Talk:blow down

Deletion discussion

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blow down

To blow something down, just looks like blow + down AFAICT. WurdSnatcher (talk)

• Delete as per nom.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 14:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Sorry to vacillate, but on second thoughts, blow down, as in The Three Little Pigs, means to bring into a state of ruin through blowing. This is not the literal sense, which would be "I blew the pingpong ball down the slope". So I think we should keep it.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
    • But that seems to just be another sense of blow. We may have blow up, but we don't have "blow into a million little pieces", "blow sideways" (as in this, this and this), or "blow apart", or "blow to smithereens", or "blow to the ground", "blow off one's feet", "blow senseless", etc. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:49, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
    • I think a "to destroy; to reduce to rubble"-definition might be valid, it sounds right but is very hard to search for. WurdSnatcher (talk)
      • But those senses of blow involve explosives, not wind. Lots of things get blown down by wind/hurricanes, etc. aside from big bad wolves.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:56, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Not convinced that blowing something down necessarily implies demolition, simply because demolition might be a natural consequence of being blown down. A tree or a flagpole or a tent or a fence can be blown down, without being demolished; admittedly the tree is probably beyond repair, but we wouldn't say it's been demolished or brought to a state of ruin. A plastic Santa on the roof can be blown down without sustaining any damage. Is the meaning of "blown down" different if the object isn't destroyed, or is the notion of physical destruction independent of the phrase? Right now I'm thinking that it arises from knowledge of what's being blown down, not the words "blown down". P Aculeius (talk) 13:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe not always necessarily demolition, or destruction, but certainly damage of some kind. If the Santa (who in their right mind puts a Satan on the roof anyway?) or TV aerial is blown down, then even if not broken, there is damage that has to be put right. When things are blown down, we understand that repair will be needed. It is typical of some phrasal verbs to look like SoP, when in reality there is a certain specificity to the construction that more often than not means a more narrow definition than the simple SoP. To blow s/t down a slope or a tube does not imply damage and repair. "The power lines were blown down last night" most certainly does imply damage and repair. Specific definition. I like to offer the example of "cut up" to help users to better understand phrasal verbs. Just think of the difference in meaning between "He cut his finger" and "He cut up his finger". The meaning of "blow down" as a phrasal verb is parallel. -- ALGRIF talk 15:34, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

If a thing can be "blown down" without damaging it, then the notion of damage isn't inherent in the phrase; one merely assumes or infers damage to things that would normally suffer damage if blown down. A storm blows down leaves, but doesn't damage them; twigs and branches that have been blown down may damage the tree, or merely prune it of dead wood; but the twigs and branches that have been blown down wouldn't necessarily be considered damaged. Right now it sounds like all we have is that "to blow down" means "to blow on something so that it falls down". I don't think anyone is confused by the lack of reference to damage or destruction, which depends largely on what's being blown down. As it stands, the sense in question equals, "to blow on something so that it falls down; the object may or may not sustain damage, or if it is a house, it will be destroyed, unless it is a treehouse, toy house, birdhouse, or similar object, in which case it might sustain minimal damage and be repairable, or in the case of Eeyore's house, easily rebuilt using the original materials." P Aculeius (talk) 18:13, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It is listed as a phrasal verb elsewhere. Its idiomaticity seems to come by it being specific to the wind (so the big bad wolf blowing down a house wouldn't count). I'm not sure I buy that, but I'll change my vote to neutral, maybe a weak delete. WurdSnatcher (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Delete as SOP. As noted above, it just means to blow down; compare "knock down" and "blow over" (also SOP). A sudden burst of gas out of a sealed cannister might blow a nearby cannister down, or blow it over, or knock it down or knock it over. A wolf might blow a pig's house down, or use a ram to knock it down. You might use a leaf-blower to blow leaves down out of a tree, or to blow them down the street into a neighbour's yard. Etc. - -sche (discuss) 19:17, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

• Keep per lemmings heuristic: some sense present in Collins[1], the nominated sense present in MacMillan[2] and McGraw-Hill[3]. Also in usingenglish.com[4], as pointed above. On another note, the corresponding noun blowdown is kept anyway, and even Merrian-Webster[5] has it, in relation to trees. Furthermore, I thin the phrase will be useful for translations; I put "the trees were blown down" into Google translate, and for German I got umgeweht and abgeblasen, and for Czech I get *odvětrány, utter nonsense. For "blow down", Google translate gives me *foukat dolů, which does not work either. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:37, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
• Keep: per Dan Polansky Purplebackpack89 18:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 17:01, 25 December 2015 (UTC)