Talk:wait a minute

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Latest comment: 4 years ago by TheDaveRoss in topic RFD discussion: March 2019–March 2020
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RFD discussion: March–May 2018

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verb. SOP --Otra cuenta105 (talk) 18:55, 24 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

(Wait | hang on | hold on | just) a (minute | moment | mo | jiffy)... nothing special about this one. Delete. Equinox 22:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)Reply


RFD discussion: March 2019–March 2020

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Sense 2: "Listen to me; pay attention". That is arguably the pragmatic intent, but I don't see it as a separate sense. It's more like "literally wait a minute [and don't go away yet]" because you have more to tell them. It's the same "wait a minute" as a warning when you want to stop somebody walking into the trap you just spotted, etc. etc. Equinox 22:07, 31 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Not a separate sense to what? Do you mean it is the same sense as sense #1, or that it is a SOP? In these uses “wait” is an urgent advice to suspend action until further notice (sense 2 of wait), and "a minute” clearly stands for an unspecified period of time (sense 2 of minute). Aside: I think this is actually an informal sense of the two-word term “a minute”. Pragmatics aside, this would indeed appear to be a sum of parts. The difference with sense 1 given for wait a minute, I think, is that there the speaker is addressing themselves, interrupting their spoken-out-loud thought process. But that is, ultimately, also not more than a pragmatic difference with the underlying literal meaning, the action to be suspended being the ongoing uttering of the train of thought. With a little further effort I expect we can also argue away the third sense.  --Lambiam 22:41, 31 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
Deleted - TheDaveRoss 19:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)Reply