Category talk:English rare terms

There are so many extremely common words in the list below (e.g. accident, abort), and some words that I'm not convinced by (e.g. adorabubble... this isn't urbandictionary). I'm not going to start editing anything, but this category definitely seems to be in need of a clean-up. 217.171.129.69 22:58, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The category is auto-generated from all entries that use the "(rare)" gloss on at least one definition; therefore accident and abort will have particular rare senses, and not be rare in all senses. In each case see the linked entry. Equinox ◑ 14:55, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand now that it is an auto-generated page, however I can't find the "(rare)" gloss on any definition for accident. Maybe I am just missing it somehow. 217.171.129.70 18:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

It's noun sense 14: "(uncountable, philosophy, rare) Appearance, manifestation." Equinox ◑ 18:14, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

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Category:English rare terms

It is very often not the term that is rare, but the etymology group, the PoS, or the sense. I have no specific suggestion for a replacement, but "English rare definitions", though vague, would be less misleading. At some point we have to recognize that out categorization is seriously deficient when it operates below the L2 level for polysemous entries. DCDuring TALK 02:17, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

If the entire etymology group is rare, or the entire POS is rare, then I think that's a rare term. For example, I'd consider the verb likeness to be a rare term, no matter that it derives from an identical noun that is not rare. (And no matter that it's not currently tagged as rare . . .) But rare senses are trickier; maybe Category:English terms with rare senses? Honestly, I've never totally understood the purpose of these categories. Is someone going to be looking through Category:English rare terms wanting to see common words that have rare uses? Are there any common words that don't have rare uses? I almost feel like {{rare}} simply shouldn't categorize, and Category:English rare terms should be added manually/botically when the term as a whole is rare; but then, the same logic would apply to many other such categories as well. —Ruakh_TALK 02:30, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

For sense-level categories that have few members, categories are very useful. "Rare" isn't one of them. I'd be happy enough to see it go. If we could look at the lang= paremeter for context templates at CatScan we could use CatScan for maintenance purposes. I'd be happy with the bot proposal. Who might do it? It would seem to be a BP matter. DCDuring TALK 03:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see how cat:English rare terms is different (w.r.t. the nomination here) from cat:English nouns (it's not the word that's a noun but some senses thereof) or cat:Mathematics or, well, almost any of our cats. You wanna change the whole system, that's an admirable idea — but why nominate this one to be changed?​—msh210℠ (talk) 05:39, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Because I don't believe in grand top-down projects, don't have enough confidence to propose grand changes. I think they account for great wastes of time and worse. In some ways, this is analogous to the way law works. Things begin with individual cases.

The inappropriateness of the name of this category struck me when I was working on [[fistula]]. I had been bothered by this before, but I guess the attention being devoted to categories lately makes me question the soundness of the elaborate structure being built on such a questionable infrastructure. DCDuring TALK 06:26, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I think I proposed to add something to {{context}} like def, so {{rare|def=1}} (or any valid character) will convert from Category:English rare terms to Category:English terms with rare definitions. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of it, merely if I were to implement something, I would implement it like that. I mildly oppose it, for technical reasons and also because I think it's better to edit the category descript to say 'English rare terms or English terms with rare definitions'. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Mglovesfun on this. I proposed this a while ago, but I think now it's not really feasible to make this work. I changed the description for the category, though. —CodeCat 11:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

If the category title is as misleading as this is, the category should be hidden. Those who would not be misled are registered and therefore would have the option of hiding or displaying hidden categories. Or we could rely on users not actually using the categories. I don't think we have too much evidence of use. The principle could be broadly applied. DCDuring TALK 16:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I dunno, entries in Category:English nouns can also be verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. so why not allow Category:English rare terms to include entries that have non-rare senses? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:00, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I find all of these sentences O.K., except the last one:

• "Abstract is a noun."
• "Abstract is an adjective."
• "Abstract is a verb."
• "Abstract is a common term."
• "Abstract is a rare term."

Do you disagree?

—Ruakh_TALK 19:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

No: good point.​—msh210℠ (talk) 04:29, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah it's about antonymy, verb doesn't imply not a noun, but rare does imply not common. --Mglovesfun (talk) 08:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Since apparently nobody likes Category:English rare terms anymore, I created, templatized and populated Category:English terms with rare senses. The other mentioned name was Category:English terms with rare definitions. --Daniel 18:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)