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I'm perfectly willing to accept that "squircle" is a somewhat satisfying portmanteau but the term is being used here as if it was in widely accepted usage and has a recorded lineage. Nowhere in the article does it mention how the term came into use. Without that, it's as if I just said that a "pentallipsoid" is a shape that has five lobes but is otherwise ellipsoid. Okay, I can conceptualize that, but (a) who first used the term, and where and when, and (b) why not call it an "ellipentagon" or some otherportmanteau? It's not enough to say that people are using a term that's not in any dictionary and expect people to accept it as part of the linguistic landscape. Can anyone help with background? Bricology (talk) 06:49, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Mathematicians etc. use a lot of terms which are not listed in traditional dictionaries, so that can't be the sole criterion for Wikipedia. The historical background is discussed in the Superellipse article... AnonMoos (talk) 11:17, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's the historical background of the interest in superellipse-type curves in design contexts. The squircle was an offshoot of this... AnonMoos (talk) 00:49, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The next time that Lewis Carroll contributes to editing an encyclopedia, I'll be careful how I treat him. Otherwise, citing a composer of fantasy verse could not be less relevant here. Bricology (talk) 00:25, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
He's the one who first applied the word "portmanteau" to a method of word composition, so love him or hate him, he's the originator. And his longer fictional works were fantasy prose... AnonMoos (talk) 11:06, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It probably contributed to usage of the term, in a kind of citogenesis (xkcd 978) about language. Now, besides Wolfram MathWorld, it is used in multiple academic papers, as a quick Google Scholar search shows, and thus it can't be taken off. Even if it is not a term in use in mathematics (due in part to superellipses in general not being a popular topic) it is clearly a term in use in design. This is probably a valid process when it is about language rather than facts, though I am not sure. Either way, I love this article and it provides me with boundless enjoyment. I am not sure how much you guys care about unregistered users, but it is my honest opinion. For my money, it could be a featured article. 179.228.66.29 (talk) 13:21, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you enjoyed the article! However the quality is far too low to qualify as a featured article. The term squircle was in use in the academic literature before I created this article in 2006, but it may have become more widespread since then. Modest Geniustalk16:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
179.228.66.29 -- if you want a real "Citogenesis" look at Oxford spelling: there's little evidence that that phrase was used in that meaning before it appeared as the title of a Wikipedia article (though that inconvenient fact wasn't really discovered until 2010). However, I don't think that applies to squircle... AnonMoos (talk) 23:04, 9 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I won't look closely at the article until later, but the natural meaning would be the distance between the center and the closest and most distant points on the curve. "Semimajor and semiminor axis" are terms which have a unique defvinition for an ellipse, but would not for a squircle. AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]