Yezur Wiki:Ambiguous glosses

A working list of Dictionary entries whose English glosses do not distinguish them. It is the counterpart to a ruling the operator made on 2026-08-21 over calf and bone: where a language has two words and English has one, the one-word gloss inherited from the export hides the distinction rather than recording it, and the entries read as free variants when they are not.

Each row names the language, the competing lemmas, what their definitions currently say, and a suggested split. The suggestions are suggestions — the operator rules, and the ruling is what gets written.

How the list was made

Every row of the Lexemes table was grouped by language, part of speech and gloss; any group holding more than one lemma is a collision. Of 3,752 lexemes, 44 groups collided. Inflected-form pages, which carry no gloss, were excluded.

The collisions fall into three kinds, handled separately below: glosses where the definitions already draw the distinction and only the gloss field was stale; lemmas that genuinely need a ruling; and one case that is not an ambiguity at all but a mistake in an etymology.

Settled without a ruling

In these the entry already said the right thing and only the one-word gloss= field — which is what the collision check reads — was stale. Corrected 2026-08-21.

Language	Lemma	Was	Now	Because
Besoh	o'	fingernail	claw	The definition already reads "claw, talon (of beasts) — the human nail is kio'".
Besoh	go	ten	whole, full	The numeral sense is already marked archaic on the entry; it has passed to göj.
Besoh	bë	right	right (hand)	bë is the right hand and strong side; mon is right as in correct.
Besoh	mon	right	right (correct)	As above.
Proto-North-Andusian	*gira	play	game	From Proto-Andusian *gida ("dance"), and glossed "contest, game" on the entry. The plain verb is *gidz.

Dictionary:mum was also repaired in passing: its two Proto-South-Andusian etymologies had their part-of-speech headings at the same level as the etymologies, so neither nested under its own.

Needs a ruling

Herta-Olaic: one etymon, two reflexes

Thirteen Gaillean lemmas descend in pairs from a single Proto-Herta-Olaic word and reach Middle Airananwe still paired, with the same gloss on both. Two reflexes of one etymon is a normal thing for a language to have — but the pair almost always divides the sense-field between them, and here nothing records how.

#	Gloss	Proto	Gaillean	Middle Airananwe	Suggested split	Verdict	Notes
1	stone	*o:jig͡ɣ	oiat / oisie	oyte / oysye	Stone as a material against a stone as an object — the split already ruled for bone.	pending	oisie: piece of stone, oiat: material
2	sea	*kɸaɲɛx	piecia / qangha	piecie / qangyaa	The sea as an expanse against a named body of water; or inshore water against open water.	pending	synonyms
3	child	*ᵐbilwə	mbila / theste	mbile / these	A young person against someone's offspring, of any age.	pending	mbila: a child theste: offspring
4	burn	*rkaʒtə	awarei / reghazhtei	ooeree / regyasytee	Intransitive (to be alight) against transitive (to set alight).	pending	awarei: be on fire reghazhtei: transitive
5	live	*ruo:ʃt	rocettei / videi	rocetee / vindestee	To be alive against to dwell, to reside somewhere.	pending	rocettei: dwell videi: be alive
6	they	*aɪʃxe	aecei / icei	aycee / ecee	Animate against inanimate; or, given the pair below, the same distinction the singular makes.	pending	icei is female, aecei is male/generic.
7	he/she/it/etc	*xmɑtʲe:	athe / hima	—	As above. The gloss "he/she/it/etc" is itself worth replacing with whatever the ruling settles.	pending	hima is female, athe is male/generic.
8	you	*ixaβ (pl.) / *nwijɔ (sg.)	ihav / nio	hyaave / nie	Already answered upstream: the proto distinguishes plural from singular and Ancient Hertic labels its pair ιαπα (plural) / νου (singular). Gaillean and Middle need the same labels. See the error below.	pending	yes, clearly ihav and hyaave are plural, and nio/nie are singular.
9	in	*ho:tβ	hoth / ou	hoth / uue	Static location (in) against motion (into).	pending	hoth: inside of, contained by ou: more generically "at a location" -> in England.
10	at	*uztk	sou / uzh	—	Place against time; or a general locative against a precise one.	pending	sou: time uzh: place

Herta-Olaic: unrelated pairs

These three have no common etymon, so they are simply two words the export gave one gloss.

#	Gloss	Gaillean	Middle Airananwe	Suggested split	Verdict	Notes
11	by	ith / taw	ith / itaa	Agent ("written by her") against proximity ("by the door"). English merges these; most languages do not.	pending	taw: nearby / ith: action done by
12	for	bell / wiu	bel / iyu	Benefactive ("for you") against purpose or duration ("for three days").	pending	bell: purpose / iyu: benefactive
13	step-mother	siquiba / velna-hwith	siqie / velan-huith	velna-hwith is transparently a compound and siquiba is not, which usually means one is the plain word and the other formal, legal or distancing.	pending	siquiba is a more colloquial term, also meaning "adoptive mother" or "caretaker" or effectively "baby-sitter". velan-huith is the formal term.

Andusian

#	Gloss	Languages	Lemmas	Suggested split	Verdict	Notes
14	he, she, it	Proto-Andusian and all three branch protos, and Besoh	*dʰɛ / *o, and their reflexes	Two third-person pronouns run the length of the family with no distinction recorded anywhere. Proximal against distal, or animate against inanimate, would both be ordinary. Whatever is ruled propagates to eight entries.	pending	dhe: female o: male
15	hail	Proto-South-Andusian, Besoh	*mum / *rɔts, mium / roc	mum comes from *muᵐb ("snow"), rɔts from a word already meaning hail and ice. Soft hail or graupel against the hard hailstone would follow the etymologies.	pending	synonyms

Besoh: superseded senses left unmarked

Besoh repeatedly coined a new word to escape a homophone — and in one case, go / göj, the older entry says so plainly: "archaic: ten — the numeral sense has passed to göj." Four more pairs did the same thing without leaving the note, so both lemmas still claim the sense.

One ruling covers all four: whether the older word keeps the sense alongside the new one, or is marked superseded the way go is.

Human note: No, if there is a superseded form we don't keep the word on the old. This isn't divergent, it's just a differing path. If anything, we also don't list "lost final consonant restored" or "escaping homophones"; those are bordering on out-of-character comments.

#	Sense	Older lemma	Replacement	What the replacement's etymology says	Verdict	Notes
16	sharp	he (etymology 3)	heĥ	"the lost final consonant restored archaically"	pending
17	stone	ho (etymology 2)	hoĥ	"the lost final consonant restored archaically"	pending
18	spear	gö (etymology 3)	gön	"extended with -n to escape its homophones"	pending
19	new	ba' (etymology 2)	beza	"Origin uncertain" — so this pair may instead be a real split (ba' young, raw against beza new, fresh).	pending

An error, not an ambiguity

Gaillean ihav and its Middle Airananwe reflex hyaave both give their etymon as *nwijɔ — the singular — which is also the etymon of nio / nie. The plural *ixaβ has no Gaillean descendant at all, though Ancient Hertic ιαπα continues it and matches ihav in shape.

Reading ihav < *ixaβ fixes the etymology, gives the plural a reflex, and settles row 8 at the same time. It needs confirming rather than ruling, but it is a content change either way.

Human note: Confirmed - ihav and hyaave are from ixaB.

See also

• Yezur Wiki:Dictionary structure — the settled decisions, including the per-sense translations rule and the reciprocal-link rule
• Yezur Wiki:Daily routine/Report — the maintenance routine's own flag table