Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations

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Note: Use the talk page only for comments about this page. Nominate words below.

This page is for nominating future Word of the Day entries. The philosophy behind our WOTD feature is similar to that of Wikipedia's featured articles. The main goals are:

  1. to highlight the best of Wiktionary's definitions by featuring them on the Main Page,
  2. to nurture people's natural interest in unusual words and phrases, and
  3. to help readers improve their vocabulary.

Contents


Nominate a new word


[edit] What to nominate

[edit] Exotic usefulness

An ideal WOTD candidate is a word (or phrase) likely to be encountered in a newspaper or in literature. It should be exotic enough that it adds to readers' vocabularies, but not so unusual that it cannot be used in everyday conversation.

For example, the word the wouldn't work because it's too common. It may have an interesting entry, but it is a staple found in every English speaker's lexicon. At the other extreme, zenzizenzic is simply too unusual. No one is going to use that word in everyday conversation.

[edit] Variety

Before nominating a word, you might want to look through our index of past Words of the Day to make sure it (or a variation of it) hasn't already been featured.

Also keep in mind that featured words are chosen to reflect a variety of:

  • parts of speech — Nouns, verbs and adjectives should appear more or less equally, but we also need good adverbs, idioms, set phrases and the like.
  • languages of origin — Many English words derive ultimately from Latin or Greek precursors, but English has borrowed from, and styled itself after, many other languages, so try to mix it up a bit.
  • initial letters — Not all interesting words start with J, K, Q or Z.

[edit] What not to nominate

These are in addition to the other warnings already mentioned above.

  • No long words - We've already featured all the interesting words over 15 characters long - please wait until after 2011 to renominate any of them.
  • No "redlinks" (missing pages) — If a word is not yet in Wiktionary, it belongs at Wiktionary:Requested entries, not here. (Better yet, why not create the entry yourself?)
  • No offensive words — Please avoid profanity. A nominated word should not offend the average person, nor should it be something you would be embarrassed to use in front of your boss or your grandmother (or your boss's grandmother, for that matter). Wiktionary defines profane words in part so people know not to use them in polite company. WOTD nominations, on the other hand, should be words that people can safely use in everyday speech. Note also that many parents and schools automatically filter out pages that include certain offensive words, so featuring such a word on the Main Page would restrict access to Wiktionary itself.
  • Avoid abbreviations — Abbreviations, initialisms, acronyms, symbols, and the like are unlikely to be selected without extremely convincing reasons. In other words, don't nominate WYSIWYG, dpi, or ☿. Symbols in particular cause problems for readers who lack the required fonts, and are therefore unlikely to be featured.
  • Stick to English — Since this is the English Wiktionary, foreign words and phrases that have not found their way into everyday English speech should probably be avoided.
  • No previous selections - We want to feature new selections, not the same selections over and over. Please check the list of previous Words of the Day, to be certain it has not been selected previously.
  • Avoid other WOTDs - We want to feature words that haven't been WOTDs for other dictionaries, partly to highlight unique terms that make Wiktionary so special, partly to avoid complaints (by preventing the possibility entirely) that WOTDs were "stolen" from other dictionaries.
  • Avoid purely obsolete words - Words whose definitions are only obsolete, archaic, rare or similar should be avoided as hard to use in practice. A word that has a sense marked as rare, etc, in addition to a more common sense is fine.

[edit] How to nominate

Follow the Nominate a new word link below and add your word(s) to the top of the list. Please link your word to our page for it by surrounding it with [[double square-brackets]] (be sure to get the capitalization right). You might want to include a concise reason or justification for the nomination. A definition is not necessary since our page for the word should already contain a good definition.

In case there are questions about your word(s), it is imperative that you sign your nomination by adding four tildes (~~~~) at the end. (Although it is not required, you can quickly register for free if you don't already have a username.)


Nominate a new word


[edit] Latest nominations

Entries are in reverse chronological order, by date of nomination. Please add your word(s) to the TOP of the list below and remember to sign each new entry by typing four tildes (~~~~)

[edit] Older nominations

Note to administrators and interested editors: If you notice words that have already appeared, or are in the queue to appear, as Words of the Day, please strike them out by using <s> and </s> HTML tags.

[edit] October 2008