Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 July 3

= July 3 =

75
We have the wonderful words septuagenarian and octogenarian for people who make it to 70 and 80 respectively. Is there an equivalent word for someone who gets to three quarters of a century? Would the amateur neologists here care to invent one? Asking for a friend. HiLo48 (talk) 02:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The word for 3/4ths was "dodrans", so maybe a "dodranticentenarian"? AnonMoos (talk) 02:34, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * What do you know, Wikipedia even has an article on Dodrans... AnonMoos (talk) 02:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * P.S. The "distributive" form of the number 75 in Latin would be "septuageni quini", but it's not obvious to me how to combine these into a single word... AnonMoos (talk) 02:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Quini-viceni is Latin for "twenty-five each", so I suppose a distributive form of 75 could be "quini-septuageni". Note that quinisextus is formed from quinque + sextus, so the ancient Romans were not adverse to the quinification of quinque in non-distributive uses either. (However, while the distributive form has quīnī-, which is presumably declined in tandem with septuāgēnī, the second use has a presumably invariant quīni-.) As to coining a conceivable English word, I suggest "quiniseptuagenarian". --Lambiam 15:13, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * semisesquicentennarian or demisesquicentennarian (from semisesquicentennial), or possibly hemi-... Mitch Ames (talk) 07:55, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Probably "-centenarian" without a doubled consonant would be preferred. "Demi" is French and "Hemi" is Greek; they appear in certain names of musical notes, but I don't see that they would add anything to Latin "Semi" here... AnonMoos (talk) 08:29, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Belafonte "Drink this Wedding Toast"
The above is not the song title. LP gives song title so: WILL HIS LOVE BE LIKE HIS RUM. Pronoun capitalization makes it look like a hymn. How shall we capitalize? Temerarius (talk) 16:30, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "Will His Love Be like His Rum". See MOS:TITLECAPS, where His is specifically given as an example of a pronoun that should be capped. (Like serves as a preposition in the title, so under the "five-letter rule" it shouldn't be capped.) Hymns have nothing to do with the matter. Deor (talk) 16:58, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I should have said, Wikipedia's odd guide aside, I intend it as a general question of best style. My supposition about implications of a deity are reflective of a tradition of style, not my invention. My first impulse is to render "Will his Love Be like his Rum?" Temerarius (talk) 20:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I know of no style for titles (except for those that use sentence-style capitalization) that would lowercase his. If you search for the title on the Internet, most places capitalize every word in this title. Deor (talk) 21:38, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's stylized with all words capitalized, then so it should be here. But Wikipedians know better, right? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily "better", but we do have a Manual of Style into which a good deal of thought has gone, which is more than most sites on the Internet have. And many of of the "most places" I referred to above are hardly reliable sources (lyrics sites, etc.). Deor (talk) 23:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't trust lyric sites, which often have errors in the lyrics, never mind questionable spelling. But imposing our so-called Manual of Style to override the way a song title is actually spelled is arrogant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:16, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Spelling shouldn't be changed: The Young Visiters, The New Rythum, etc. But the ability to cite the authority of the so-called Manual of Style for overriding shouty (or goofy) capitalization (or other "styling") of titles and names is, for me, one of the greatest attractions of the said Manual of Style. -- Hoary (talk) 05:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Because we know better than the ones who actually titled these things. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It was presented in all caps. DO YOU REALLY THINK WIKIPEDIA SHOULD FOLLOW SUIT? Note, though, that the song title includes a question mark, as it should. --Lambiam 10:03, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedians know best. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:41, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * If you search on the internet, you find databases that are capitalized by algorithm. Temerarius (talk) 18:49, 4 July 2023 (UTC)