22, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

  Also keep for ordinal numbers like thirtieth. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:34, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• I'm changing my vote to depopulate per Mahagaja; the categories aren't limited to inflected forms. Ultimateria (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
• Keep but remove non-lemmas per Mahāgaja. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 19:23, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
• RFD kept, pending depopulation. Ultimateria (talk) 01:16, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

@Surjection Could you remove non-lemma etymologies from pages in these categories? Ultimateria (talk) 20:20, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Is that the consensus decision for this vote? It should be closed first IMO before taking action. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 20:30, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

@Surjection: It's a small but unanimous consensus, and it's unlikely that anyone will add to it. Also, removing etymologies from regular non-lemmas is, I believe, already seen as uncontroversial. I'm only referring to the most straightforward cases, like holdeth. But you're right about the process, I've closed it. Ultimateria (talk) 01:16, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, I'll look into doing a bot job. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 06:45, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

• It appears this successfully removed non-lemmas from both categories (except one I did manually). — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 05:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The categories still have the RFD templates in place, which they shouldn't if this is closed. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

• The templates have since been removed. — excarnateSojourner (talk · contrib) 05:33, 16 February 2023 (UTC)