The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.
Are there any spelling differences where Canadian and Australian English universally use American spelling?
Are there any words where ⟨sce⟩ and ⟨sci⟩ are pronounced as /ske/ and /ski/?
Does English use "one and half" to refer to 1.5, or 1 1⁄2? Such as "one and half" hours for 90 minutes, "one and half years" for 18 months, or "one and half days" for 36 hours? --40bus (talk) 06:38, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a BrE speaker, I would more often say "an hour and a half" (etc.) for units of time. If making several measurement of dimensions, "one and a half inches" (etc.) would be routine, but I might still prefer "an inch and a half" if mentioning a single measurement. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:01, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
40bus, confirming that "one and half" is not colloquial English: it is always "one and a half".As an NA-English speaker, I usually use (and hear used) a unit and a half, but two+ and a half units. Prose fractions where the numerator is greater (like 3⁄2) are rare; I've seen them only in recipes where the batch size / yield has been increased from the original (I realise this is not in scope of the original question; nor, on reflection, prose). Folly Mox (talk) 14:21, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We do also say one point five, if that was part of the question, but one and a half is significantly more common in spoken NA-English. Folly Mox (talk) 14:24, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re #2: TIL from Merriam-Webster that scedasticity and derivatives are apparently not supposed to be pronounced with /sk/ as I always thought, even though it's borrowed from Ancient Greek σκεδαστικός which has a kappa there. Nonetheless the pronunciation with /k/ still seems common (twoexamples), so I still feel free to give that as an example for ⟨sce⟩. Double sharp (talk) 08:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Old Science Fiction fans like myself (bear with me, this gets relevant eventually) like to abbreviate it as "SF" (i.e. "Ess-eff"). Decades ago, the sf fan and humorist Forrest J Ackerman coined the term "Sci-fi" ("Sigh-fie") as a pun on Hi-fi (High fidelity), which was quickly taken up by jounalists and others not part of the SF community (it became a shibboleth we used to spot lurking journalists at SF Conventions), but was applied by those within it specifically to badly written TV and Film works that used superficial science-fictional trimmings but lacked any attempts at scientific plausibility. Years later, some in the SF community started to pronounce Sci-fi as "Skiffy" when talking about SF in an ironic and/or self-deprecating manner. A somewhat niche example of 40bus's #2. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 09:17, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. I'd say that "program" is pretty standard in the parts of Canada in which I've resided. However, we still mostly use "ou" rather than "o" (e.g. honour). Clarityfiend (talk) 02:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! So, I have a doubt about something called the ‘desolate case’. As per what I know (from ChatGPT and my linguist friends) this case is either used in languages like Abkhaz, or is a hypothetical case. ChatGPT told me that it indicates that a noun is in a state of abandonment, desolation, chaos, anarchy, physical/emotional emptiness, loneliness and other things. My linguist friends said that it could be hypothetical, or used in conlangs. When I asked GeminiAI, it said that it is used in Udi and Abkhaz. I added this case to ‘List of Grammatical Cases’ but User Danyunsik told me about it. I hope you can clarify this doubt. Thank you! Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 15:34, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A grammatical case indicates that a constituent noun phrase is used in one of a restricted set of grammatical functions. For example, in the Turkish sentence avcıyı öldürdü domuz we see the noun phrases avcıyı ("hunter") and domuz ("swine") separated by the verb form öldürdü ("killed"). Translated word by word, we'd get "the hunter killed the swine". But the suffix -yı tells us that the first word is in the accusative case, meaning it is the object of the sentence, so the actual meaning is that the swine killed the poor hunter. If it had been the other way, it could be reported as avcı domuzu öldürdü. The same case-based grammatical analysis holds for the Latin sentence venatorem occidit sus.
Indicating the state something is in is not a grammatical function. In many languages the state of something being sweet and cute is indicated by a hypocoristic suffix, like Turkish -cik. To this suffix, case endings can be added to indicate the grammatical function of a noun phrase, like avcı domuzcuğu öldürdü: "the hunter killed the little swine". The word order could also be domuzcuğu öldürdü avcı; the case endings reveal the roles of the actors in this drama.
Just for this reason alone – being desolate is not a grammatical function – it appears that the curious case of the desolate case is a made-up story. --Lambiam18:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except for the minor issue that being desolate, not being a grammatical function, cannot be indicated by a grammatical case in any language, whether natural or constructed, as I tried to explain. --Lambiam06:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AI chatbots are not reliable sources for Wikipedia. They don't contain facts, they contain probable combinations of words (so they don't know in a strict data tagging sense that the tallest building is the Burj Khalifa, but they do know that there's a very high chance that the sentence "The tallest building is" ends "the Burj Khalifa") - if you ask a question about something that doesn't actually exist in its training data (as the desolate case seems to be), it won't be able to say "This doesn't exist". Instead it will just slam words together according to those probabilities until it produces a sentence that it thinks make sense. ChatGPT knows how people talk about grammatical cases in general, so it can just take those sentences and swap the word "desolate" in without a desolate case actually existing. See AI hallucination for more details. Smurrayinchester08:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, I asked my linguist friends, and they said that they pranked me. It’s a FAKE ‘CASE’. I’m so very sorry for wasting both of your time. Do accept this apology. Long-live-ALOPUS (talk) 13:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You can find many instances of the phrase "desolate case", simply meaning a very unfortunate situation. It appears in books, newspaper articles, etc. ChatGPT or similar will happily take this existing phrase out of context and elaborate on it as a grammatical case. I'm sure the source data sets contain sentences along the lines of "the X case is a rare grammatical case found in the Abkhaz language". The model will take that as a template and run with it to make up plausible-sounding details as needed. --Amble (talk) 17:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One feature in the historical development of the Japanese language is the contraction of certain vowel combinations (typically ones where the second vowel is u) into long vowels. For example, the au sequence became a long o sound. However, there are some situations where this did not happen. For example, the verb 会う/あう (au) meaning “meet” did not become おう/ō. Likewise, 買う (かう/kau, “buy”) did not become こう/kō. The au phoneme sequence in the given name of the Ashikaga shogunate’s founder also did not contract to ō. Another category of seemingly inconsistent sound changing is for some godan verbs whose conjunctive (i-stem plus -te/て) and past (i-stem plus -ta/た) forms underwent some changes that resulted in something different from their normal stems, whereas the form that conveys the idea of wanting to do something (i-stem plus -tai/たい) did not. For example, the way to say “want to read” takes the normal stem of 読む and thus comes out as 読みたい and not 読んだい, whereas the conjunctive (読んで) and past (読んだ) use an altered stem appearance. If all three involve the stem and the T-sound, why would two of them exhibit this change while one doesn’t? Primal Groudon (talk) 03:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Primal Groudon, the answer to every historical negative in linguistic development is unknowable— or, if you prefer, "just cuz". Concerted effort by a number of regulars at this venue seems to have broken the habit one prolific querant used to have of asking this genre of question. That experience is likely why no one has bothered to respond to this thread over the past four days. Folly Mox (talk) 14:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rudolf Koch has a brief discussion in his Book of Signs. Some of them, such as Aquarius, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini, are fairly obvious (self-evident). By the way, I'm not sure that "etymology" is the best word to use in this context... AnonMoos (talk) 09:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In an issue of The Churchman from June 2, 1900, we see:
I call the little one the "rainbow baby" because he lives in the midst of all those bright cambric colors.[4]
And in a book from 1910, we find about a child named Iris:
I recollect so well poor old Father telling me that it meant 'Rainbow.' We always called it 'the rainbow baby.'[5]
And as late as 2000, we see this:
In fact "rainbow baby" is a term used to describe racially mixed children, particularly those of black and white heritage.[6]
Uses in this sense of having mixed racial ancestry are found until around this time. The current sense therefore almost certainly became common only this century. --Lambiam07:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. That answer was actually as to any normal words beginning with /ʊ/ exist in English, but of course if none occur at all, then obviously none occur with a particular spelling. AnonMoos (talk) 19:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In dialects that don't have the FOOT-STRUT split (i.e. Northern England English), almost all words starting u use /ʊ/ (any that in standard dialects would be /ʌ/). Most stereotypically, the word "up" - "It's grim oop north" as the saying goes - but it's also how the Yorkshire side of my family would pronounce "umbrella" or "unreasonable", for instance. Smurrayinchester09:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed an oddity at Talk:Parade (magazine)#Marriage. An IP user asked (with no antecedent anywhere, and a question mark missing): "Did she marry Leonardo DiCaprio". This appears to be a question placed on the wrong page. Yet even though I have no idea who the writer was referring to by "she", the answer must be "no", since Leonardo DiCaprio has never been married. Is there some kind of linguistic term for this phenomenon -- a question which can be answered despite a missing antecedent? --Metropolitan90(talk)01:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You only think it's answerable because you felt your understanding/definition of what was meant by "Leonardo DiCaprio" was solid enough to answer. My point is simply that there's not necessarily a defined amount of antecedental knowledge required to answer many questions. It's not a yes/no situation where you either have it or you don't. Matt Deres (talk) 16:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's just syllogism: if no woman has been married to Leonardo DiCaprio, then "she" – a specific, albeit unidentified, woman – has not been married to Leonardo DiCaprio. --Theurgist (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The OP is not asking why we can answer this specific question, but about a name for a kind of question, like there is the term "rhetorical question". An unanswerable question may be called a "conundrum". A question that is its own answer could be called an "autological question". Most questions with an unresolved referent need resolution before they can be answered, even granted sufficient knowledge about all other names and terms. Some can be answered, in spite of dangling references, in the same way that we can give the value of while not knowing the value of --Lambiam18:00, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is an English word with an unusually large number of synonyms? If I ask search engines this question, they just list synonyms for "unusually", "large", or "number of". Card Zero (talk)22:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Supposedly the word "set" has a very large number of meanings, and its entry takes up a lot of space in comprehensive dictionaries, so it might also come with a large number of synonyms (not guaranteed)... 22:28, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I'd imagine that vague words of approbation or disapprobation, such as good and bad, would have a large number of synonyms. (A Google search for bad synonyms, for example, turns up a link—reading "BAD Synonyms: 1101 Similar and Opposite Words"—to Merriam-Webster's thesaurus page.) Deor (talk) 00:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having done zero research into this question, I suspect that words with the highest number of synonyms (as opposed to separate meanings) are those where their communication is burdened by a certain amount of social sensitivity: words like die, vagina, cannabis, etc. Folly Mox (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WordNet is a computer-readable dictionary with "synsets", sets of synonymous words, and the largest synset in the database is... buttocks, ass, .... After that is dohickey, thingummy, .... For verbs, its's to love and then to botch and to bawl out. If I'm reading this correctly, it has 28 words for buttocks and 24 words for love. Those numbers do seem a little low to me, so it might not be including multi-word phrases or some very slangy terms. Smurrayinchester13:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had thought of WordNet and investigated this myself. Somewhere along the way I read that the largest synset is "concrete", as in "real" or "substantial". But I didn't see a list of the synonyms, and began to doubt if "synset" really means a set of synonymous words. Perhaps it's more like a set of related concepts? Card Zero (talk)17:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I came across that too. The concrete group seems to refer to a larger collection of synsets - a slightly foggier group of polysemys (so taking into account that being synonymous is not a transitive property. "run" means "manage" and "sprint", but "manage" doesn't mean "sprint"). Smurrayinchester09:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Afterwards, the monarch and members take their seats and the Report on the State of the Realm, an account of the government achievement of the past year, is read (traditionally in Nynorsk), customarily by the youngest member of the government present.
I understand that the text could be written in Nynorsk rather than Bokmål, but since both of them are related to orthography rather than pronunciation, how can we say that a speech is read in either standard? Nyttend (talk) 05:58, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was the case of the "abominable snowman", a TV weathercaster in the 1960s who insisted on pronouncing the word for "snow" with what many Norwegian viewers interpreted as an ultra-Danish pronounciation, causing great controversy... AnonMoos (talk) 11:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nynorsk tends to have different words for a lot of concepts, and where they are related, there would be different vowels and such, which usually aren't unstressed. You can hear Jon Fosse reading from his book in this video, which I assume is Haugesund dialect. [7] I think there are a lot more fricatives and affricates than in spoken Urban East Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I could provide samples of later traditions of Genesis in Nynorsk and Bokmål for comparison. The situation might be similar to the differences between RP British and formal Scots, or so. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:26, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nynorsk
1 I opphavet skapte Gud himmelen og jorda.
2 Jorda var aud og tom, mørker låg over djupet, og Guds ande svevde over vatnet.
3 Då sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det vart lys.
4 Gud såg at lyset var godt, og Gud skilde lyset frå mørkret.
5 Gud kalla lyset dag, og mørkret kalla han natt. Og det vart kveld, og det vart morgon, første dagen.
Bokmål
1 I begynnelsen skapte Gud himmelen og jorden.
2 Jorden var øde og tom, mørke lå over dypet, og Guds ånd svevde over vannet.
3 Da sa Gud: «Det skal bli lys!» Og det ble lys.
4 Gud så at lyset var godt, og Gud skilte lyset fra mørket.
5 Gud kalte lyset dag, og mørket kalte han natt. Og det ble kveld, og det ble morgen, første dag.
Wow, I had no idea there were significant differences with anything aside from orthography. But then, my experience of Norwegian is limited to its use on stamps (even with "Noreg" versus "Norge", I figured they were pronounced the same), and I'd never compared the two or realised that there were vocabulary differences. Wakuran, you say "later traditions of Genesis" — do you mean that these are recent translations? I don't need to know either version of the language to recognise that it's the first chapter of the book. Nyttend (talk) 06:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I meant to write "translations". The Bible is a text that's been translated into almost every known written language. They are apparently recent translations into the two Norwegian varieties. The "orthography" explanation is mostly to clarify that there aren't only two different dialects of Norwegian. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is part of a note section in a WP article. An artist used the boy (Donald) as a model on several occasions. Is this list grammatically correct? Such as capitalization and completeness. I know the word "in" is usually placed before the years. But my main concern is the structure of the list. Thanks.
Donald's highlights follow: a. graduated from Horace Greeley School, 1941. b. took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit). Landed on June 21, 1944. c. lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. d. worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., 1948–49. e. worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer, 1956–61. f. attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France, 2009. JimPercy (talk) 14:29, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see nothing wrong with the structure (consistent) and grammar (correct, in this context) of the list. My personal choice might have been to parenthesise the lc item letters (i.e. '(a)' not 'a.') and either begin each entry with a capital letter, or end each item with a semicolon, but that would depend on the styles present elsewhere in the article. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Bulleted and numbered lists and WP:MoS#Colons may be of help, as might Help:Footnotes.
Of course, all this goes out of the window if the text is a quote from a source, in which case it should be reproduced as it appears in that source. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 16:56, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks. It's all my own wording. I also enclosed a couple "hidden texts" to back up the statements. So, another way would be using (a) (b) (c) instead of (a. b. c.). Still another way would be using semicolons instead of the closing periods. I thought it would look better starting every sentence with a capital letter. But the sentences are not complete (w/o an "He"). I suppose the sentences don't have to be complete in list format. So, I can capitalize the words "Graduated," "Lettered," "Worked," etc. OTOH. That might be a good reason to go the semicolon route (instead of capitalizing the first letter of incomplete sentences). JimPercy (talk) 18:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why the a.b.c. tags at all? He graduated from Horace Greeley School in 1941. He took part in Operation Overlord (ADSEC unit), which landed on June 21, 1944. He lettered in three sports at Rider College, 1946–48. He worked as a sportswriter for The Daily Item of Port Chester, N.Y., in 1948–49. He worked as an associate editor for Progressive Grocer in 1956–61. He attended the 65th anniversary ceremonies of the Normandy landings in France in 2009.—Tamfang (talk) 20:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's usually clear when to say a or an: a NASA, an FBI, a UK, an EU. (eg, 'an' before a vowel sound, 'a' before a consonant sound) But the following trip me up: is it an FAC or a FAC (as some people read 'a featured article candidate', a/an HGV (heavy goods vehicle) and LGV (large goods vehicle), a/an NI (National Insurance) number, a/an MP (member of parliament), and especially, a/an SNES, which even discusses it within the article. It doesn't really matter in informal writing but it really matters when you have to write in a formal way. Is there anyway to fix this problem? JuniperChill (talk) 13:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Short answer to the general case is "no", although I'm sure some publisher style guides recommend one practice (acronym, initialism, read as full expansion) over others. It doesn't seem like we do, according to MOS:ACRO. For article development, I suppose the answer as usual is "follow the sources".This was actually discussed just a few months back at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations § "a" or "an" (Summer 2024), with no conclusion. Folly Mox (talk) 13:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm thinking people who type 'a RfC' means that they read it as 'a request for comment'. I tend to say 'an RfC' because I do say it letter by letter (like a BBC). However, I tend to write 'a LU', because I say it as 'a London Underground...'. But with a/an before HGV, is confusing as it has to do with the Brits on how to say the letter H. Its mixed, as some say /hei-ch/ rather than /ei-ch/. For example, this gov.uk website says both 'a HGV' and 'an HGV' in the same page. And a yt channel called Luke C in a HGV. JuniperChill (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting to see the evolution of how people pronounce initialisms as terms become more commonplace: few people nowadays would read LOL as "laughing out loud" rather than /ell oh ell/ or even /la:l/; I've also heard BTW, WTF, TBH, JMO, and TL;DR pronounced as initialisms in spoken conversation. OTOH, some initialisms tend still to be read in expanded form: I've yet to hear anyone say /en gee ell/ for NGL instead of "not gonna lie", or /tee aye ell/ for TIL rather than "today I learned".Of course, some acronyms become so accepted as regular words that pronouncing them otherwise would just confuse the listener: if I heard someone say /are ey dee ey are/ for radar or /ell ey ess ee are/ for laser, I'd assume they were spelling it out because their dog associates it with treats or something. Folly Mox (talk) 16:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion it depends on how the abbreviation is pronounced, which may be speaker-dependent. If people say /əˈspɒf/, you write "aSPOF". If they say /ənˈɛs.piː.oʊˌɛf/, you write "anSPOF". --Lambiam17:15, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the sentence “Chicken has de facto become its own genre of food [which refers to the diversity of chicken-centered food items],” what is a more apt word in place of “genre?” Primal Groudon (talk) 20:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
First, what's new about this? Second, various synonyms work: class, category, type, etc. EO has another synonym or two.[8] But while it seems valid, "genre" is used more in connection with works of art. Unless someone thinks fried chicken is a work of art! ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 21:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel less comfortable with the second two, I recommend the first. But perhaps say "a culinary category in its own right" rather than "its own culinary category", which just makes me think of chickens being fed to other chickens. Card Zero (talk)08:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any Current Wikipedia Featured articles from the brilliant Freshing Prose Days
Byzantine Empire has been listed continually since 2001, when it was still just "brilliant prose", and was subsequently confirmed in 2004 (as "refreshing brilliant prose"), and again in 2007 and 2012. But it's currently under review and might well be delisted. Fut.Perf.☼21:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sesame oil flavored Korean style. Domestically produced seaweed is lightly fried in delicious vegetable oil and seasoned Korean style with sesame oil and salt. Andre🚐01:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to be a pretty standard typeface, clear characters and prosaic writing. I think a smartphone could do a passable photo translation. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:45, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re. 2: Loads of words: instance, example, enrich, episode, any, union, active, alloy (the stress being on the first syllable), answer (in American accent, i.e. with the first vowel pronounced like that of "at"), and likewise. I still wonder if there are words (unnecessarily polysyllabic) that begin with the vowel of put. HOTmag (talk) 17:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On 1: We generally abhor -er endings Down Under, but as spellcheck continues its inexorable rise to world domination and Americanisms proliferate, such atrocities are finding their way more and more into written communications. Particularly from those who do not know the first thing about the language they (ab)use, such as journalists and users of "social" media. -- Jack of Oz[pleasantries]20:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just imagine if they develop a sister app for spellcheck, called "factcheck", which will ding anything that its AI considers to be factually incorrect.
Re 1: My US spellchecker rejects dioptre, fibre, goitre, lustre, mitre, nitre, philtre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, sceptre, sepulchre, sombre, spectre, titre, but accepts cadre, calibre, chancre, euchre, fiacre, genre, louvre, lucre, macabre, manoeuvre, massacre, mediocre, nacre, ochre, oeuvre, sabre, theatre, timbre, so these last may be acceptable in some contexts. In Australian English, metre is a unit of measurement with meter in other contexts, such as voltmeter, gasometer. Center appears in the phrase one per-center. My Macquarie dictionary grudgingly accepts diopter. Luster could be what Aussies call a "perv".Doug butler (talk) 21:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you add your examples to my list, that now includes five pairs only: bull cow, horse mare, rooster hen, dog bitch, fox vixen.
I don't need nouns with the prefix "she" (e.g. she-ape, she-ass, she-bear, she-camel, she-cat, she-crab, she-elephant, she-fox, she-goat, she-wolf, and the like), nor nouns with the suffix "ess" (e.g. lioness, tigress, and the like). HOTmag (talk) 01:30, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The "bull and cow" pair and the "duck and drake" pair are interesting, since the female term is used to refer to the species as a whole, contrary to the unmarked masculine default presumptions which apply elsewhere in English. In the "ram and ewe" pair, "ewe" is a very old word which goes back to Indo-European, and originally referred to the species as a whole (though not in modern English)... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. If you're excluding words with feminine prefixes or suffixes, then "vixen" originally had a feminine suffix (though quite opaque in modern English). There's also billy-goat and nanny-goat for gender indicators other than "-ess" or "she-"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary has categories wikt:Category:en:Female_animals and wikt:Category:en:Male_animals. Of course you will still have to filter out all the elephantesses and she-walruses, and then match the remaining female animals to male counterparts (some of which are missing, since the male list is shorter). And many of these are weird and obscure, such as ram-cat. There are also cases where the same words apply to different animals in different pairings. For instance, doe is a female deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or squirrel, but buck is a male deer, rabbit, kangaroo, or shad (a kind of fish). (A female shad is however a hen, so here we have the pair buck/hen.) Then again, you can probably call a male squirrel a buck if you want to. You can probably call it a dog-squirrel if you want to - the odds of confusing people increase slightly, but really you can reach for any suitable metaphor in a crisis like this where you don't know what the word is, because nobody else knows either. Cock-squirrel, for instance, would still be comprehensible.
One common pair you missed is gander/goose. It may be stallion/mare (but beware all the other gendered words for horses of specific status, such as colt and filly, not to mention gelding). Then there's drone/queen/worker (bees are complicated). Rooster has synonyms cock and cockerel. In the form cock/hen this applies to most birds, and some fish. Male deer are not only bucks but sometimes stags or harts. Male cats can be toms, but female cats are just cats. Female pigs can be sows, but male pigs are just pigs. (Edit: or boars, in fact. Though of course a boar, as in wild boar, is a kind of pig, leading to the existence of female boars, and I suppose boar-boars. Forgive me if this is boaring.) Card Zero (talk)05:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
