Oi. One could take offence at that, you know...

Oops!

Well, your avatar is quite ravishing, Chavs. I've no doubt it's a close personal resemblance.


(... will stop digging now before this hole gets any bigger.)

Yay for me! Why?

Because I remembered this post while playing Who Am I? today and was able to get the right answer!

I've found that dictionary now. Thanks. It's interesting to see how words are evolving sometimes to mean opposite things. Ravisher as the male seducer and also the attractive female. In English English "second-guess" is to anticipate what someone will say or do and in US English (as found in word wizard) it means to criticise in hindsight apparently. Fascinating to see how the English language diverges in different parts of the English speaking world.

Bloke just means man. It does not mean one who is usually old or eccentric as defined in Word Wizard today. I've looked in the free dictionary you use as well as the free dictionaries I use and can't find a definition that means an old or eccentric man. I've never heard it used to mean old or eccentric either.

Totally agree with you.
I'm an Aussie and I always use it.
'Hey there's that bloke over there!!' That would be man or person.

First of all, there is a dedicated thread for queries regarding this game, which is a better place to post your comment, since anyone who might do something about it is more likely to see it there.

While I do not see any definition that corresponds to the one in the game, it is clearly there somewhere online, since this game uses an online database as the source for its words and their definitions. I often see definitions that do not seem quite right, suggesting that the person who added the definition didn't really understand the term correctly. Sometimes they change over time and become more accurate, but they are outside the control of FunTrivia. In this case, you will never see a better definition for bloke in the same set, so its inaccuracy won't ever keep you from guessing the correct answer. Remember it for when you encounter it in Mind Melt, which I think users the same database.

done!

threads have been merged

Thanks. I thought I'd used the correct thread for word wizard. It was headed "word wizard". I'm just concerned that word wizard is helping to mess up the english language by giving out wrong definitions or confusing people but if it's not possible to have any quality control, is there any point in querying incorrect definitions?

Not for incorrectness. What FunTrivia can do is screen categories of words - removing sexual and drug references, for example.

Much of what looks and feels to be wrong definitions for those of us who learned the language in the 20th century is actually evidence of the evolution of the language as it incorporates new words, and changes the meanings of old ones. This is a natural linguistic process, like it or not.

I'm trying to reset the thread title back to the original

Thanks, mehaul!

How do we tell rubbish from genuine definitions then? There have to be standards in language (e.g dictionaries) otherwise it becomes meaningless. We'd all use words to mean what we wanted them to mean and people would not understand each other. I've checked all the free dictionaries that are used and that usage is not there and as it's an English and Australian word neither I (English) nor the Australian who responded have ever heard this usage. I think it's just a mistake. We can't assume no mistakes are ever made and every definition is correct if someone mistakenly uses it that way. If people are called a "bloke" it's a neutral term just meaning a man. If people believe the definition in wordplay today they would think they are being insulted as "old" or "eccentric". Since it seems that if errors go into the word quiz database there is no way of correcting them and they become accepted as fact, I'm probably wasting my time even making this point.

Check all possible usages of the word, even ones that are listed as archaic. Word wizard and mind melt love to pick the the third alternate archaic usage of a word.

Another title reset. If there isn't a posting after a post you want to reply to, you don't have to go through the reply button, just fill your text into the quick reply text box. Going back to an earlier posting and using the 'reply' button carries the title with that box. In this case it returned the error title to the thread.

What sometimes happens is a missing link. You can often trace where the words that purport to be definitions came from if you start thinking like a computer rather than a human who can choose and/or discard options.

If you look for a simple definition of the word "bloke" in online dictionaries you won't find the meaning "old" or "eccentric". What you will find if you follow some links are additional options, like synonyms. One of the synonyms given for "bloke" is "geezer" and a geezer is an old, often eccentric, man. Furthermore, the Collins Thesaurus defines a geezer as "man, guy (informal), male, gentleman, bloke (Brit. informal), chap..."

A human, particularly a Brit, Aussie, or Kiwi, would know that a bloke is just a word for a man and that geezer is a word for an older man with maybe a further defining characteristic and we wouldn't equate the two. However an American computer with one or two tiers of definitions might take a synonym, then take its definition and match it with a third... and in that case, a bloke can be a geezer and a geezer can be a bloke and a geezer can be a weird old man so therefore a bloke can be a weird old man... and without a human in there saying "that's not right" that's what may appear in Word Wizard.

I don't have a particular problem with it. Word Wizard is not in itself an online dictionary, it doesn't get picked up or indexed by search engines, and if an individual takes a definition from it and tries to apply it elsewhere, it's likely that some other human will correct them - by which time no one will know where they got it from and they'll think they dreamed it. Unless of course it's a really good error that gets adopted by the universe in which case I want ten percent.

Wizard: Q. The trait of being co-operative

Possible answers: Amenability
Obligingness - I chose Obligingness.
Wrong! Amenability. So often when I get a wrong answer it's because there are either 2 bad fits or 2 good ones.

Q Joint of a finger when the fist is closed
A knuckle

Correct, but a knuckle is a knuckle is a knuckle, fist or no fist.

I think the brackets can be eliminated from this one.

Hi, One comment. Today in word wizard "memoranda" was defined as a "written proposal or reminder". Since "memoranda" is plural it should have been "written proposals or reminders" unless the singular form "memorandum" was used.

So all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds (as Dr Pangloss used to say) and there's never a mistake creeping in. Whatever is written is all just fine because if someone's written it, it becomes use of language, even if that person slept through English classes at school or misunderstands what someone else means when they use terms correctly and repeats it in incorrect usage. Well, well well. No need for a response to this message. I suspect it would only depress me.

This site is not a dictionary. It merely accesses a free online dictionary to construct a game where we users match a word to a definition taken from that source. There is nothing wrong with the definitions I gave in my last post on this subject; what we get is an mechanical pairing by a computer that matches two things that a human probably wouldn't match. Programming the computer to be more precise or more intuitive would probably be a long job which, for the sake of a tiny proportion of 'definitions', isn't worth it. We don't have to agree with the source, in fact we can probably all agree with the fact that it contains errors - but we are not being asked to endorse the dictionary, only to play a game based on its content. If you have such a problem with it, don't play the game - there are plenty more.

And please don't change the thread title in your responses.

Not sure if this one has come up before.


Mismatched quotes, neither of which are necessary.

Today on "Word Wizard" the word "scrabble" was defined as aimless drawing, which I would know as "scribble" but that's not my point here.

The answer options included making a "noisy disturbance".

The word scrabble is also used where animals make a noise such as "I hear mice scrabbling in my attic" or where people are trying to hold on such as where someone is falling and "scrabbling" to get a handhold. Therefore the answer that included "noisy disturbance" would also seem to be correct in most people's understanding.

I'm aware that you go by particular definitions in a particular database dictionary but it would be helpful if "answer" options could avoid including more than one definition that would be generally understood by people as "correct" .

I know it's not always easy.

Hi

That is a fair point, and it got me wondering if "scrabble" means the actual noise of scrabbling around or not. And I found this:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=scrabble

"scrabble (v.)
1530s, "to scrawl, scribble," from Dutch schrabbelen, frequentative of schrabben "to scratch," from the same root as scrape (v.). Meaning "to struggle, scramble" first recorded 1630s. Related: Scrabbled; scrabbling.
Scrabble (n.)
board game, 1949, proprietary name (registered U.S.), probably from scribble-scrabble "hasty writing" (1580s), a reduplication of scribble (n.)."


Hmmm! The plot thickens?