Talk:специальная военная операция

RFD discussion: March–July 2022

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специальная военная операция

Russian. SOP. Vininn126 (talk) 11:54, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Delete; This just means "special military opiration", which isn't literally "war", it's just interpreted that way. Thadh (talk) 11:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Could potentially be interesting for its descendants (diff). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 16:10, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

We can list such descendants, if so desired, as a calque without listing their original as an entry.  --Lambiam 12:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Keep Shumkichi (talk) 22:56, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm open to keeping it if the term has become used as an obvious set-phrase euphemism for war, or for the specific ongoing one, and not as a generic term for a "special" operation. Usage notes should indicate whether the term is used by supporters or detractors of the operation, and whether there is a satirical connotation as there is in the German descendant. Quotations would be welcome. 70.172.194.25 17:55, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Although this demonstrates the cynicism and dishonesty of the Russian government, I think it's an SoP and not a term we need to keep. We already have a more common colloquial term спецопера́ция (specoperácija, “(military) special operation”). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Delete. If someone steals a cellphone and then claims that they “found it on the ground”,^[1] we are not going to document a sense “to steal” for the verb find on the ground. The meaning of an utterance is what the speaker intends it to mean to their audience, also when they are lying. Only when people start to use a phrase as a wink-wink joke, as happened for fall off the back of a lorry, knowing that their audience will get it, does the euphemistic or otherwise veiled sense deserve an entry. There is no evidence of the phrase специальная военная операция being used with the intention that the audience hears “war”. If such evidence emerges later, with uses spanning at least a year, we may then consider including it.  --Lambiam 11:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam Ten jaki sprytny. Brawo, odkryłeś, jak działają idiomy. Jedyny problem z tą konkretną frazą jest taki, że nie ma przywileju czasu i nie wiemy, czy będzie używany w przyszłości. Ale już jest używany jako idiom. Nie pozdrawiam. Shumkichi (talk) 19:50, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

The requirement of uses spanning a year comes straight from our criteria for inclusion. A temporary exemption for “hot words” is possible, but still requires evidence of idiomatic use; as far as I can see, such evidence is currently not available.  --Lambiam 23:12, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: You're of course right that this expression doesn't mean "war, invasion" and thus isn't idiomatic but to circle back to the previous point, I don't see where we can list the descendants if there's no entry for the original article. Maybe introducing something like a descendants hub (analogous to translation hubs) is an idea. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:07, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

When I wrote that, I thought that these terms described as descendants were used ironically and as such deserved their own entries. But it appears that they are merely unironic straightforward translations of the Russian phrase in all its SOP-ness and, if meeting our CFI at all, only because of Siberian coalmines. Putin talks about недружественные страны, which is translated as unfreundliche Staaten. These are the countries that have imposed sanctions (see also Список недружественных стран (Россия)), but this is no reason to define the meaning of недружественная страна (nedružestvennaja strana) as a euphemism for “a country that imposes sanctions” and list unfreundlicher Staat as a “descendant”.  --Lambiam 16:12, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha Umm, excusez-moi, but the phrase does mean "war, invasion"; ever heard of this little thing called "euphemism"? The very nature of idioms is that their individual components put together are not to be taken literally but figuratively. Shumkichi (talk) 15:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Shumkichi: As Lambiam said, the difference between bathroom and специальная военная операция (specialʹnaja vojennaja operacija) is that the former is used with the intention that the non-euphemistic meaning is received while the latter is not. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:40, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Fytcha ????????????????????????? bathroom is not an idiom, lol, it is literally a room to peepee and caca, and bath in

And I don't understand your argument. You literally said yourself that a NON-euphemistic meaning is NOT intended for the Russian word; in other words, it is a euphemism for war. Shumkichi (talk) 15:46, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@Shumkichi: Bathroom is an euphemism, which was my point. I don't see how idiomaticity makes a difference but sure: the difference between pass away and специальная военная операция (specialʹnaja vojennaja operacija) is that the former is used with the intention that the non-literal meaning is received while the latter is not. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:51, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

@FytchaNo, it's not an idiom, its main meaning is to take a bath, grrrrebfdsjhmvjsfgvbmszbzsdfjsdvb. It can have a secondary, nonliteral meaninng that's closely related to the main one, that's all.

"the difference between pass away and специальная военная операция (specialʹnaja vojennaja operacija) is that the former is used with the intention that the non-literal meaning is received while the latter is not" - what do you mean by that? Nothing makes sense in your weird argument. You die, you don't literally pass away, it's always gonna be idiomatic. The same goes for the Russian word, it's always gonna mean war. How is the non-literal meaning not received with the second one? Who cares what the original intention of Putin's was, lol? It's also used by other people, you know that? Shumkichi (talk) 15:58, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Keep as a figurative sense, and also because the German calque has got its entry. The SoP rule should not apply to every term: one could as well delete Первая мировая война as SoP. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 09:56, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Is there evidence the term (or, for that matter, its German calque) is used in figurative sense? If it is not used in a figurative sense, I feel we should not keep it as a figurative sense. Our entry for Первая мировая война is also not kept as a figurative sense.  --Lambiam 23:20, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Since the special military operation has turned into a conflict, the term no longer is SoP. This term is as entry-worthy as the hot words slava Ukraini & heroiam slava. And by ‘figurative’ I mean non-literal, and a non-literal term of such significance that meets CFI is certainly a valid entry. And indeed, this coinage could become a historical term like Великая Отечественная война. The Ukrainian conflict has had a great impact geopolitically, and it’s only fitting that we lexically keep up with current affairs, that is, tommorow’s history. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 17:00, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Putin’s “special military operation” has been an armed conflict from the moment it started. Repeating that the term is not SoP and entry-worthy does not make it so. In uses outside Russia we typically see the term enclosed in quotation marks, like here. This echoes Putin’s words. In sources based inside Russia the term is used “as is”, as seen here, simply parroting Putin’s words without a hint of irony and not as a euphemism. We should keep up with current affairs, but not proactively. Kenneth Adelman infamously wrote articles with Cakewalk in the title, proclaiming that “demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk”.^[2] We know how this turned out, and Adelman’s prognosis has been much derided.^[3][4][5] It was semi-predictable that the idiomatic sense of the term cakewalk would inherit an ironically inverted sense, but this simply did not happen, and expectations that in the course of tomorrow’s history the term under discussion will gain another sense than what Putin chooses to convey to the Russian people are based on crystal-ball gazing.  --Lambiam 20:36, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam. PUC – 10:15, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Not sure. It feels a bit too early, but it's an interesting case of Newspeak that might be worth documenting. – Jberkel 10:28, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam. This reminds me of WT:Tea room/2021/December#"fake_news", discussing whether Trump's use of "fake news" to refer to info which is actually true was a different sense: no, and if someone hawks a fake as a "genuine Rolex", it doesn't mean we should have a definition # fake at genuine. As I opined in the Tea Room, "sometimes people use words to be dishonest or otherwise wrong, and that doesn't normally change the dictionary definitions of the words", or as Lambiam put it, "The meaning of an utterance is what the speaker intends it to mean to their audience, also when they are lying." If people pick up the phrase and use (3x in durable media) "fake news" to mean "real information", or "special military operation" to mean—to convey to their audience— "war", then we can reconsider. (I see we do have "police action", but that one has over a century of use behind it, in reference to various wars.) - -sche (discuss) 02:04, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Delete as a noun entry. If it exclusively refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then this is a proper noun and should be treated as such. We have no indication that it actually means "war, invasion" outside of that. Theknightwho (talk) 14:32, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

RFD-deleted. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:50, 4 July 2022 (UTC)