Talk:Tabasco sauce

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RFV[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


What is this? If it is a brand name, it should be proper noun, shouldn't it? What is really the brand name here? Is it "Tabasco sauce" or "Tabasco"? Is there a common noun "tabasco sauce"? --Hekaheka 14:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is it's a genericized trademark, though I don't have any strong feelings about whether it should be capitalized in that usage. I can certainly imagine saying "Please pass the Tabasco sauce" to a friend I'm eating dinner with, even if the sauce in question is not Tabasco™ brand pepper sauce made by the McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana. —Angr 15:44, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this here? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
With "here" I suppose you mean RfV, not Wiktionary. It's here basically because we need to verify whether "Tabasco sauce" is a noun or a proper noun, or both. Current POS is "Noun", but the definition appears to be for "Proper noun". If it is a common noun, current definition looks more like an etymology.--Hekaheka 21:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Even if Tabasco is a brand name, Tabasco sauce cannot be called a proper noun... Lmaltier 06:50, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why? DCDuring TALK 12:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because the difference between a common noun and a proper noun is related to the sense. The POS must be the same in Tabasco sauce, béchamel and gravy. Lmaltier 18:51, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What is the nature of the relationship between the difference and the sense? Is the POS the same for "Ron" and "my brother-in-law", which are semantically identical and both hyponyms of "man", just as Tabasco and bechamel are hyponyms of sauce? DCDuring TALK 00:55, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look at proper noun. Lmaltier 06:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have. I was hoping to be able to develop criteria to add to Appendix:English_proper_nouns#Proper_noun_as_Part_of_Speech_in_Wiktionary or insert in Wiktionary:English proper nouns. DCDuring TALK 12:20, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I made a new version of the entry based on the assumption that "Tabasco sauce" is a common noun. The "official" way to write the brand name seems to be "TABASCO® Sauce". --Hekaheka 13:32, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That it's capitalized in promotional material (including on product labels) does not mean that that's the official spelling of the brand name.​—msh210 (talk) 16:17, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not a lawyer, but I have the impression that brand names are almost always in all-caps. eBay, for example, has [a trademark on http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:q1ifp1.4.32 EBAY], not on "eBay"; but its user agreement and privacy policy and so on, which amount to user-facing legal documents, all use "eBay". So in the general case, I don't think there's any such thing as an "official" capitalization, one way or the other. —RuakhTALK 16:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. According to company's own web site [1] the trade mark is TABASCO®. Thus "Tabasco sauce" must be a common noun and the definition should be something else than "A trademark of..." --Hekaheka 21:02, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's Tabasco, brand name of a sauce. Even if the manufacturer never calls it that, people do. Tabasco sauce doesn't meet the idiomaticity requirement, I don't think.​—msh210 (talk) 21:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Tabasco sauce" should be deleted then? --Hekaheka 21:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
IMO.​—msh210 (talk) 16:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Surely not. Tabasco sauce isn't a "sauce" of "tabasco". ---> Tooironic 13:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the information to Tabasco, deleted the content of Tabasco sauce as RFV-failed as uncited, but left a redirect pointing to Tabasco. How's that? - -sche (discuss) 00:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]