Welcome to the language section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

Select a section:

WP:RD/L

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

How can I get my question answered?

Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
Note:
- We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
- We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
- We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
- We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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.

August 27

Swedish question

I'm almost ashamed to ask this, given that I understand Swedish quite well but not perfectly, as I'm not a native Swedish speaker.

But anyway, here we go. I saw a cartoon on Facebook where a pensioner on a stroller finds himself on a pedestrian walkway completely blocked with improperly parked foot pedal cycles (the ones you kick instead of pedal). He says: "Tacka vet jag mördar-sniglar!" I know that mördar-sniglar means "murderer snails" but I'm having trouble parsing the sentence as a whole. What does it exactly mean? JIP | Talk 00:38, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The cartoon, by Robert Nyberg, can be seen here. The caption of the cartoon, "De nya mördarsniglarna", means "The new killer snails", which appears to refer to these carelessly strewn kick scooters. Swedish mördarsnigel is a common name for the Spanish slug. (The hyphen in the text balloon is not part of the orthography, but inserted because of a line break.) On Wiktionary the entry tacka lists tacka vet jag as a "related term", but the latter is still a red link. This may be because this idiom is hard to translate. Here it is translated as "I prefer", with a footnote stating:

"Tacka vet jag" is quite hard to translate for it means many things. Literally it means "Thank(fully) I know of

. You might translate it here as, "I fondly remember", or, "Give me those old-time" (as in "Give Me That Old Time Religion"). Presumably the rollator operator used to already have a hard time navigating the old-time snails, but deems these new "snails" worse. --Lambiam 08:54, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish, French, German

For an English speaking person, which language is easiest to learn, if he learns alone without teacher using online resources? And he will appear for language test after two years. -- 10:07, 27 August 2020 Landdolphin

Please sign your posts using 4 tildes (~).

Please define your terms. What do you mean, exactly, by "learn a language"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:46, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't have any background in any of the three, I would guess Spanish -- French has some difficult sounds (front rounded vowels, uvular "r") and a spelling system with a rather indirect relationship to the spoken language. German has front rounded vowels and some complex grammar (verb prefixes which sometimes detach from the verb, case distinctions in adjectives and determiners, and complex word-order rules)... AnonMoos (talk) 10:50, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Language acquisition is not an on/off state but scales in different ways for reading, writing, listening, and speaking (and even these things can be broken down into cross categories such as extensive vocabulary vs circumlocution). For example, my spoken Spanish is limited to "me gustaria dos chiles poblanos y un mojito" and I can only catch a vague gist if a Spanish speaker addresses me as if I'm wearing a disability helmet. However, I can occasionally write simple sentences with a dictionary and generally make heads or tales of a text (and the longer the better, actually). If you don't have a teacher, nor anyone to constantly practice with, your speaking and listening are going to suck (and hell, mine do and I took Spanish for three semesters at uni). If you don't regularly engage in output, your speaking and writing are going to suck (¿Quién tiene dos pulgares y no habilidad? ¡Este chico!). The only online sources that are going to fix this are... teachers! Even if you're just Skyping someone to practice and they're not giving you deliberate lessons, they're still teaching you.

Also, English speakers aren't a monolithic entity. Due simply to accidental exposure, someone living in the United States (especially in the southwest) might have a much easier time learning Spanish than someone in Canada (who would have an easier time learning French). Ian.thomson (talk) 11:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An issue to consider is also the availability of online resources. Otherwise Scots may be the easiest, due to the grammatical similarity and high overlap in lexicon, but online "Teach yourself Scots" resources are scarce and spotty. The extreme regularity of the grammar of Sranan Tongo (as well as English having been its main lexifier) also make it very easy to learn - but again, hardly any online resources. --Lambiam 12:30, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful with Scots! It may not be what you think it is. In the last few days, it has been discovered that most of the articles on Scots Wikipedia were written in mangled English by an editor who doesn't speak Scots, which was widely reported in the news. See this discussion at MetaWiki. --Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 21:51, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think the same advice applies to the Sranan Tongo Wikipedia. Much of it is written in a travesty of that language, with many totally made up neologisms for concepts for which established words exist, strange grammar and inexplicably weird spellings, such as a ubiquitous nyunr instead of the very common word nyun. Who knows how many other small Wikipedias with very few active editors (or in this case even none) are similarly compromised? (And rumour has it that a majority of editors at the Latin Wikipedia are not native speakers either!) --Lambiam 00:16, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When pondering closeness to nearby learning resources and speakers, Spanish if you live in USA/Canada, and German/French if you live in the UK. When pondering closeness between languages, English and German are closer, they both descend from the same West Germanic branch, while French and Spanish are closer to each other, descending from the same Western Romance branch. In summary, German or Spanish if you live in North America, German if you live in the UK.--TZubiri (talk) 01:54, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Landdolphin:, reading, writing, and speaking a language are three different skills, and you didn't specify which you meant. But assuming you mean a general knowledge involving a mix of all of those skills, the order is: Spanish (easiest), then French, then German. That's for a native English speaker; the order would be different if your native language was, say, Swedish or Dutch. TZubiri, the OP mentioned that their learning would be strictly from online sources, so geographic proximity is irrelevant. And while English is a language of Germanic origin, both French and Spanish are a lot easier for a native English-speaker to learn than German. Mathglot (talk) 10:24, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An English speaker with a good-sized vocabulary should find a lot of the Latin roots of Spanish to be recognizable from their English counterparts. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:07, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

August 28

Sic semper tyrannis

John Wilkes Booth is said to have shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" after killing Abraham Lincoln. But how did he pronounce it? JIP | Talk 00:28, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Semper" would have stress on the first syllable, and "Tyrannis" on the middle syllable. Otherwise it would depend on whether he used the Traditional English pronunciation of Latin or a more historically accurate one (called "Erasmian" when it comes to Greek, not sure if there's a similar term for Latin...) AnonMoos (talk) 05:28, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It may plausibly have sounded somewhat like /sɪk ˈsɛmpɚ taɪˈɹæ.nɪs/ But Booth may have had a somewhat non-rhotic accent from his English mother, or perhaps instead extrrravagantly rolled r's as a common affectation among old-school stage actors. Or a 19th-century Baltimore accent from where he grew up, learned Latin and began his theatrical career, so this suggested phonetic description must be interpreted very broadly. --Lambiam 11:23, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The term would be "Church Latin". To Catholic priests and religious Latin is a living language and the pronunciation follows the vernacular at the time the Church was founded. 2A00:23C0:7980:3F00:CDAD:6AF2:6034:DF10 (talk) 12:51, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The term for what? For a more historically accurate pronunciation of Latin than the traditional English pronunciation? How do you think Brutus would have pronounced "Caesar", and how do you think a priest (who still speaks Ecclesiastical Latin) would pronounce "Reddite igitur quae sunt Caesaris Caesari" (Mark 12:17)? Also, when do you think the Church was founded? They probably spoke Aramaic and Syriac. --Lambiam 20:37, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy link: Church Latin (WP:WHAAOE) 107.15.157.44 (talk) 18:07, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Children learn accents from their peers rather than their parents, see [1] for one example, but this is a consistent and well documented phenomenon which starts at a surprisingly young age. If Booth had an accent, it was probably more closely aligned to the community he was raised in rather than that of either of his parents. Unless he had an affectation he was deliberately using. --Jayron 32 12:52, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

107.15.157.44 -- the article "Ecclesiastical Latin" only has a small section on pronunciation. In any case "Church Latin" is not the counterpart of "Erasmian Greek" -- Erasmian Greek was a serious and reasonably successful attempt to reconstruct the ancient pronunciation of Greek, while Church Latin is a slightly-adjusted version of the Italian pronunciation of Latin, as used by the Catholic church in Italy and the Vatican City... AnonMoos (talk) 20:19, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't read the article past the lead; I just added link since it was mentioned (as a "courtesy" for those of us unfamiliar with the term). 107.15.157.44 (talk) 21:43, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

August 29

Lord You-know-who (from Harry Potter)

"Malfoy" obviously means "bad faith" in French. Does anyone have a translation for "vol de mort"? wikt:vol#Noun_5 gives two different versions of "vol" and maybe they can combine to something related to "death eater", or whatever. Thanks. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 00:21, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A common interpretation I hear is "flight from death", which is supported by his Horcruxes. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:23, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For another conjecture, see here. --184.146.89.141 (talk) 06:10, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Although French vol can mean "flight", this is not "flight" in the sense of "fleeing" / "running away" / "escaping", but solely in the sense of "flying" / "taking to the air", as birds and planes do. The combination vol de mort can be used in the sense of "death flight", as in the title of the air disaster flick SST: Death Flight (but not for the popular form of extrajudicial killings; these are vols de la mort in French). Another sense in French is "theft", and "Lord Death Theft" does fit with this horcrux thing intended to snatch death from the Grim Reaper. JKR's revelation that the final ⟨t⟩ was meant to be silent^[2] lends support to the theory of a French interpretation. --Lambiam 09:45, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Third-person singular simple present indicative form

In regard to leafs vs. leaves, WTH does "Third-person singular simple present indicative form" mean? (I was curious as to whether "Toronto Maple Leafs" was grammatically correct, and that description didn't help).--107.15.157.44 (talk) 20:28, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the verb "to leaf" (as in "to leaf through a book"), we have "he/she/it leafs" vs. "I/we/you/they leaf". (This is the regular English inflectional pattern.) AnonMoos (talk) 21:33, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. The book "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker (kind of a modern popularization classic by now) has a discussion of "The Maple Leafs" and related forms in Chapter 5. Some of the linguistic issues are mentioned in our article bahuvrihi... AnonMoos (talk) 21:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of that before. Would "peanut" be an example (being neither a pea nor a nut)? --107.15.157.44 (talk) 23:01, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? A peanut is certainly a kind of nut... AnonMoos (talk) 23:07, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, its a legume and not a "true" nut; but since everybody calls it a nut (in a culinary sense) it is considered to be such. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.15.157.44 (talk) 23:44, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you really want to blow your mind about the distinction between botanical and culinary meanings of terms, read the berry article. --Khajidha (talk) 13:11, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And fruit and vegetable, come to think of it. --Khajidha (talk) 13:14, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

:Geesh! We actually have an article: Ketchup as a vegetable. 2606:A000:1126:28D:69F5:735D:5EC1:F97D (talk) 19:03, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And, of course, chocolate is a vegetable too. --ColinFine (talk) 18:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Third person: the subject of the verb is neither you or I but someone or something else (e.g. buckthorn). Singular: used when the subject of the verb is a mass noun (e.g. "buckthorn"), or when it is a count noun but we are talking about a single (or a typical, generic) exemplar. Simple present: for a stative verb, indicates that the state denoted by the verb applies at the present time; for a dynamic verb, most commonly indicates that the action denoted by the verb is habitual (at least for English), for example a yearly recurring event. The indicative is used when the state or action is real and not merely hypothetical. Usage examplee: "[Buckthorn] leafs early in spring and holds its leaves until late in fall."^[3] The word "leaves" in this sentence is not a verb form but the plural of the noun leaf. --Lambiam 21:51, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both for your informative replies. So, "Toronto Maple Leafs" being a noun, is grammatically incorrect, right? --107.15.157.44 (talk) 22:54, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's a somewhat complicated issue which is not easy to explain briefly without using technical linguistic terminology ("exocentric"/"headless"/"bahuvrihi" etc). I would really advise you to read chapter 5 of The Language Instinct... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:12, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In short: "it is what it is, as long a people agree that it is so" (or something like that). 107.15.157.44 (talk) 23:52, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As "Toronto Maple Leafs" is widely and confidently used by adult speakers of English, it is grammatical -- in the same way that "autumn leaves" is grammatical, and "[X] is comprised of [Y]" is grammatical. -- Hoary (talk) 04:42, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is very similar to the plural of sabretooth not being *sabreteeth but sabretooths (sabretooths are not teeth) – while the plural of wisdom tooth is simply wisdom teeth (wisdom teeth are teeth). --Lambiam 10:37, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is also mongooses for the mammal, but geese for the bird. --Khajidha (talk) 14:14, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Khajidha -- "mongoose" is not derived as a compound with "goose" as one of the compound elements, but "sabertooth" is definitely derived as a compound with "tooth" as one of the compound elements. AnonMoos (talk) 17:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

True, but the similarity does lead to confusion as to the proper plurals. Probably was too far afield to be mentioned in this discussion, though.--Khajidha (talk) 02:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary lists mongeese as a "(nonstandard) plural of mongoose". On Merriam–Webster mongeese redirects to mongoose, where they have: "plural mongooses also mongeese", refraining from casting more explicit aspersions upon the propriety of the latter form. They do not list mangander, though. --Lambiam 16:53, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

" "Third-person singular simple present indicative form" means "plural". doktorb _words^deeds 08:41, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Say what? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:24, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And "Ignorance" means "Strength". --Lambiam 16:27, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

August 31

Leiden Conventions

In the Leiden Conventions, what is the difference between "letters missing" and "letters erroneously omitted"? —Mahāgaja · talk 23:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Letters missing would indicate that the manuscript has a gap, or what we call a lacuna. Usually this is due to damage of some sort to the writing. Letters erroneously omitted means that the scribe perhaps made a misspelling, or mistranscribed something and forgot to write down some letters/words in the text. bibliomaniac 1 5 02:15, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bibliomaniac15: Thanks; so at [4], "⟨s⟩í" in line 7 means the scribe wrote "í" but the editor assumes the scribe meant to write "sí" (presumably the "s" of the preceding word is doing double duty), while "Me[i]c" in line 9 means the scribe did actually write "Meic" but the "i" is worn away or damaged in some way? (Assuming of course that this edition follows the Leiden Conventions.) —Mahāgaja · talk 07:55, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that should be right. Leiden Conventions were 1931 while this volume was published 1935. First time I've seen this for Gaelic though (not that I would have any experience in that at all...) bibliomaniac 1 5 18:16, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

September 1

Channel surfing, zapping during the radio days

I'm wondering how one used to express the action of constantly changing channels on the radio (as in turning the knob), say, up until the 1950s. Rebecca West uses the word "swing" in the 1930s ("Nevertheless there was always good music provided by some station or other at any time in the day, and I learned to swing like a trapeze artist from programme to programme of it"), but that probably wasn't a common way of describing it. Was there perhaps another verb or phrase which had taken this meaning, the way 'zapping' had during the heyday of television (and remote control)? Thanks in advance. ---Sluzzelin talk 16:37, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly "twiddling the dial"?. I wasn't around in the 1950s (ha!), but the phrase was certainly used in the 1970s, to refer to TVs as well as radios. Our first TV had a dial for changing channels; preset buttons came later. --Viennese Waltz 17:05, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a forum post that supports my answer: "Back in the days when radio was the primary means of electronic entertainlment (yes, there was such a time) and one tuned it by turning a dial, some people were constantly fiddling with the tuner either to try to get better reception (since old tuners (variable capacitors) tended to wander off frequency) or to see what was on another station. If others were in the room and annoyed by the this practice, they were apt to say "Stop twiddling the dial!!" Thus "twiddling" has a mildly pejorative sense. The modern equivalent of the radio-dial twidler is the person with a TV remote control who constantly changes the channel and annoys others in the room." [5] --Viennese Waltz 17:09, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent! Thanks Wiener Walzer! ---Sluzzelin talk 17:13, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Someone constantly fiddling is annoying, but I think the primary sense of "twiddling the dial" in the context of radio was doing this too get good reception, not to get a good program. I suspect the use of the verb zap for changing TV channels came from the imagined similarity of a remote to that staple of SF, a zap gun – used with emotional satisfaction to blast whatever crap was being shown into oblivion – and that the current sense of a repetitive action came only later. In the radio days we had "stations", not "channels". Unlike the ease of just pressing a button on the remote, you had to tune in to a station. This required some care or you might hear a whining heterodyne. There are uses where people "keep twiddling the dial", but in vain attempts to get any signal. For a (not specifically annoying) effort to find a nice program, I think simply "changing the station" was more likely to be used. In this passage the narrator uses that terminology. --Lambiam 17:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. Here are some examples of "twiddling the dial" being used to find a good station: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] --Viennese Waltz 18:37, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All of those seem to be modern works, not texts from the era in question, though. What did people back then actually say? --Khajidha (talk) 19:15, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam, isn't it possible that "zap" comes from when remotes made audible clicks? Temerarius (talk) 22:26, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is possible in the sense that I cannot exclude it. The clicking sound is not something I'd have described as a zap, though. I find the analogy with a zap gun seductive, but my theory is not stronger than a suspicion.

Khajidha, I’m not going to be able to give you proper sources because all my finds have tended to be in books without preview. Examples are in the collapsed box below. People seemed to use several words: twirl, twiddle, twist and flick when talking about the dial and tinker when talking about the radio in general. You can compare these (sort of) in ngram [11] which seems to suggest tinker was the first favourite, followed by twirl and then twist. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:48, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of actual usage 1929-1947

1927, Wallaces' Farmer and Iowa Homestead - Volume 52 - Page 972: No doubt a lot of radio fans are content with a few stations, but I twirl the dials a lot and am constantly searching ... twirling, and twisting the dials until I am asked to stop that nonsense, tune in some music and listen
1929, Popular Science - May 1929 - Page 62 Vol. 114, No. 5 - ‎Magazine: O MATTER how you twirl the dials on your radio set, you often find that you can't get dance music just when your guests feel in the mood for dancing
1929, Popular Science - Jul. 1929 - Page 70 Vol. 115, No. 1 - ‎Magazine : ”OHN, I do believe you'd be tickled to death if something went wrong with that radio set, just so you'd have an excuse to tinker with it,” my wife observed one evening after she'd watched me twirl the dial on our single control set.
1937, LIFE - Oct. 18, 1937 - Page 9 Vol. 3, No. 16 - ‎Magazine: Noiv you can enjoy a G-E Touch Tuning Radio for no more than you would pay for a good conventional hand-dialed radio. No more dialing! No dials to twist, twirl, or swish.
1937, Radio - Issues 215-224 - Page 64: Or would you park yourself beside the BC set and twiddle the dial all evening in search of something of interest
1940, Magazine - Volumes 11-12 - Page 12 Boston and Maine Railroad: “Well," said the Switchman,“ they can spout that stuff all they want to; I don ' t listen to i . When one of those birds comes on I just twist the dial and
1941, Music Clubs Magazine - Volumes 21-23 - Page 6 : After supper when pleasantly relaxed I ' d probably twiddle the dial in search of a string quartet weaving some tuneful theme
1947, Sales Management - Page 8: Too often they merely flick the dial over to the symphonic hour.
1947, Conquest... - Page 492 Carol Hovious, ‎George Whitefield Norvell: do we let the radio run, listening to whatever happens along? Do we twiddle with the dial until we find something we like?

These date from after the radio-only period, but according to the "Hacker's Dictionary" -- "frob, twiddle, and tweak sometimes connote points along a continuum. Frob connotes aimless manipulation; twiddle connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; tweak connotes fine-tuning."

-- AnonMoos (talk) 01:32, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On Google Books Ngrams Viewer "(changing the station)+(searching for a station)" gets comparable results to "twisting the dial". Of course, neither implies someone constantly doing this. In the examples above the verbs by themselves also do not imply repeated changing like zap does for TV channel switching; inasmuch as repetition is clear from the text this sense comes from the context (constantly searching ... until I am asked to stop). --Lambiam 09:38, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the days when there were only two television channels in the UK, we used to "turn over". Alansplodge (talk) 19:51, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you again, all of you! I admit I hadn't thought enough about what constitutes zapping. What Rebecca West did (changing the channel whenever the music ended and was followed by "talks and variety programmes") is the not same thing as someone annoyingly zapping or frobbing through the channels, while everyone else in the room can't keep up and gets exasperated. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:53, 2 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

September 3

What is a sense of epigonentum when it's at home?

In Scally, Robert J. (1975). "Introduction". The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900-1918. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0691075700. we read:

All over Europe the enervation of the traditional Center had been accompanied by the language of decline, decadence, and impending chaos. In the sense already mentioned, the insurgent Social-Imperialists employed the same rhetoric, but the established leaders gave every sign of being bewildered and demoralized by their sense of epigonentum and by the increasing aggressiveness of the forces they felt were arrayed against them, feeling more or less powerless to arrest or survive them in the long run" [italics in original]

What is meant by "sense of epigonentum"? The word does not appear in the OED, nor is it in Chambers 20th Century Dictionary. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Browsing @ the google results for "epigonentum", I get that it's a German word meaning unoriginality, imitativeness, or epigonism. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hum, well "epigonism" is another one that isn't in the dicker... William Barnes may have had a point. If it means "sense of being epigoni" where "epigoni" means "the less distinguished successors of an illustrious generation" then I suppose it makes sense. DuncanHill (talk) 01:17, 3 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]