Talk:List of English words containing Q not followed by U

Possible additional words

Comparing this list to a similar list in The Scrabble Book by Gyles Brandreth (ISBN 1851525181), I noticed multiple words that appeared in that list but are not in this list. That list claims to be sourced to the 1983 editions of Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, Webster's New International Dictionary (Second Edition), Webster's Third New International Dictionary, The Random House Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary and The Oxford English Dictionary. Unfortunately, it doesn't specify which word comes from which dictionary, and I don't have access to the dictionaries in question (either 1983 or current editions) to verify. However, maybe somebody else does and wishes to look into these further. The words in question are:

bathqol - a divine revelation in Hebrew tradition
qaneh - an ancient Hebrew measure of length
qantar - a Mediterranean unit of weight
qasab - an ancient Near Eastern unit of length
qasaba - an ancient Arabian measure of area
qobar - a dry fog of the Upper Nile
qs - the plural of the letter q
qt - quiet; usually used in the phrase 'on the qt'
qvint - a Danish weight
shoq - an East Indian tree
shurqee - a south-easterly wind of the Persian Gulf
trinq - an oracular statement in Rabelias' Pantagruel
zaqqum - a tree with bitter fruit, mentioned in the Koran
zindiq - a heretic extremely unfaithful to Islam Lowercaserho (talk) 20:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

From memory, I think I've seen qantar in my Scrabble dictionary (could be wrong) and qs and qt definitely aren't in (I think you'd spell it q's). I'm also fairly sure I'd have played qvint had I seen it in there, though not sure enough to say it definitely isn't in there. I'll check it against my dictionary when I have access to a faster computer.--Launchballer 06:56, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

• Maqam?; taqsim? Joefromrandb (talk) 20:26, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Words with QU where the U represents a full vowel

Normally in English the QU combination is pronounced /kw/, or sometimes /k/, and is followed by a vowel. Maybe this article should include a sentence or two about words where a U after a Q represents a full vowel, such as qū, qurūsh, Quran, or whatever the various dictionaries may contain. While such words are technically outside the scope of the list as defined by its title, they are usually terms borrowed from languages (in these cases Chinese and Arabic) where the Q is an ordinary consonant that may or may not be followed by U, like almost all the words currently in the list are. --Theurgist (talk) 23:38, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

In fact this point has been raised more than once since the page's creation, above, and more examples have been cited, such as qubit. Usually foreignisms or new coinages, words with -qu- where the -u- is a full vowel are more akin to most words in this list than to the "ordinary" English words containing -qu-. Another recurring point is that many of the words listed are realia of the respective cultures and thus not truly English words. See a recent and brief discussion at the Language Reference Desk. --Theurgist (talk) 19:50, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Such cases may be interesting, but they don't seem to fall within the scope of the title of this article (see discussion at (#Qur'an should be in here above). By the way, using "q" to transcribe Hebrew alphabet ק or Arabic alphabet ق is historically correct -- all three have a common origin. AnonMoos (talk) 15:20, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Qatar...

...is the name of an Arabic country. It begins with Q not followed by U. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 14:24, 7 January 2020 (UTC) It's on the list.

Proper nouns

I see a lot of references to words being excluded specifically because they are proper nouns, but I cannot see any reason that proper nouns are excluded as a rule. Conceivably some people don't want them included because this list serves use for avid Scrabble fans, but that is absolutely not Wikipedia's scope. I propose that the lead be reworded and (appropriate) proper nouns be included in the list. -- HTGS (talk) 20:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that would lead to overwhelming the list with an indefinite number of Arabic, Chinese, Albanian, Inuit placenames etc (potentially many thousands of them), as is already basically explained in the article. AnonMoos (talk) 03:17, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how these thousands of words would all be supported by references in reasonable dictionaries... but maybe the entry criteria are more relaxed than I assumed? -- HTGS (talk) 11:58, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

That's part of the problem -- once names are admitted, then there's no clear boundary between which should be included and which should be excluded. I included the word POTENTIALLY in my comment above for this reason. AnonMoos (talk) 13:21, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

There is absolutely a clear boundary; those words supported by reputable dictionaries can be added to the list. Iraq can easily be added by referencing any dictionary, while Saqib cannot. -- HTGS (talk) 13:28, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I doubt there's as much agreement between dictionaries as you assume, considering that different dictionaries have different purposes and degrees of comprehensiveness. Names of fully-sovereign countries are very easy to decide, but once you start to dig down further, many names would be caught up in a gray penumbra of uncertainty, which invoking dictionaries in general (instead of one specific dictionary) would do little to resolve... AnonMoos (talk) 14:13, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I can't figure out what you mean by "invoking dictionaries in general". I don't suspect that editors should allow entries from The Big Dictionary of Arabic Baby Names to be added. If a word is included in the OED or Webster or Collins though, then it is unambiguously an English word. I'm sure, as we do for any other change, we can decide as we go which dictionaries are appropriate or not.

I also notice you are using a script or editing tool that makes changes to other people's comments. Could you please turn that tool off when editing talk pages? Thanks. -- HTGS (talk) 00:51, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Different dictionaries, even among general purpose mainstream dictionaries, have different policies and different intended uses. I suspect that the single-volume American Heritage has more name entries than the many-volumed big OED (at least among the editions that I've examined).

Unfortunately, since the stupid encryption protocol upgrade was imposed in December 2019, I mostly can only edit Wikipedia through an indirect method which is not fully Unicode-compliant, as discussed at User_talk:Baseball_Bugs/Archive024#Ref_desks_edits. The only way for me to get around the stupid imposed encryption protocol upgrade was to buy a whole new computer, and I eventually did that -- but buying a new computer still didn't allow me to get around the stupid imposed encryption protocol upgrade when posting from home (only when using public WiFi at a different location, something which it's not practical for me to do more than a few hours a week). To get around the stupid imposed encryption protocol upgrade at home, I would have to get a completely different type of Internet service than the one I have, and this new Internet service would not work with my old computer (which I still use quite regularly, and in fact am using right at this moment). AnonMoos (talk) 01:30, 27 August 2021 (UTC)