Talk:ager

Ager in French

According to my research, this word belongs to the very modern and specialized vocabulary of the medieval historians and geographers, and is not recorded in the TLF (I did not find it).Nortmannus (talk) 16:54, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Nortmannus: Yes, I'm not convinced either. It's definitely found in the historical discourse ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], etc., etc.) but it's always italicised so it seems to be an instance of code-switching/quotation of a Latin word, not a real French term. I'm probably going to RFV it. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 17:05, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: Good, the French wiktionnaire cites two sentences that seem to be modern, probably borrowed from historians and geographers, unfortunately without any date or author or book. Too bad. Regards.Nortmannus (talk) 17:36, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2017–February 2020

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ager

Not a French word; always found italicised in historical discourse, as far as I can tell. A few examples: [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. I'm looking for non-italicised instances. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 21:38, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Hmm, do we not count italicized instances? I'm inclined to say we should, for the simple reason that a user might come across the word in a French context and want to know what it means. Sometimes italicization is used like quotes (e.g. "An oriented curve is said to be simple if such and such"), but these authors seem to italicize compulsorily, but otherwise use the word normally (and mostly as part of fixed expressions like ager vectigalis and ager publicus, but that's a different story). Are you worried about extreme duplication?__Gamren (talk) 19:51, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

@Gamren: I don't know; I think italicisation should count for something, but it's not necessarily prohibitive either. User:Sgconlaw has summed up my position pretty well here.

In the present case however, I've no doubt the French section should be deleted; and if non-italicised instances do exist (which remains to be seen), I'm not sure I would even want to count them as valid. The reader is reading a book about ancient Rome; don't you think he'll naturally assume there's some Latin in there? Won't he spontaneously look in a Latin dictionary rather than a French one? Imo, thinking otherwise is treating people like idiots, and it ultimately makes us look like fools. Per utramque cavernam 20:39, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Deleted, no valid quotes provided after more than two years. Canonicalization (talk) 09:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)