Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 March 26

= March 26 =

"she's a Portsmouth"
Currently watching S01E09 of The Crown (TV series) and came across this conversation:

Queen:"I'm surprised to hear you turning down the opportunity of going to America.   Porchey:"Why?"    Queen:"Well, that's where your girlfriend's from, isn't it?"    Porchey:"Fiancée."    Queen:"Fiancée? Goodness. Who is she? Money, I hope. So you can keep up the stables. Porchey:"Actually, she's a Portsmouth." Queen:"Oh, dear. So no money." Porchey:"Some money."

What does "she's a Portsmouth" mean?

Porchey's fiancée is from America, so presumably she's not from Portsmouth, UK. There are a number of cities named Portsmouth in US, but none would be so famous as to qualify as an immediately recognizable "a Portsmouth" to a British person, I'm guessing here. ECS LIVA Z (talk) 03:24, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * In The Crown (TV series), the name "Porchey" links to Henry Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon, where you will read that he was once known as Lord Porchester (hence Porchey) and that he married an American named Jean Margaret Wallop who was related to the Earl of Portsmouth. So "Portsmouth" refers to that particular noble family, who it seems were poor (at least by the Queen's standards). --76.71.6.254 (talk) 04:57, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! What's the relation between Jean Margaret Wallop and the Earl of Portsmouth? ECS LIVA Z (talk) 05:06, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Jean Margaret Wallop was the granddaughter of the 8th Earl of Portsmouth, and the sister of a U.S. senator from Wyoming. - Nunh-huh 05:10, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

how do you count number of words that you know?
If you know, for example, that ' time' is both a substantive and the act of measuring out would you say you know two words or just one? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.224.153.207 (talk) 13:30, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Define "know". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:18, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It's commonplace for one word to function both as a noun and as a verb.  In "The time is three o'clock" it functions as a noun.   In "You can time it to the second" you're thinking of performing the measurement and it's a verb. 92.8.221.9 (talk) 14:58, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * So, reiterating the OP's question, is that one word or two? And if a given word has, say, 10 definitions / usages, and you are familiar with 4 of them, do you "know" the word? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:01, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Of some relevance may be List of languages by number of words and Number of words in English. It's impossible to definitively draw dividing lines between distinct words in situations such as the example you give. Some dictionaries give separate entries for unrelated words of the same spelling, such as "saw" as the past tense of a verb and "saw" as a sharp tool. They would include variant uses of a word as a single entry for a single word, as in your example. Loraof (talk) 16:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Let's try a source. This one, quoted in The Economist paraphrases the OP's question into "vocabulary size" which is probably relevant. The result is, on average, between 20k and 35k words. The website from which the facts are derived (with over 2,000,000 tests at the time the article was written) takes into account different meanings for the same words and counts them for each usage. I scored a measly 31,200. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:18, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Defining "know" a "word":—
 * see word for difficulties defining the term precisely. Some dictionaries list "time (n.)" and "time (v.)" as separate headwords; others group them together. Homonyms are always considered as separate words, but a word with polysemy is still a single word. A larger dictionary will include more headwords and more senses of polysemic words, by including those too rare to make the cut for inclusion in a smaller dictionary. Additionally, a larger dictionary may make finer distinctions than a smaller one, giving separate definitions for two closely related senses which the smaller dictionary bundles into a single sense; similarly for syntactic differences like verb alternation. Dictionary publicity sometimes includes boasts of the form "contains X definitions of Y words".
 * see vocabulary for "knowing" a word. The article explains different degrees of familiarity with a word. If you believe that "brilliant" means "very good", is that accurate enough to count as "knowing" the word (or at least knowing one sense of the word)?
 * In theory, by a complete examination of a dictionary containing definitions for Y headwords and X senses, you could see which of these you are familiar with. Some problems:
 * There are too many words for that to be practical. You could extrapolate from a statistical sample using a representative subset of words and senses. This is the approach Rambling Man linked to
 * The test excludes words and senses which you know but which are not covered in the dictionary. This will typically include recent slang and words specific to your locality, or even to your family or circle of friends.
 * jnestorius(talk) 09:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Words are rather arbitrarily defined anyways.  For example, why is "cannot" one word but "will not" two words?  Linguists instead tend to deal in morphemes or lexemes rather than words, but again, is the presence or lack of a space in writing enough to make a distinction?  Compound (linguistics) makes a salient point here "In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word) that consists of more than one stem."  "Less precisely, a word" is a phrase which captures the rather fuzzy-around-the-edges definition for what a "word" really is.  -- Jayron 32 18:47, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That's been discussed many times by the people who acctually count vocabularies.. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:38, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

I wish to know what texts other than the Tanakh and Talmud are sacred.
Are any of these texts just as authoritative as the Talmud? Also, is there a such thing as Jewish shamanism?

Disclaimer: I am aware that different groups hold different beliefs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 17:06, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * That isn't how this reference desk works. I will point you to Judaism and specifically Tanakh and Oral Torah. And Sacred. Rmhermen (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not too sure what a "Jewish shaman" would be, but if Honi the Circle-drawer and Simeon bar Yochai don't qualify, then they didn't exist before the modern New Age era. AnonMoos (talk) 20:57, 26 March 2017 (UTC)


 * The Tanakh is not sacred; the first part of it, the Torah is. That is what a handwritten copy of is kept in the Tabernacle. (The Talmud are commentaries, not objects of worship, or "sacred" either.) There are also things such as Tfilin and the Mezuzzah which are sacred as representing or commanded by the Torah.  Read Robinson's Essential Judaism. Your "This question is only for those who follow Judaism" is entirely inappropriate for the ref desk, and, frankly, offensive; I've removed it from the header. μηδείς (talk) 00:35, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * That depends entirely on what your definition of 'sacred' is. Almost any text written about a religious subject from a religious standpoint is considered sacred in that there are laws of reverence regarding its treatment. There are differences in how sacred a given text is in this regard; generally the Torah is the most sacred (especially a Torah scroll), followed by other parts of Tanakh, followed by everything else. As for authority of various texts, the answer is extremely complicated, but reading the Wikipedia articles should give you a good idea. הסרפד  (call me Hasirpad) 17:29, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think we disagree, but I would say that while the Torah is an object (almost) of worship, the Talmud is just a set of books you would treat with respect. Now what about the Jewish shamans? μηδείς (talk) 01:53, 30 March 2017 (UTC)