Disputatio:Latum Hadronum Collistrum

Die 11 Septembris 2023 — Estne haec pagina ad “Magnum Collistrum Hadronum” movenda?

Haec est disputatio petitoria Vicipaediae quae ad formulam {{Movenda}} attinet, die 11 Septembris 2023 paginae additam.

Large collider or large hadrons? Epistulae Leoninae suggest (p. 7) that the hadrons are the “large” thing in Large Hadron Collider. However I am quite sure that “large” here refers to the collider itself. --Grufo (disputatio) 00:52, 11 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

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We did not reach a consensus yet on the right title, but Categoria:Motiones paginarum neglectae teaches us that the risk that this discussion freezes is non-zero. However 100% of us agrees that “large” refers to the collider and not to the hadrons. We could change that adjective in the meanwhile and keep this discussion open. The reason I had added {{Movenda}} to the page had to do specifically with this point (magnorum vs. magnum). --Grufo (disputatio) 15:16, 16 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

"Latus -um" nominative seems most accurate, not "Magnorum" genitive, see discussion below. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:04, 16 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I moved the page to “Latum Hadronum Collistrum”, for now, so we can at least agree on what “the large thing” is (i.e. not the hadrons). Hence now comes the easy part: we have just to find an agreement between collistrum and conflictor :) --Grufo (disputatio) 18:44, 16 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Collistrum Hadronum Magnorum

The proposal "Collistrum Hadronum Magnorum" is simply wrong. "Large" in LHC refers to the Collider, not to Hadron. (There are no large or small protons...). Moreover, it is called Large Hadron Collider, not Big Hadron Collider. The right adjective is "Latus", not "Magnus". This has the extra advantage that one can reproduce the LHC acronym in Latin. I don't like the word "Collistrum", because it is completely made up. My preference goes for "Conflictor", as used in Ephemeris (see http://ephemeris.alcuinus.net/archi2008/nuntius1.php?id=512). To summarise, etymologically my preference is (by far): "Latus Hadronum Conflictor (LHC)". My second choice (which has several disadvantages, including a confusing declension) is: "Latum Hadronum Collistrum (LHC)". Jbackroyd (disputatio) 18:50, 12 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

"Collistrum" de "collido" bene Gross fecit, — nam "conflictor" nomen agentis est, non machinae, — sed de hadronibus magnis erravisse videtur. Mea mente ad "Magnum collistrum hadronum" movenda est, nomen autem ex "Ephemeride" in nota indicandum st. Demetrius Talpa (disputatio) 20:11, 13 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Latus Hadronum Conflictor

Please allow me to expand the argument. 1) I claim that "conflictor" is the right translation of "collider" not only because it has been used previously in other documents, but because it comes directly from the Latin verb "confligo = to clash, to collide". "Conflictus" is the perfect infinitive of "confligo" and, as a noun, it means "collision". Hence "conflictor = collider". 2) "Collistrum" has no etymological connection with any Latin word (please correct me if I am wrong). It is simply an Anglicism and should not be preferred to a word with Latin root. 3) "Conflictor" sounds more dramatic than "collistrum". It sounds more appropriate to convey the power of a collider. (I admit this is a subjective argument). "Collistrum" sounds dull. 3) "Magnus" would be appropriate if the LHC were the Big Hadron Collider or the Great Hadron Collider. But it is the Large Hadron Collider instead. Conclusion: I strongly recommend "Latus Hadronum Conflictor (LHC)". Jbackroyd (disputatio) 19:26, 13 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

You can browse the vocabulary_(en) if you want, but you will not find Latin terms in -tor (-sor) that do not refer to human beings (unless you are in front of temporary personifications). So both “conflictor” and “collisor” would be bad Latin if used for a machine (and against today's common practice; cfr. arator, aratrix, aratrum for a classical usage). The choice would then be between “conflictrum” and “collistrum”. Grammatically they would both be OK, but a conflict has moral/human/psychological implications, which a physical collision does not have. A remaining doubt might be about the opportunity of creating an agent/instrument noun out of an intransitive – anticausative – verb (you do not collide things in Latin, you “collide”), but we already have similar examples (e.g. ascensor – N.B. that was also a human being). As for latus vs. magnus, it is true that latus would be a more literal translation of English “large”, but in Latin latus tends to be used as a pure adjective, rarely it gets crystallized into terms. In that case, as far as I know, they would prefer the more generic “magnus”. --Grufo (disputatio) 22:29, 13 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

@Grufo: it seemed to me in a previous discussion that this is a detail of Latin word formation on which you have a very strong point of view :) I haven't been following the discussion here, but surely, since Ephemeris has used "conflictor" in the required sense, for us at Vicipaedia "conflictor" and "collistrum" are both sourced and potentially acceptable. I'd say "conflictor" has the edge (but very slightly) because it's used in real modern Latin text rather than in a lexicographical proposal. I agree that "collido" and "confligo" are normally intransitive, though "collido" is sometimes used in the passive, and I noticed in L&S just one transitive use of "conflicto" (Terence).

@Jbackroyd: In English "large" is more or less a synonym for "big": the term usually corresponding to latus is "wide". I don't honestly know which term is more appropriate to what happens in the machine! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:36, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Let me echo Andrew here: at least in American English, big and little are exact synonyms, generally interchangeable, with the stylistic nuance that big is often taken for the basic, down-to-earth word, and large is often taken for the more elegant, high-falutin one. (Even so, "livin' large" is more idiomatic slang than "livin' big," though possibly because of the alliteration.) Latus is 'broad, wide', not 'big, large'.

As for confligere: it's both transitive & intransitive. Cassell's cites Lucretius transitively clashing corpora together and Cicero transitively comparing "factum adversarii cum scripto." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:11, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, I do have strong opinions about this! But about which word has the edge, you are forgetting that conflictor ends with -tor :) --Grufo (disputatio) 14:02, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

No, I had that detail in mind. It's against Grufo's rule, I know, but some other Latinists find it acceptable. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:55, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, "Large" in LHC refers to the fact that the diameter of the collider ring is 8.6km wide. It seems to me that "latus" expresses this concept quite well (and better than "magnus"). "Latus" was chosen by Ephemeris also to reproduce the English acronym LHC. Jbackroyd (disputatio) 19:17, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

As for the agent noun from intransitive verbs, we use everyday the word usor, “user” (utor is indeed intransitive, however it is not anticausative like collido/confligo). As for anticausative verbs, we do have some examples (e.g. ascensor, cursor, desultor, etc.), however I must admit that none of them transforms the term into a causative (i.e. a cursor is the one who runs, not the one who makes other people run, an ascensor is the one who ascends, not the one who make other people ascend, and so on). So, the only example I found of an agent noun that transforms the verb into a transitive is usor, but utor is not anticausative, and so it is a bad example.

Long story short. I did not find any example that would justify either collisor, or conflictor, unless we want to mean “the one that (itself) collides/conflicts”. If we move instead to instrument nouns in -trum_(en), there we do find one example that would justify either conflictrum or collistrum: the late Latin lectrum (from lego – the verb itself is transitive, but a lectrum is not the instrument that reads, but the instrument that allows people to read). --Grufo (disputatio) 17:57, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

«We use everyday the word usor»: "Who's we, Kemo Sabe?" One of us prefers to use utens. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:16, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

If I am not wrong utor in early Latin was transitive, and we find some examples in classical Latin here and there – e.g. “vilica vicinas aliasque mulieres quam minimum utatur” (Cato); “ne Silius quidem quicquam utitur” (Cicero); etc. But as we saw, being intransitive does not forbid a verb to form an agent noun (see ascensor, cursor, etc.). The problem I see here is that collido and confligo are not only intransitive, but also anticausative, and that is too much for creating conflictor/collisor with the meaning of “facilitating/allowing collisions”. With instrument nouns instead (conflictrum/collistrum) the idea of who accomplishes the action seems more vague to me, and therefore more acceptable (e.g. lectrum). --Grufo (disputatio) 22:24, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

Correction. Confligo seems to be both anticausative and causative, although of the causative I found only one example in Lucretius, and Lewis&Short calls this usage “rare”.

• Anticausative: “causae, quae inter se confligunt” (Cic.).
• Causative: “semina cum Veneris stimulis excita per artus obvia conflixit conspirans mutuus ardor” (Lucr.)

--Grufo (disputatio) 22:34, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

We have a source for "conflictor". Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:51, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)

But we have a source for collistrum too. --Grufo (disputatio) 22:04, 14 Septembris 2023 (UTC)