Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English words of Greek origin

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was KEEP after major rework

List of English words of Greek origin[edit]

Very shortly after I created the page, people objected to it on the talk page, saying that such a list will always be incomplete, and could be the size of a phonebook. There are enormous lists of technical words in all kinds of fields that are derived from greek roots. I defended the page's right to exist by saying that if List of English words of Latin origin is worth keeping, then this one is too. If that one should be deleted, I would even support that argument, but then this one must be deleted as well. Well, today the list of Latin words was deleted with some very convincing arguments and almost unanimous support, and so I think this one has to go too. We simply don't have room for lists of English words that are large percentages of the total vocabulary of the language. ~~delete~~ -Lethe | Talk 02:33, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Edit: I really like the things that UncleG is doing to this and the other articles. I now vote to keep the article text and rename the article and remove the word list, just as Uncle G is doing. -Lethe | Talk 03:17, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

Retain -Rex Gentium All that hard work for the enlightenment of my fellow human beings for nothing? The percentage of Greek-origin words in English being less than that of Latin, the list as it stands is relatively small. In my opinion, this list covers the main, known words that are derived from Greek and henceforth will only grow minutely. In my own contributions to this article, I purposely avoided the countless neologisms and "coined" Greek words that can overexpand and bloat an article, adding instead established or even everyday words whose origin in Greek is unexpected. To do away with this article would be a foolish act that would rob many of an expansion of their knowledge.
- Hard work indeed. The list includes many contributions. But it is nothing more than an alphabetical listing of words by etymology, one which would be tens of thousands of words long, if complete. We simply have no space for such things. It would be better represented by a automagically generated list in Wiktionary, which should include a category by etymology. -Lethe | Talk 11:55, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
VFD listings should use 3rd level headings. Goplat 02:59, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
If this is a list of 'main' Greek words as Rex says (or as the list states, 'some' words), then what is the criterium for a Greek word to be on that list? That sounds rather arbitrary. Words of Greek origin make up some 15% of the English language, so a full list would be too large. An arbitrarily smaller list is not particularly encyclopedic. As such, delete. Radiant! 09:13, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Rename it Greek loans in the English language and expand the introduction to the list (which is already an article in its own right), but limit the actual list to a few significant examples of each type of loan. The general topic is appropriate for an article irrespective of whether it is realistic or proper to have an entire list of such words. / u p p l a n d 09:54, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Strongest possible keep. Where else is one supposed to find a list of Greek loan words if not on Wikipedia? Totally ludicrous nomination. --Centauri 10:36, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- It's not ludicrous. The similar article List of English Words of Latin origin was deleted last week after consensual vote on the VfD list. It is reasonable to suggest that the same reasoning would apply to this list. Radiant! 11:40, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
- You might try Wiktionary, which was designed to be a collection of words, their definitions, etymologies, and lists thereof. Wikipedia was designed to have encyclopedic articles, which this simply is not. It is a list of words whose only notoriety is etymology. -Lethe | Talk 11:45, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Amnesiate, for the good reasons given for "List of English words of Latin origin." Adding technical features to Wiktionary to enable database searches for words with specified etymologies would be a valuable thing to do. Hand-maintaining incomplete lists of words constituting a sixth of the English language is not. I'm not sure whether we have an article on medical Greek and Latin roots--building blocks used for construction of medical terminology. There are textbooks on such things, and there are only a few hundreds of such roots that are commonly used. That would be a reasonable article. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:51, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Retain but prune drastically A complete list of English words with Greek roots is ridiculous -- such functionality should be one way you can slice-and-dice a dictionary. It is especially ridiculous that neologisms such as "photography" and "sphygmomanometer" appear in this list -- words which never existed in Greek -- until they were borrowed back into Modern Greek. It is the neologisms (mostly medical and scientific coinages) that give us silly numbers like 25% (or whatever) of English. On the other hand, words like "olive", "bishop", and "scene" are not obviously Greek and have an interesting history, which should be discussed. The straight borrowings like "orchestra" and "drama" are perhaps less interesting. The discussion of spelling and plurals is also useful. Macrakis 16:34, 24 Feb 05 (UTC)
Delete. Even without the neologisms. Anything truly notable as being a loan word, per Macrakis' comment above, might be noted in the Ελληνικά article. Also, there seems to be enough flexibility in Wiktionary to allow such categories to be created, and this topic would certainly be far more appropriate therein. HyperZonk^talk 17:35, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
Agreed about renaming I agree that the name "List" is inappropriate. I suppose the information about coinages, about spelling, etc. could go in the Greek Language article. What's more, most of it is not specific to English, since all the other European languages have pretty much the same stock of Greek-based neologisms and even mostly the same stock of Greek borrowings (everything from olive to moussaka appears in all the major European languages). But does it belong in the Greek language article itself?--Macrakis 18:37, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Note that this information about Greek borrowings can be found in Wiktionary. Radiant! 19:23, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
The "hard work for the enlightenment of my fellow human beings" should have been directed towards putting etymologies in the dictionary where they belong, right from the start. My vote is the same as it was in Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of English words of Latin origin. This sort of etymology is exactly what Wiktionary is for. This article should have been made a pointer to Wiktionary at its creation. Wikipedia is not a list of words. ~~Wiktionary~~. Uncle G 16:22, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
Keep Useful article about an important aspect of the language. I want the English language covered in Wikipedia as I have no intention of using Wikidictionary. Wincoote 23:26, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- whether or not you use wiktionary, this list doesn't belong here, it belongs there. If you have a use for such a list, perhaps you should reconsider your policy about wiktionary. Lethe | Talk
Definite keep. Why anyone would want to delete an article about such an important subject as this eludes me. --Gene_poole 04:39, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- "List of words" is not a subject, it's just a list. This is an important list, but wikipedia is not the place for such a list Lethe | Talk
Keep, unless... there is an actual listing on Wiktionary similar to this (I don't use Wiktionary, so I honestly don't know)? If I were to look for words derived from the Greek language, I don't want to guess them out one at a time from the top of my head and type them in. To my knowledge, this is one of the only lists out on the net of words from Greek origin, and it needs to be somewhere, if not here. If Wiktionary can make a compiled list like this, then cool. But if not, I think it should stay. I personally think it's a shame we lost the Latin one... there are 34 others under the Lists of etymologies too... I do not believe they should just simply disappear. Obviously, with such a compilation, they have relevency. This list itself has proved quite helpful to me personally, and not because it was just "interesting to know" or anything. If they must disappear from Wikipedia... then maybe Wiktionary (or whatever is appropriate) can carry this list, if that is possible? - Shadowolf 08:45, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- If there isn't one in wiktionary yet, there will be soon. This list doesn't belong in wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vocab list, not a dictionary. Lethe | Talk
~~Delete here, recreate information in some form on Wikitionary. If some particular Greek-derived word has an interesting etymology, well, put it in the freaking article for the word.~~ Change of vote: Keep and modify per Uncle G. --Calton 00:28, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Please take a look at Wiktionary:Category:Greek derivations and Wiktionary:Category:Latin derivations. Note that I have not transwikid anything. There's nothing to transwiki. I've simply categorized the existing Wiktionary articles, creating any stubs as necessary. Consider this to be the proof of the pudding. As per Uppland and Macrakis I suggest that at the end of this process this article be renamed to something other than "List of", so that no-one is tempted to make it into a list again. I recommend that the same treatment be given to all of the Lists of English words of international origin. (List of English words of Polish origin is a prime candidate.) There may be a merger possibility for the introductions of all of these lists once the actual lists of words themselves have gone. Uncle G 01:42, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)
- Excellent idea, UncleG, strong concur with the above. Radiant! 12:18, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Article can benefit from modification, although I'm not sure what's the best way to move forward. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:21, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Modified article. I've cleaned this article up, entirely removing the list of words (which you probably saw the tail end of, going by the date on your comment). The article has now had that drastic pruning.
- I think that, with one exception, we all agree that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Any article that is a list of words is unencyclopaedic. (By which I don't mean non-notable.) Any article with "list of words" in its title, moreover, is going to be a dicdef-magnet. And indeed this, and all of the other List of English words of X origin articles listed at Lists of English words of international origin, have become nothing more than dicdef-magnets, as their editing histories over the past few months show only too plainly. I've applied the same procedure that I applied to this article to some of those other articles. Look how short they have become! Look at List of English words of Scots origin, List of English words of Polish origin, and List of English words of Hindi origin, for examples. Without the mini-dictionaries, there was practically nothing left in the articles. (However, I think that there is something that could be written about words of Scots origin, words of Polish origin, and words of Hindi origin — decribing how words from these languages came to be loaned into other languages, what classes of words are loaned, the distinctive features that give away such words, and the like — and that these articles are the beginnings of such.)
- I think that the best way forward is to
  1. Rename this article to Words of Greek origin and realign the article to be about, as per Macrakis, loanwords from Greek into all languages.
  2. Apply the same to all of the other List of English words of X origin articles.
  3. Lose Lists of English words of international origin entirely, for two reasons:
    1. The tree is simply rooted in the wrong place. This whole article series is predicated on the idea of words being loaned to English. In other words, it is seen as a sub-topic of English language. But as Macrakis points out, many of these loanwords are loaned to multiple languages. The far better way to look at this series is as being about the languages that the words were loaned from. This article and List of English words of Turkish origin are prime examples of articles just begging for the Anglo-centrism to be removed.
    2. It's a list of lists. Even without the above consideration, there's no need for a list of lists. There's almost never a need for a list of lists. An article like that should be a category of lists.
- I also recommend a long hard look at:
  - Nahuatl dictionary, a Nahuatl-English translation dictionary sitting quietly in Wikipedia
  - List of Dacian words, a Romanian-English translation dictionary sitting quietly in Wikipedia (entirely duplicating Wiktionary:Category:Dacian derivations, where the effort should be directed)
    - Actually, this is not a Romanian-English dictionary, but rather a list of words (with English glosses) from an ancient language named Dacian, a substrate language of Romanian. That said, it still doesn't belong in the Wikipedia, but rather in Wiktionary:Category:Dacian derivations.--Macrakis 12:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      - Well, looking at the article and finding the vast bulk of it being a long list of entries like:
        baban - "big, plump"
        
        baci - "shepherd"
        
        bagă - "to put in, to stick in"
        
        băiat - "boy"
        
        beregată - "throat"
        
        brânză - "cheese"
      - I have to say that whatever it may really be, it's doing a fair old job of disguising itself as a Romanian-English translation dictionary (with a one-paragraph preface). ☺ It even has its talk page divided into sections for the individual words.
      - More seriously: Your and other people's contributions to the discussion at Talk:List of Dacian words would be appreciated. Uncle G 18:05, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)
- Uncle G 02:20, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)
  - Once more, concur with UncleG, and if it's a lot of work I'd be happy to help. Radiant! 10:28, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
Keep. The Recycling Troll 18:14, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Retain and Rename now that it's had the actual list removed, there's some useful and encyclopedic stuff left. rossb 07:03, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Keep as rewritten. Rename, obviously. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:45, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.