Usor:IacobusAmor/Disputata anni 2013

E Vicipaedia

Lovers of their fathers[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi, Iacobe. I was struck by "Philopator" and found that there are a few more of them than en:wiki has yet dreamed of. Given the list in Philopator (discretiva), do you actually know which one was the inspiration for the name of the genus? At present the link goes via Philopator to Philopator II, but he, in spite of being on en:wiki, is probably the least famous of all! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:58, 8 Ianuarii 2013 (UTC)

campfire, again[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi, Iacobus! I thank you very much for answering my doubt in the Taberna, but could you help me again? How could I say "by/around/near the campfire"? Casquilho (disputatio) 11:58, 6 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Is something wrong with the simplicity of prope ignem ? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:47, 6 Februarii 2013 (UTC)
Ad ignem (considere, etc) usitata constructio est. Neander (disputatio) 15:00, 6 Februarii 2013 (UTC)
Ad ignem considere, I like it. Thanks! Casquilho (disputatio) 18:06, 6 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

miscellāneus[recensere | fontem recensere]

Salve Iacobus, ut vales? 1)Quod tibi videtur de Lucius Skywalker? Melius sit Lucas Skywalker?(Vel aliqua more nomine Graece). Etiam possumus facere sit instar origine Luke Skywalker . 2) De Categoria Lingua Hawaiiana, amabo te movere quam melius tibi sit.(Aut relinquas ut iam sit.) 3) Velim citer vel serius creare res de larva(sicut Anglice insect youngling) sicut re latine "Vermiculus" et 4) Simia. 5) verbum "tragice" debet sit in dictionario tuo Cassells quae in Whitaker inveniri potest. Quod tibi videtur? Gratias.Jondel (disputatio) 04:41, 21 Februarii 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi, Iacobe! I happened to notice that a couple of your recent pages (Leptatherina and Ferdinandus de Lesseps) aren't properly linked on other Wikipedias. May I ask: have you added them to Wikidata yet? It's necessary to do this, just as it used to be necessary to add a link directly on another wikipedia. Luckily it's even quicker to do it than it used to be. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:17, 11 Martii 2013 (UTC)

As discussed in our Swiss montagnard's page, let's wait a day or two, and if the bots haven't noticed these articles, a concerned human might attempt the fix. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:19, 12 Martii 2013 (UTC)
Certainly. These are early days. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:31, 12 Martii 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I think I worried you (or attempted to do so) unnecessarily. Just now I linked a Spanish article to an Italian one (there being no English equivalent), and that same minute the link I made was copied to Wikidata by a bot. We are being watched! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:08, 25 Martii 2013 (UTC)
Scary! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:08, 25 Martii 2013 (UTC)

Categories[recensere | fontem recensere]

I usually leave it a couple of weeks (sometimes much longer) before wikifying your redlink categories. I absent-mindedly acted faster at Diabolus and Satanas. Feel free to revert me, of course, if you are still at work on those categories -- I see that Hell and its denizens are still the focus of your attention :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:35, 6 Aprilis 2013 (UTC)

A curiosity is that none of my Latin dictionaries has a form of Hades, the Greek god of the underworld and hence the name of his domain. So I've been using infernus where necessary. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:40, 6 Aprilis 2013 (UTC)
Lots of new redlinks and red categories for you! ;) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:54, 6 Aprilis 2013 (UTC)

Gandalphus[recensere | fontem recensere]

I trust you will understand my peremptory words on that talk page are aimed not at you, but at those who dissert endlessly about philology without citing a source :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:24, 24 Aprilis 2013 (UTC)

De violoncello[recensere | fontem recensere]

Ave, IacoboAmore! I found the word cellum in the page about the cello and I've doubts about its existence. Maybe you've translated it from the English form, but I play it and I think cello is only used in English (for example not in Italian), so I wouldn't write it on the Latin page. Thanks for the attention, Franciesse 13:20, 2 Maii 2013 (UTC).

Not enough work has been done to collect the Latin names & nicknames of musical instruments. Cello is the usual name of the instrument in many languages, as exemplified by wikipedia articles in Basque, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilokano, Indonesian, Latvian, Lëtzebuergesch, Norwegian, Malay, Runa Simi, Swedish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Welsh, and perhaps others written in non-Roman scripts. For the moment, a footnote records that no attested Latin form has been found. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:00, 2 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your research, for the moment I'd cancel the name as you did, surely you know more than me about the relationships between English and Latin! Excuse me for my intrusion, but I'm going to work a little on that page, so I started from the title :-) Thanks again! Franciesse 14:57, 2 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot[recensere | fontem recensere]

... for your corrections of the new I've put about pope Tawadros and pope Francis! Rex Momo (disputatio) 15:39, 12 Maii 2013 (UTC)

The Horse and His Boy/Incipio.[recensere | fontem recensere]

Emendationibus tuis gratias tibi ago.Jondel (disputatio) 18:29, 12 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Landlocked[recensere | fontem recensere]

is mediterraneus (inland| remote from the coast ) ? Jondel (disputatio) 14:40, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and mediterranea (n.pl.) serves as 'inland country', but we don't yet have such an article to link to, do we? If we do, please feel free to change the link! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:44, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Don't know and will check now. Well, what I was thinking is we could use it as an adjective (?) e.g. Lacus supersalsus est landlocked=>mediterraneus. I wasn't sure if you felt strongly to use mesogaea.Jondel (disputatio) 15:10, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Yes, mediterraneus, -a, -um, but Latin sometimes gets unhappy when adjectives butt against each other, as they would in lacus supersalsus mediterraneus, so maybe mediterraneus lacus supersalsus ? The adjective mesogaeus, -a, -um may have been applied to this concept by our anonymous Iberian geographer, fortasse ex radicibus Graecis 'middle earth' significantibus; it's a species epithet in at least two genera, one a plant and one an insect. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:23, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)
There is, Civitas Mesogaea. Ok. New synonyms /vocabs for me!Jondel (disputatio) 15:14, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)
That's only a list of landlocked states, not an article on the concept of being landlocked (if indeed such an article is wanted). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:23, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps, I would be writing it. Jondel (disputatio) 15:56, 18 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Questions about the emendationes on the page of Philadelphia Flyers[recensere | fontem recensere]

Salve, IacobeAmor! I was just curious about some emendations you made on the Philadelphia Flyers page. I'm not questioning them, but I'd like to know if there are some peculiar reasons for them because I made similar pages of all the NHL teams and am wondering if I should make changes to them too. Φιλέτυμος (disputatio) 12:54, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

I took the defintion from the English wiki, which for professional sports based in Canada and the United States should be taken to be authoritative. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

First, the word manus, wherein I used turma. Is manus more preferable?

Turma (supposedly related to turba) apparently comes from the military vocabulary, referring to 'a squadron of thirty cavalrymen, one-tenth of an ala ' (though Ovid uses it for a troop of priests), and manus of course is just 'hand', which has various transferred senses, including 'a band or body of men'. Cassell's dictionary, designed to help English-speakers write Classical prose, says to translate 'team (of athletes)' as manus. However, turma is often seen in recent Latin, so I'm not in a position to judge, though my inclination is naturally to follow Cassell's. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Teams in some sports have subteams, often also called teams: a defensive squad and an offensive squad. Because of the association of turma with the notion of a squadron, it might be usefully precise to refer to a squad that's part of a team as a turma and the whole team itself, being more vaguely defined, as a manus. But again, let's see what others think. (This discussion might profitably be taken over to the Taberna.) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:45, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Then the translation of '”National Hockey League'”. I came up with series for the word ”league”, and you used foedus. Any comments on that? Φιλέτυμος (disputatio) 12:54, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

A series is basically a 'row, succession, chain', especially 'line of descent, lineage', so using it for 'league' seems odd, especially when we have foedus with the attested sense of 'league' (as between states or individuals). Bear in mind that sports is going to offer zillions of formally defined (often professional) leagues: basipila, canistriludium, football, Little League Baseball, the Ivy League, etc. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Finally the words for ”conference” and ”division”. I just used the Latin equivalent for the latter, but I wasn't happy with my choice for ”conference”: pars. I agree that pars fits better to the ”division” as you used it. Φιλέτυμος (disputatio) 12:54, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

For 'division', Cassell's says to use pars. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Part of my problems with the translation of ”conference” was that it seems to me an odd choice of word also in English. So do the words ”conference” and conloquium share a particular meaning or what is the foundation of the use of conloquium? Thanks in advance! Φιλέτυμος (disputatio) 12:54, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's the strangest of the lot. A conference is basically 'a meeting of two or more persons for discussing matters of common concern', but in modern English it has gained the sense of 'a territorial division of a [religious] denomination' and 'an association of athletic teams'. So if the development of Latin were to parallel the modern process, we'd have conloquium for 'a meeting of two persons' etc., extended to conloquium for 'an association of athletic teams'. However, an altogether different word may work better, and maybe other vicipaedians will advise! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:36, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Btw, welcome to Vicipaedia! Your articles are adding to the usefulness of the project! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:52, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)
Thank you very much, your explanations did clarify many things! Yea, that foedus is undoubtedly a better choice than series - I just had to come up with some term, because I didn't have that many good dictionaries at hand. And yes, it would be welcome if other vicipaedians gave their opinion of the term conference, but until that I'll go with the conloquium. Φιλέτυμος (disputatio) 14:06, 22 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Pigeons are pests[recensere | fontem recensere]

I saw your summary. A good thing you noticed. Please look at my comment at Vicipaedia:1000 paginae#Pigeons are pests -- Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:27, 23 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Heterocephalus glaber[recensere | fontem recensere]

Gratias emendationes tuas (--quamquam disputatio sit--). Erravi me paenitet. Tamen respondi. Quomodo satis dicere 'tunnel'? Crypta? Felicitationes.Jondel (disputatio) 14:57, 27 Maii 2013 (UTC)

Curticellae[recensere | fontem recensere]

Salve Iacobe! "30 516 incolarum habet." Could you explain this one to me? I thought accusative was right and was using "incolas habet" as a template on other Belgian commune pages, so let me know if they should all be changed and I can do that. Lesgles (disputatio) 21:57, 13 Iunii 2013 (UTC)

Accusative is right: the numerals are in the accusative: triginta milia quingentos sedecim. The singular of 1000, mille, is usually described as an indeclinable adjective; the plural, milia, as a neuter noun. So: one thousand inhabitants, but two thousands of inhabitants. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 23:32, 13 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
Ah, good to know, thanks! I'll change the other ones with multiple thousands. Vale, Lesgles (disputatio) 19:29, 14 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, I was just doing a little searching and found something that makes it sound a little more complicated, from this grammar: "Obs. 1. When smaller (adjective) numerals follow millia, the name of the objects enumerated, provided it comes afterwards, is put in the same case as millia (not in the genitive): e.g. Caesi sunt tria millia trecenti milites; Caesar cepit duo millia trecentos sex Gallos. But if the name of the objects enumerated comes first, it is usually put in the genitive governed by millia; e.g. Caesar Gallorum duo millia qvingentos sex cepit. Sometimes, however: Gallos cepit duo millia qvingentos sex. (Omnes eqvites, XV milia numero, convenire jubet, in apposition. Caes. B. G. VII. 64.)" I don't have a more modern grammar to check, though. Lesgles (disputatio) 20:38, 14 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
Allen & Greenough #134 and Gildersleeve #293 imply that the canonical (or at least the preferred) form is the genitive with milia, though other forms occur. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 09:57, 15 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
The practice identified in the old grammar quoted by Lesgles would be quite typical across languages, a sort of linguistic universal, that, in cases of doubt, the nearest handy element gets to choose the rule; so, if "milia" is nearest, it wants the genitive and gets it; if "trecenti -os -is" is nearest, it wants straight case-agreement and gets it.
I just looked in Woodcock, A New Latin Syntax (1959). He says the genitive is normal and doesn't notice the pattern that Lesgles cites. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:50, 15 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it looks like Gildersleeve does give the same pattern, at least in this edition: "tria milia quingenti equites, tria milia equitum et quingenti, equites tria milia et quingenti, equitum tria milia quingenti". Of course then he gives a quote from Livy with the genitive, but that may be because Livy liked using even mille with the genitive, as he notes below. I think Andrew's reasoning reflects why I was confused—that's a long time to hang on to the genitive when there are a lot of adjectives that come between. In a way, Gildersleeve's second option looks the best logically, but that would be clunky with large numbers ("30 milia incolarum et 516 habet"). Lesgles (disputatio) 16:38, 15 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
Gildersleeve says, point-blank: "in the Pl. it is a declinable substantive, and must have the Genitive." That's the rule. He then goes on to accommodate a variant, as noted above. To be the most useful to the widest audience, the style of reference works typically uses canonical forms and avoids curious exceptions, no matter how "logical" they might look, or how similar they might seem to patterns in writer's linguistic substrates. That's why the suffix for the third-person plural indicative perfect is given in Vicipaedia as -erunt instead of -ere, why media urbs is preferable to centrum urbis, and why Lutetia urbs clarissima is preferable to urbs clarissima Lutetia (and Nirvana grex musicus is preferable to grex musicus Nirvana, and so on). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:54, 16 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
I think in some of those examples you're being more prescriptive than Vicipaedia is; likewise in this case Gildersleeve, with his "must", seems more prescriptive than he should be. On the other hand it may be that Caesar is betraying his pre-classical education here: I don't know whether examples similar to those given by Lesgles could be cited from later authors. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:28, 16 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
It's curious that I read Gildersleeve's prescription in exactly the opposite way. To copy the whole paragraph: "Mille, a thousand, is in the Sing. an indeclinable adj. and is less frequently used with the Genitive: mllle mllites, rather than mllle militum, a thousand soldiers ; in the PI. it is a declinable substantive, and must have the Genitive: duo milia militum, two thousand(s of) soldiers = two regiments of soldiers. If a smaller number comes between, the substantive usually follows the smaller number." I read the "must" as applying uniquely when no other numbers follow; the following sentence is a weaker prescription ("usually") to ignore milia and follow the smaller numbers. Then the four examples given are the canonical usages, while the quote from Livy, withwhile the genitive is the curious exception (hence the "but"). Lesgles (disputatio) 20:42, 16 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
E. C. Woodcock, in A New Latin Syntax (1959, #77), states the rule this way: "the plural milia is a noun and always requires a genitive after it." In addition to the pattern cited by Andrew above, the seeming exceptions may relate to the fact that nouns may freely stand in apposition to each other; hence there's nothing wrong with pedites tria milia caesi sunt 'footsoldiers, three thousand (of them), were slain' = 'three thousand footsoldiers were slain'. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:13, 17 Iunii 2013 (UTC)
(If Woodcock were here, I'd like to ask him whether that after means "immediately after" or or not; it seems that the recent grammarians unfortunately don't explicitly consider this case...) But you're point about apposition makes sense. I think the takeaway is that different writers interpreted the relation between the noun quantified, the noun milia, and the adjective numerals in different ways, and there are ample authoritative examples to follow for both usages. Lesgles (disputatio) 17:04, 17 Iunii 2013 (UTC)

Gerasimus[recensere | fontem recensere]

Salve Iacobe! Gratias ago pro emendationibus tuis, commentatio multo melior videtur. Vale, Lesgles (disputatio) 19:36, 19 Iunii 2013 (UTC)

Sabbatum[recensere | fontem recensere]

I can't quite understand what you did here, or how it corresponds with your summary. Jondel had begun to translate (as requested at the Taberna) from simple:Shabbat. From where were you "restoring"? I don't see anything in the page history. Anyway, I've restored Jondel's last version. Obviously the Latinitas may want some work, but if there's anything more seriously wrong with the way the page has been started, please explain what it is. Thanks -- Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:54, 13 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

Iacobe, you appear to have started the article Shabbat in competition with Sabbatum (it has the same English interwiki link and no Wikidata record). It isn't a translation from simple:Shabbat and therefore it isn't what was "desired at the Taberna", in spite of your summarium. Your time's your own to spend, but you should understand that if the articles eventually have to be merged, that time may turn out to have been wasted. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:23, 14 Iulii 2013 (UTC)
Having read your last note on the Taberna, I'm blocking you for a day for timewasting. (Details) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:42, 14 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

Salve![recensere | fontem recensere]

Iacobus, how are you? Your advice is always valued here. Would you nowknow the word for gasoline? Also fyi I would like to be starting on the landlock article soon.RegardsJondel (disputatio) 10:09, 5 Augusti 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the last speaker: your advice is needed as much as ever, Iacobe! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:22, 5 Augusti 2013 (UTC)

Monotypica[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi, Iacobe. You might want to comment at Disputatio Categoriae:Genera monotypica. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:03, 13 Septembris 2013 (UTC)

De categoriis adumbratis[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi again, Iacobe. Please see my note at Vicipaedia:Taberna/Tabularium 20#De categoriis adumbratis (rubris). As explained there, you're free to restore the redlinks that I've deleted to uncreated categories. If you do, you then need to go ahead and create the categories -- which is fine if they match an existing series or will soon have a plurality of members. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:15, 20 Septembris 2013 (UTC)

-typicus or -typus[recensere | fontem recensere]

Dear IacobusAmor, Thank you very much for your input on Disputatio:Taxon_monotypum. You can read my response on the aformentioned page. With kind regards, Wimpus (disputatio) 10:43, 3 Octobris 2013 (UTC)

Footnotes at the cemetery[recensere | fontem recensere]

Hi, Iacobus. I may not be a kind programmer, but I noticed the problem at Coemeterium Montis Alburni and I have diagnosed and cured it on that page. Unluckily the footnote system on en:wiki is not ideal for people like you who want to translate a large part of a page, but not all of it, to another wikipedia. This is not something that a programmer can solve for you: you have to do it yourself as part of your translation work. So I'll tell you exactly what to do. If you see, where the footnotes should appear, the text

{{reflist
|refs=

then you have to copy all of the reflist over, including the {{ and including the following list of refs, all the way to }}. After doing that, and after you have translated all that you want to translate of the text, save. You may now see some horrible red messages after the footnotes, saying something like "Cite error, O incompetent American: <ref> tag with name "barth" defined in <references> is not used in prior text.". Make a note (or mental list) of the names -- in this case, "barth" -- OK? Now edit again, just the reflist section, and remove the entries that begin with the names you noted -- in this case, the entry beginning <ref name=barth>. Having removed from the list the refs that were listed in red, save again. Now, with reasonable luck, you should have perfect footnotes and no red messages :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:19, 1 Novembris 2013 (UTC)

Templates we don't have[recensere | fontem recensere]

I noticed also your urgent pleas about transferring templates from en:wiki. Will you allow me to try to explain why there is often no response even from those Wikipedians who are good at making templates? There were always two reasons, and there is now a third:

  1. It takes a long time to do this work, and often there is no evidence that you (or others) would ever want the template on more than a couple of pages. In economic terms, that time would be badly spent: Vicipaedia will benefit much more from other work than from this.
  2. Templates on en:wiki are continually being altered. There is no warning that such alterations are happening, and copying those changes to other wikipedias is really complicated and frustrating. Therefore, copying a template now, and expecting to rely on en:wiki for the data, will entail an unknowable amount of later work to keep the template active.
  3. The third reason is new. Wikidata is gathering the information that goes into many of these templates. It is already possible to design templates here that use the information at Wikidata, and these templates are not dependent on the unpredictability of en:wiki. So, this different kind of template will be better and will reward the time spent on it.

I'll mention this on the Taberna, so that others will comment if they think I'm mistaken in any way. If I'm right, I want to urge you not to copy en:wiki templates across -- not even in hidden text! -- unless they already work here, or unless you yourself are prepared to make them work. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:10, 2 Novembris 2013 (UTC)

Quaestio curiosa. Hoc etiam ab eo dependet, quibus de formularum generibus loquamur. Hoc maxime ad id, quod ad infocapsas , seu infoboxes spectat, animadverti, quod valde ob penuriam talium formularum irritabar - ad hodiernum diem. Nonnullis abhinc annis, ubi me ad Vicipaediam Latinam adiunxi, illo tempore mos fuit laicorum paginas creantium non formulas (sicut et meus) addere, sed ipsam codicem tabulae, ut in paginis Savariae et Regni Hungariae aliisque paginis olim faciebam. Et ego gaudeam, si formulas et Latine redditas faciamus. Paulisper autem irritor ob velocissimas (superfluasque, ut opinor) Vicipaediae Anglicae mutationes.
Alioquin gaudeo, quod forma recentissima nostrae Vicipaediae tam bene, ad hodiernorum Vicipaediarum effigiem aptata est renovata.--Martinus Vester (disputatio) 09:18, 4 Novembris 2013 (UTC)

But on the other hand ...[recensere | fontem recensere]

... wonderful material on American literature! At least one of those pages is, immediately, a pagina mensis candidate. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:39, 2 Novembris 2013 (UTC)

Better late than never[recensere | fontem recensere]

I just now saw your question at Disputatio:Gordius (auriga). Unluckily you marked it as a minor edit :) Anyway, I've now answered it. That's a delay of just under six years ... not bad, eh? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:54, 2 Novembris 2013 (UTC)

Poesis Civitatum Foederatarum[recensere | fontem recensere]

I emended the mentions of decennia in this new article. There were rather a lot -- no wonder you were worried about the pages disappearing! Please check whether the changes I've made agree with your meaning. The decennia pages from year 1900 onwards have been renamed, not deleted. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:45, 10 Decembris 2013 (UTC)

Latitudo alarum[recensere | fontem recensere]

Salve Iacobe! I was thinking of making a stub on latitudo alarum but then I saw at Disputatio Vicipaediae:Pagina mensis that you might already have a draft ready. If so, let me know! It's currently the top non-asteroid-related pagina desiderata. Lesgles (disputatio) 17:20, 15 Decembris 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking of doing that long ago, but my interests have moved on, so by all means feel free to proceed! It'll definitely be a useful addition. Whether that should be its lemma, though, remains an open question. Signifying 'breadth of the wings', it's a perfectly plausible term, but just about all bodyparts (and some of their measurements) in all fields of biology have nomina biologiae propria (often Latin, or so obviously formed out of Latinate patterns that their Latinization is obvious), so latitudo alarum might not be the last word on the subject, so to speak. (It's not even certain a priori that the best word for what we call a wing in reference to insects is really ala, but it may be, since instances of it turn up in Latin contexts found on the internet.) For a wealth of details, see en:Insect wing, and of course you'll have seen en:Wingspan. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:52, 15 Decembris 2013 (UTC)
Gratias ago de admonitionibus utilibus! I've found some examples of "latitudo alarum" in scientific Latin, though I had to disregard several references to an architectural "alarum latitudo" in Vitruvius. As for ala, Pliny seems to use both pinna and ala, so you're right that that should be mentioned. Of course, we don't even have a page on ala or pinna/penna, so maybe that's the place to start. Lesgles (disputatio) 23:50, 16 Decembris 2013 (UTC)