Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 January 9

= January 9 =

Wall calendars
Our article on the wall calendar has exactly one babel link, he:לוח שנה (כלי). Do all the other Wikipedias really have no articles on this basic subject? Not knowing what these things are called in any other language (i.e. to the exclusion of date schemes, the things covered in our calendar article), I don't know what to look under. Therefore, I don't need any input here — I'd just ask you to go to the Wikipedia for the language of your fluency and see whether it has an article on this subject. Nyttend (talk) 00:58, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The Germanic language Wikipedias have the article on calendars at "Kalendarium" (see da:Kalendarium, de:Kalendarium, no:Kalendarium, sv:Kalendarium) - this wouldn't be an appropriate link from wall calendar, since it includes other types of printed calendars such as desk calendars and diaries as well as electronic ones. (Actually, I think Wall calendar is an unnecessarily specific title. It should be at Calendar (stationery) or similar, and cover all forms of printed calendar). As far as I can tell, the French Wikipedia doesn't dedicate an article to printed calendars. It just mentions on the disambiguation page fr:Calendrier (homonymie) "le calendrier désigne sous forme de tableau, d’almanach ou d’agenda la liste des jours, des semaines, des mois d'une année avec mention de quelques informations accessoires telles que : jours fériés, saisons, fêtes des saints, périodes de vacances, etc" - "A calendar notes, in the form of a table, almanac or diary, a list of days, weeks and months of a year with additional information such as holidays, seasons, holy days, vacations, etc.". Smurrayinchester 09:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The Hebrew article, similarly, is about Calendar (stationery), not just about wall calendars; so I've now edited wikidata to include it with the Kalendarium family. --217.140.96.140 (talk) 14:01, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I rather agree with Smurrayinchester, it is not that something lacks in Wikipedias in other languages, but rather the English article is inappropriate, unfinished and of a bad quality at least since 2009. I know the editors of Wikipedia like to boast that there is/must be an article for everything, but sometimes we may to stop and consider if we really need to write about everything especially when there is hardly anything to write about.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 16:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't advise anyone to write an article on this subject.  When someone did it on pt:wp this is what happened:

13h29min de 21 de março de 2012 Eric Duff (discussão | contribs) apagou a página Calendário de parede (Título errado, malformatado ou absurdo: o conteúdo era: " ''Características do calendário...)

which, being translated, reads

Attention. You are re-creating a page previously eliminated or renamed. You must consider if it is or is not appropriate to consider editing it. Know what can be done when a page created by you is eliminated. The register of eliminations and of movement of this page is presented, for convenience, below:

13:29, 21 March 2012 Eric Duff deleted the page Wall calendar (Title incorrect, malformed or absurd: the content was:  "  Characteristics of the calendar...)

So wall calendar is now a redirect to Calendar (stationery), which has no babel links at all. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:20, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Swedish translation advice:Tideräkning/Kronologi
What is the difference between Tideräkning and Kronologi? Are they used in the same way? Same meaning? Thanks! --Sergeant Stringent (talk) 11:33, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm sure somebody can give a more extensive answer. The short one is "No". Kronologi is a listing of events, e.g. Tideräkning corresponds to calendar or era. The Swedish term corresponding to BCE is f.v.t. före vår tideräkning. You can also use tideräkning when referring to the muslim or jewish calendar, or when discussing how the Roman empire kept track of the years in their history. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * That's great. Thank YOU! --Sergeant Stringent (talk) 20:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Can loanwords have accents?
Talk:Loanword notes that one linguistic standard for a loanword is the omission of accents. Are there others that would allow the retention of accents? With words like café, résumé, naïve, and façade, my knee-jerk reaction is that with the accents they are foreign words, while if the accents are omitted this indicates they've been assimilated into English as loanwords. Thoughts? - Reidgreg (talk) 16:58, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I doubt that it can be simplified to quite that extent. One issue has been the difficulty of inserting accents using an English keyboard: possible (though not simple) with a computer, but impossible in the days of typewriters. Another has been the tendency of those who do speak a foreign language to show off that knowledge by adding the accents: there are communities today in which cafe is monosyllabic (a "caff"). Dictionaries tend to give versions with and without accents, especially for the more recent imports where the original spelling has been retained, even though the pronunciation may have changed. Wymspen (talk) 18:58, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * You can't dispense with the cedilha because it tells you the "c" is pronounced as in "city" rather than as in "can". 195.147.104.148 (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hence the joke pronunciation "gar-kon". And now I must resume working on my resume. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Because every word in English is spelled the way it's pronounced?

The pretension of using the accent (or in other cases foreign pronunciation) to show-off seems consistent with applying the foreign language rather than the common loanword. I understand there's a spectrum to it, that loanwords don't get assimilated all at once. I was just hoping accents might be an easy indicator that they haven't yet met that threshold. - Reidgreg (talk) 20:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Richard Armour, in his mock history of the United States, said that John C. Frémont would get upset at people who omitted the accent mark. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:08, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * One standard that could be very usefully adopted is that when a truly foreign word (whether with or without accents) is used in an English text, it should be in italics. But when a foreign word has been incorporated into the English lexicon, it should be in Roman and the accents dropped.  To my mind, words like debut and premiere and cafe are so thoroughly anglified now, that to still pretend they're foreign words by using the accents is just that, pretentious.  But if one must pretend that to be the case, then one must also italicise them.  To include the accents but not italicise them is to pretend that the English alphabet has all manner of accents that it simply does not have.  Nobody is ever taught that graves, circumflexes, haceks, cedillas etc etc are features of the English alphabet.  That's because they're not.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:18, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * See English terms with diacritical marks, which starts out with


 * Some English language terms have letters with diacritical marks.[1] Most of the words are loanwords from French, with others coming from Spanish, German, or other languages.[2] Some are however originally English, or at least their diacritics are.
 * Loraof (talk) 23:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * This is not a properly sourced statement, just an editorial, but ... I feel like that article is wrong. Words with most of those things are foreign, not any kind of English word.  The diaresis is genuine English.  The accent and macron and breve seem like they have been borrowed for teaching purposes, or as the article says for poetry markup, but they are not the normal system.  A tip-off is that if you write one breve or accent in that system, you have to write a hundred of them over many different words of native English origin normally spelled without them.  Still, you can argue that they are "native", just another kind of native.  Whereas the loanword "canyon" is not the foreign word cañon.  A letter which a speaker of English cannot pronounce or write down without learning some of another language is not an English letter! Wnt (talk) 00:47, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * In 20th century American English, diacritics were almost always omitted, since our typewriters and typography equipment usually did not have the capability. In 21st century American English, it's okay to have them or omit them. It is common to see café, résumé, naïve, façade, jalapeño, and açai, but it is also very common to find cafe, resume, naive, facade, jalapeno, and acai. There are personal preferences, as well as institutional preferences, but I don't think there is anything like a standard. —Stephen (talk) 12:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * So I'll go to a café and résumé writing my resume? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:02, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Try going to a café and resume writing your résumé- more likely to get a job :)  O Fortuna!  ...Imperatrix mundi.  13:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links and editorials! I was thinking along the lines of JackofOz (astoundingly, I have WP:JACK linked on my userpage), in terms of whether or not to apply italics under MOS (specifically MOS:FOREIGNITALIC).  I think I have a better understanding of why that guideline is written the way it is, and also why there have been perennial name-change discussions at Talk:Facade. - Reidgreg (talk) 16:44, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

While I agree that truly foreign words, either with accents or without thereof, should be used in italic and many style guides require such a usage, though in some cases it is technically difficult or impossible to use font styles and the boundary between foreign words and incorporated loanwords is somewhat vague. But I do not agree that the English alphabet by itself lacks accents. There is no official authority which would define what belongs and what do not to the English alphabet, but appealing to unofficial authorities like dictionaries we may see that dictionaries like Oxford or Merriam-Webster use accents in the headwords, so suggesting there are accents in English. Sometimes it is even desirable to use accents to show the correct pronunciation, for example, in the case of resume and résumé, though one might argue that the English spelling does not represent the pronunciation correctly already so the lack of accents would make no great difference. However, if such words are listed in popular and authoritative dictionaries we can hardly say that they are still not naturalized. These words are already part of the language, at least according to the lexicographers, and it would be somewhat strange to pretend they are not and use them in italic (unless a particular style guide requires to do so for some particular words). I do not agitate to always use accents and strictly follow the dictionaries unless one wants or is required to do so, but accents in English are a matter of fact, however they may be rare.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't imagine façade, háček (to get something that isn't from French), naïve, résumé, entrée, apéritif, cliché, fiancé(e), René(e), and passé without the accents. I can't imagine rôle, reënter, coöperate, learnèd, or ångström with them (though I might occasionally write them in for a laugh, or to clarify the pronunciation in the case of the grave). A few words like Chloë or dénouement sit on the cusp for me, where neither the accented nor the unaccented version feels strange: I'd probably write Chloë with the diaeresis and denouement without it. Since all of these words are certainly part of the English language, I must likewise disagree that the English alphabet lacks accents. In the case of the personal names, I suspect this is partially a frequency thing based on the people I've actually met. Double sharp (talk) 09:45, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I rather encounter naive much, much more frequently, that is the more the word is used, the more the chance it may be without accents. I myself consider naïve too pedantic and do not write thus. Also I have an impression that some accents are more persistent than others, namely acute. And as well grave, circumflex, diaeresis/umlaut, ç and ñ, but to some degree (though I suppose few people have an idea what the purpose of grave in contrast to acute, so grave is more prone to confusing and/or disappearing), or in other words, the accents of French, German and Spanish. Others are not so lucky. The more exotic the accents, the more exotic the word, the less the chance they remain (by the way, caron is a native word for háček, so it not only has a good chance to lose the accents, but not being used at all as an obscure barbarism). In average English texts I very rare, if ever, saw accents in Chinese or Japanese words (where macron is usually omitted, e.g. rāmen > ramen, and many people have no idea that the accent even was there). Words from less exotic languages like Polish (pączki > paczki) or Swedish (smörgåsbord > smorgasbord) also tend to lose accents. I'm only speaking about adopted loanwords, proper names are a different story.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it might also have to do with what I originally learned, that somewhat determines whether or not I can unconsciously write the word without the accent today. As for háček, I have no idea why, but the needless borrowing seems to be not entirely uncommon, although the acute seems to often go missing (the háček doesn't, probably because the word gives a good reminder of its presence). Double sharp (talk) 03:18, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I was somewhat wrong about háček being a barbarism, actually it has already been listed in the Oxford and the Collins dictionaries. American dictionaries, namely the Meriam-Webster, the NOAD, and the American Heritage have haček in the headword, that is they omit the acute, however the NOAD lists háček as an alternative. Caron at the same time has not found its way into dictionaries, only the AHD says "see haček", but the Cambridge dictionary gives a full definition, though at the same time it lacks an entry for háček or haček; this all seems strange for me.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:07, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * In other languages, the accents are always shown as integral parts of the alphabet (e.g. see Albanian alphabet, Polish alphabet, French alphabet). It's made explicit at the outset, so that learners are in no doubt as to what to expect.  In English, though, ESL learners are not told anything about accents; neither are native learners.  It has to be deduced (or not) from the evidence.  Our article English alphabet is the only time I've ever read that it is the case, but even there they're not shown as part of the alphabet proper.  Why is it that accents in English are treated as second-class citizens, deserving only of obscure mentions in technical textbooks? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:38, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * English is not particularly special.  In Portugal prior to the introduction of the nova ortografia in 1917 the language had virtually no accents.   The words for "and" and "is" both consisting of a single e, they were distinguished by an h prefixed to the verb - elle he, "he is".   H has a very strong sound in Spanish, but in Portuguese it doesn't.   Alternatively you could use an acute accent - elle é.   That is the current spelling of the verb, but many other words now carry accents because the declared object of the reform was to make the language look as much like Spanish as possible. 195.147.104.148 (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * So, go to Portuguese orthography and read in the opening sentence that "Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes". That's another example of where the information about accents/diacritics is up front, as it should be.  English is extraordinarily reticent about acknowledging the supposed accents in her alphabet; which is why the news that they do in fact exist comes as a total surprise to most native speakers.  Some, like me, even choose to disbelieve this.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:02, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree they are not covered in most textbooks, either for native speakers or for learners, but at the same time at some point a speaker or a learner will sooner or later find them in everyday words like café where one may order crêpe and soufflé. And as a learner is approaching an intermediate or an advanced levels s/he most likely would find words with accents in texts and dictionaries, and their explanations if not in textbooks, but at least in the very same dictionaries (the entries for acute, grave, circumflex, etc. give a very pretty good idea of accents). Yes, the way is not as straightforward as with other languages where you are presented with accents right at the beginning. Maybe they are simply too rare and not that important for beginners, so textbooks try not to overload learners with such peculiarities.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Looking at those links, they seem to be going backwards:


 * 1945: Sweeping spelling reform in Portugal eliminates the trema [a word I've not encountered before], and differential circumflex accents in most pairs of homographs such as acêrto and acerto, cêrca and cerca, côr and cor, fôra and fora, dêsse and desse, and so on.
 * 1971: Sweeping spelling reform in Brazil eliminates the trema in hiatuses, most differential circumflexes, and accent marks on vowels with secondary stressed syllables in compounds, such as ràpidamente, ùltimamente, cortêsmente, cafèzinho, and so on. This reform was mockingly nicknamed the "Remington Reform" because it reduced dramatically the amount of words bearing accents (the reference is to Remington Rand which manufactured both typewriters and rifles in Brazil, either because the reform made typewriting easier or because it "executed" a large number of diacritics).
 * 1973: Portugal follows Brazil in abolishing accent marks in secondary stressed syllables.
 * 1986: Brazil invites the other six Portuguese language countries, Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, to a meeting in Rio de Janeiro to address the remaining problems. A radical reform which would eliminate the acute accent and the circumflex accent from all words except oxytones (as in the orthography of Italian) is proposed, but ill-received by both the Brazilian and the Portuguese media and public, and subsequently abandoned.
 * 1990: A new orthographic agreement is reached between Brazil, Portugal and the other Portuguese-speaking countries. Not so radical as the 1986 attempt, it proposes a compromise between the two orthographic systems.
 * 2009: The new 1990 spelling reform goes into effect in Brazil and in Portugal, changing the rules of capitalization and hyphen usage, eliminating the trema completely from the language (except for foreign words), changing the diphthongs "éi" and "ói" into "ei" and "oi", respectively in paroxytone words which don't end with a coda /r/, and eliminating silent letters as in acção or óptimo, which are now spelled ação and ótimo.

I'm surprised to see that there was a movement to go back to the original spellings. There was a lot of sense in it. Words like almanaque, assunção, ela, Páscoa, ciência and filosofia don't indicate the derivation, but the way they were spelled originally (almanach, assumpção, ella, Paschoa, sciencia, philosophia etc.) does, and writing is a lot simpler without the accents. In Greek every word has a stress accent, which seems unnecessary, while in French many circumflexes have recently been "executed". 2A02:C7F:BE2B:5600:EC58:BE60:60A6:98CE (talk) 20:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Labelling amounts in currencies - feedback wanted
I ask for feedback and improvements of the following sentence:
 * The deposit is usually in the range from 10 to 100, likewise in Euro, Pound sterling, United States dollar, and Australian dollar, and alike respective sums in other currencies.

I'd like to express (unmistakeably) that in any of the four currencies mentioned the smallest deposit available is usually 10, and the largest 100; and that in other currencies, available deposits are worth roughly the same (e.g. for the Norwegian krone the range is not 10-100, but 100-1000). Does the wording above meet this expectation? --KnightMove (talk) 19:56, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd say "The deposit is usually in the range from ten to one hundred Euros, Pounds sterling, United States dollars, or Australian dollars, and equivalent sums in other currencies."   D b f i r s   20:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd go with "range of from". Clarityfiend (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Would you also say "the road/distance of from Rome to Marseille"? —Tamfang (talk) 09:32, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No, but what does that have to do with anything? I would say "a distance of from 10 to 100 miles between x and y". Clarityfiend (talk) 23:36, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * So would I, but a range of distances is not a distance. —Tamfang (talk) 09:23, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This is a peculiar thing to want to say, and I'd be inclined to look for a different wording&mdash;maybe something like "from 10 to 100 euros, pounds sterling, or US or Australian dollars; or in other currencies, amounts of similar value". (Note: "euros", not "Euro" or "Euros"; "pounds sterling" also in lower case, at least in Wikipedia.) It might be good to include an instance where the range is not 10 to 100, e.g. yen. Also, the original sentence talks about what the amount "is usually", while Knight's explanation refers to "available" deposits, so at least one of these is not talking about what it intends to, and it's also important make that clear. --69.159.60.210 (talk) 07:49, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Explanation: Usually, no other deposits outside of that range are available, but there are exceptions. For example: There are euro countries where also 5 € deposits are available, but in most of those countries this is not the case. There are distributors in the UK where you can also buy 175 £ deposits, but at most you can't. Should I word this differently? --KnightMove (talk) 11:40, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe this makes sense to someone, but I have no idea what kind of "deposits" it's talking about. --69.159.60.210 (talk) 22:48, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd assumed that it was the first in your link, but it can't be if you are buying them. I'm sure  can explain the context for those of us with only basic financial knowledge.    D b f i r s   23:23, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok, maybe this is a misleading term. It's about an internet payment method where you can buy a voucher with a PIN code to pay with in online stores. I was using "deposit" as the term for the monetary value - this seems to be misleading.
 * See Draft:Paysafecard for more explanation. I try to get this article draft into shape. --KnightMove (talk) 04:18, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

What the deuce? (origin of phrase)
I write to request the origin of the phrase "What the deuce" (in the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein). 2601:544:4201:C2BE:2CC0:8434:B20C:E037 (talk) 21:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * This Oxford etymologist suggests that 'deuce' is related to a word for devil, and that "what the deuce" is analogous to "what the dickens". ( I put your question in a new section, that will happen automatically if you use the button at the top of the page.) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * EO's theory is that it's connected with the deuce, the lowest card value, and by implication "bad luck, the devil, etc." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:06, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I think it's worth noting, even if I don't know the specifics, that "v" and "u" were originally the same letter. I am thinking that people who say "darn" and "heck" might make a similar close substitution??? Wnt (talk) 00:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The vowel vs. consonant form of "v" doesn't figure into the origin of "devil". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:27, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If you will indulge me in a relative non-sequitur, I feel like quoting my late great aunt, who to the mystification of her nephews, would always greet us with, "The dickens, the deuce, / The devil got loose. / He ate up his mother, / and spit out the juice."  She was a fairly eccentric woman. - Nunh-huh 02:17, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this source may be misleading. Compare this reference to the 1611 King James Bible:  “Then the deuill leaueth him, and behold, Angels came and ministred vnto him.”  This isn't the first time I've seen some variant of "devil" spelled with a u, though I forget where else. Wnt (talk) 02:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That peculiar-looking style is discussed in the V article. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:32, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That article says that "v" and "u" were not particularly distinguished before the mid-16th century; earlier on, "v" was used at the beginning of the word and "u" at other positions. The article also mentions that "f" was another waw derivative, so I also wonder how distinct the Old English deofel would have been from either. Wnt (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Apart from a possible euphemism for the devil, the OED suggests that the deuce may have come from dice games where two ones or aces, that is the deuce, is the lowest value hence losing and unlucky which might further strenghen the semantic allusion with the devil.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

What does this mean in Chinese?
What is this: 爆术艇监. --Singerium-Islandi (talk) 21:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * More context might help Siuenti (talk) 22:45, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * If Google Translate can be believed, it means "Explosive Ship Supervision". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Did you mean to ask what it means in English ? StuRat (talk) 14:02, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It doesn't mean anything in English, because English doesn't use Chinese characters. —Tamfang (talk) 09:27, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, but I believe they are asking for the meaning to be conveyed to them in English, not in Chinese. The proper Q would be "What does this Chinese sentence mean, in English ?".  Of course, they could omit the final clause, as it's reasonable to assume that any Q posted here is to be answered in English. StuRat (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


 * "Supervisor of boat of the explosive art"? "爆术" ("explosive art") is not idiomatic, it sounds like a term out of of a fantasy novel, like a type of magic perhaps. --165.225.80.115 (talk) 15:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Could it mean the captain of a boat (or barge) that launches fireworks ? That is a common way to launch fireworks, as the risk of fire is reduced from fireworks that go astray, since most will land in water.  StuRat (talk) 17:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The word for fireworks is quite different. If I were the author of a fantasy novel, I might give this title to the person supervising the construction of kamikaze boats, like these ones. --165.225.80.115 (talk) 17:42, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Or maybe like this. Alansplodge (talk) 19:45, 11 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I took the liberty of linking the characters in the original post to Wiktionary - it really is getting pretty good with CJK characters, though it has no entry for any two of these together. Wnt (talk) 19:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Searching the string in Google pulls out many hits with the first two characters, and many of those link "pyroblast", which is a Magic The Gathering card. Nowhere but here has the last two characters together in the same page as the first two together.  Is there a chance this is some kind of game hand/layout notation? Wnt (talk) 19:46, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If I'm seeing the same hits as you are, the Chinese for "pyroblast" has an extra character - "炎爆术". That character means roughly "very hot, scorching". But I agree that could be the context - the OP might have seen it somewhere and left out the first character when typing / copying it here. --165.225.80.115 (talk) 17:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)