Re: git: 71f0bf9790 - main - .vale/styles: Merge spelling-exceptions

> On 23 Dec 2023, at 20:22, Moin Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 23, 2023, at 8:55 PM, Pau Amma <pauamma@gundo.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On 2023-12-23 18:51, Ceri Davies wrote:
>>>> On 23 Dec 2023, at 18:43, Moin Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On Dec 23, 2023, at 7:23 PM, Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> On 23 Dec 2023, at 11:33, Moin Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Dec 23, 2023, at 12:07 PM, Ceri Davies <ceri@submonkey.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On 22 Dec 2023, at 14:59, Muhammad Moinur Rahman <bofh@freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> +descendents
>>>>>>>> Although I have not checked for the context in which it is used, this word is almost certainly misspelled as “descendent” is an adjective. The noun “descendants” is most likely the intended use.
>>>>>>> No it's not. The actual word is descendant which can be used as both Noun and Adjective and descendents is the plural of that.
>>>>>> That is not correct.  Pluralising a noun by adding an “s” does not frequently - or ever, as far as I can think - change the spelling of the rest of a word.
>>>>>> “Descendent”, as I said, is an adjective and the plural of “descendant” is “descendants”.
>>>>> At the moment I am not in the state to fight over a word. If you think the word is wrong please find the origin in the doc tree and submit a review or commit it.
>>> It’s definitely wrong.  I will change it at some point, but we need to
>>> be extra careful with words we are adding to the linter.
>> 
>> If I may:
>> 
>> MW online (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/descendant) has "descendant" both as an adjective and a noun, and says "or less commonly descendent" in both.
>> 
>> AHD online (https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=descendant) has it as a noun, and as an adjective says "Variant of descendent". Its "descendent" entry (https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?id=D5155900) has it only as an adjective, and says "de·scen·dent also de·scen·dant"; both AHD entries together imply but do not say outright "descendent" is more common.

I read this as 50% of the reference material you quote supports what I said, and the other 50% supports preference for my view.

>> I couldn't, unfortunately, check the ODAE as it seems to have no free online edition. Still, as the above shows, there's room for disagreement and which of you is right depends on which dictionary you prefer. So the question becomes: which dictionary does (or should) the FreeBSD Documentation Project prefer when they disagree?

Therefore, this isn’t the question.

If we’d perhaps had a discussion on doc@ about the use of vale as I asked for about a year ago, instead of carlavilla@ literally laughing at me for suggesting it, we might have bottomed this out.

Ceri