Disputatio:Pardalis

Adnotatio celata

Ita in pagina litteris celatis legi et hic removi: [ Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:42, 28 Decembris 2009 (UTC) ]

Not in Cassell's. Not in White's. Evidently (because the article exists) in classical sources, but which animal was it? Some sort of panther? That's what this article should discuss—not the pardal leopard, Leopardus pardalis (ocelot), which the ancient Greeks did not know. Add classical loci &c. [ Usor:IacobusAmor ]

As to this, btw, "pardalis" is a noun in Leopardus pardalis (teste Linnaeo), so "the pardal leopard" is a somewhat shady way to put it - it's not a "pard"-like "leopard", but a "pardal" which is a kind of "leopard"—or so we consider it today (it was a species of Felis in Systema Naturae). —Mucius Tever 03:31, 30 Decembris 2009 (UTC)

Addo quod in Disputatio:Zingiber legi: [ Andrew Dalby ]

¶ This question highlights a pervasive problem, caused mostly by the adoption of an old Latin word for a new taxonomical concept and then Vicipaedia's need to accommodate both senses. This afternoon, I noticed that the ancient animal pardalis had gotten linked to en:Ocelot, with a definition that didn't do justice to either term. (The ancient Greeks couldn't have known about the ocelot, endemic only to the New World.) So I whittled Pardalis down to words about the ancient world (its sense unclear, but now at least it's ready for somebody to survey the literature and tell us all about that mysterious Old World animal) and created a wholly new stipula for the ocelot, Leopardus pardalis. Which in turn brought into view the lemma (or, rather, lemmata) for "Pardus (-i, m.) sive panthera (-ae, f.), vulgo leopardus"—incomplete & misleading because the leopard is scientifically none of those, but Panthera pardus. Nor is it clear that panthera is always a leopard; Cassell's implies it's always a panther but maybe sometimes a leopard. Likewise pardus. My brain is spinning, so I'm leaving that one alone for now. As I pointed out somewhere a few weeks ago, the animals in Vicipaedia have been worse off than the plants. IacobusAmor 00:56, 28 Decembris 2009 (UTC)

Hm, when I made these pages I used the standard scientific nomenclature. The names have been applied at least since Linnaeus. Certainly we could add additional senses (or disambiguate) to explain ancient usage, but "pardus" and "pardalis" are not wrong for "leopard" and "ocelot". —Mucius Tever 12:30, 29 Decembris 2009 (UTC)

To which I should add that it's not a matter of incompleteness; certainly "pardus" would be an incomplete binomial name for "Panthera pardus", but the binomial is a reference style, not something you'd use in actual speech, any more than you'd say "the pard (a panther)" on every mention in English. —Mucius Tever 13:04, 29 Decembris 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, and as this is a reference work, the lemma for the panther should probably be something like:

Panthera pardus, antique breviterque aliquando panthera et pardus, et praesenti tempore inscienter leopardus. . . .

;) IacobusAmor 13:44, 29 Decembris 2009 (UTC)