Talk:item of furniture

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item of furniture

SoP. Item of + uncountable noun. - Algrif 11:16, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but it's not clear that "item of furniture" is what is said for an individual item that can be considered furniture. furniture is uncountable, which should be mentioned on the furniture page. Only some uncountable nouns can take "item of", for exmaple item of clothing, item of data; whilst others don't, such as item of meat or item of cutlery. --Keene 14:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes it's a SoP, but as this is a multilingual dictionary - albeit the English version of it - and many, possibly most, languages have a separate word for a piece of furniture, it might be justified to keep the acceptable English terms on board. Any, even subtle differences in usage should be pointed out in glosses. Without guidance one might believe that e.g. part of furniture is an acceptable translation for mueble. I don't really have an opinion whether the term should be kept or deleted, but wanted to bring this point into consideration. BTW piece of furniture beats item of furniture 7 to 1 in a Google search. Hekaheka 15:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

And "piece of" works with "meat", "cutlery". Hmm. Would it make sense to have entries of the form "piece of X", plural "X", substituting other words like "item" if "piece" doesn't work {like "head of cattle"). It would be an interesting way of accommodating at least one flavor of uncountability. DCDuring 15:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I've thought about that idea also. But the problem is we can end up with a huge clutter of words such as: lump, hunk, chunk, sack, cup, tube, bottle, glass, and so on. It might be a useful Usage notes item to identify the most common forms of making a given noun countable. Some would be tricky, like water, which could use any kind of container to make it countable, while others, like fog (bank of fog is all I can think of at the moment), and bread, are interesting. But I don't think and entry for item of X would be at all helpful. - Algrif 16:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I think an Appendix first would be helpful, though I've no idea what to call it. We have one (somewhere) for group names of animals and such, so a "counting unit" could be helpful. Incidentally, I never say "item of furniture"; I say "piece of furniture", and that's what I hear other people say. --EncycloPetey 17:22, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

On mature reflection, both of the above seem like more useful ideas than seperate entries for all the cases that come to mind, although there will probably turn out to be something "X of Y" that merits a seperate entry. I have tried my hand at usage notes at the entries for cattle (head of) and furniture (piece of). I look forward to thoughts and/or amendments and even reasoned deletions. DCDuring 17:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a sound idea. If several "piece-words" may be used with one mass noun, they would all be listed under the mass noun, and possible differences pointed out. "Item of furniture" seems to have its place in the English usage as it yields 90.000+ Google hits vs. 540.000 of "piece of furniture". As Connel points out, "item" appears to be used more in professional and commercial contexts, and "piece of furniture" is the dominant common language term. Hekaheka 11:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Delete with comment pointing to piece of furniture. Comparing piece to item, the definition given is very misleading (if not absolutely wrong) - it is only used that way in very restricted contexts (i.e. retail inventory.) Retaining this entry would only serve to confuse translators and English-learners. --Connel MacKenzie 03:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Delete per above. Not sure we need piece of furniture either, personally. -- Visviva 13:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Where would you want to put the translations of "piece of furniture"? E.g. in Spanish one hardly uses the term "una pieza de mobiliario". It is "un mueble". Hekaheka 14:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I would put that information at mueble, personally. I don't see the need for an English entry for a phrase which is only idiomatic in other languages, any more than we need entries for sum-of-parts Korean phrases that happen to be accurate translations of an idiomatic English term. But in any event, I don't actually plan to nominate any piece-of-X entries for deletion. -- Visviva 11:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed: we don't need this or piece of furniture. Delete.—msh210℠ 17:14, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, this one is an item! It has been raised on RFD before, and I believe it failed. That was before fried egg etc. were semiformalized. This would probably require a new rule if we wanted to keep it. DAVilla 20:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

And where would you like to put a translations table for "piece of furniture"? It will be necessary, because "furniture" is mobiliario in Spanish, and you would like to tell the English speakers that "piece of furniture" is actually mueble. Btw, this is not only a Spanish problem. Hekaheka 19:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I realize that doesn't resolve the general problem, but (deprecated template usage) muebles is often used as a translation of (deprecated template usage) furniture, so we should probably just add mueble m as an alternative translation in the entry (deprecated template usage) furniture, and leave countability details in the Spanish entry. Rod (A. Smith) 20:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't clear enough. The problem is not only and even mainly in the Spanish end. An English speaking person should have an easy way to find out how "piece of furniture" translates into other languages. It's not word-by-word in those about ten languages that I know enough of. That translation table might be put under "furniture", but it would be a non-standard solution. If we don't have that table, the "countability details" need to be handled possibly in every other language. It can be done, but seems a bit complicated solution to me. Hekaheka 07:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I would put the translation at (deprecated template usage) piece of furniture, which has passed RFD, in contrast to the term in question. DAVilla 03:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)