Talk:sciencey

RFV discussion: April 2019

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sciencey

Sense 2: pseudoscientific. I can imagine someone saying "homeopathy sounds sciencey", but that's actually sense 1: homeopathy sounds like it's related to real science. Equinox ◑ 06:13, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I can't find good cites in Google Books. But -y can have that type of meaning, where x-y is most definitely not x. If someone says the furniture has an oaky finish, I'm suspecting it's particle board without even a veneer of real oak. "It smells like orange" and "it smells orangey" are not the same either, with the second one implying it's similar to orange, not actually orange.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:26, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with that as a native speaker. Orangey = orange-like = like orange, as far as I'd know. (Exception: in food labelling, saying "chocolatey" etc. can allow you to get around laws where it must otherwise contain chocolate.) Equinox ◑ 07:41, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

And, famously in the US, truthy, which definitely is meant to characterize falsehood that has been crafted to be hard to distinguish from truth. DCDuring (talk) 12:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

"orange-like" means "not really orange" to me. "like orange" depends on the rest of the sentence, but if you say that something "is like orange", then it's definitely not orange. "It smells like orange" would often imply uncertainty about whether it is, in fact, orange. "Chocolatey" is a good example for me, and I guess why it's a complex definitional question; you could validly say that chocolate is chocolatey, but you wouldn't. You'd only use "chocolatey" if you want to avoid saying something is "chocolate".--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:19, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I think that pejoratives do not always merit a separate definition anyway, as there are often groups of language speakers or that can use a given word pejoratively and contexts in which many do. Examples are house (not a home), capital, dollar, fossil fuel, agribusiness, welfare, housing project, pretty, etc. This word is definitely not used especially often in a pejorative way. DCDuring (talk) 01:47, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

In the following cites, sciencey seems to mean "Having trappings of science":

• 1962, Friston Eugene Gattinger, A Century of Challenge: A History of the Ontario Veterinary College‎^[1]:

  He is said to have been “merely sciencey, not scientific”; yet during his stewardship and under imposing economic odds, he established the O.V.C. as the centre in Canada of veterinary service work and veterinary research.

• 2013, Sara Pennypacker, Clementine and the Family Meeting‎^[2]:

  “It has to be something sciencey, Waylon,” I reminded him. “Oh, my superpowers are sciencey,” Waylon said. “I'm going to be a very sciencey superhero.” “Like what?” I asked. “Like molecular transmogrification.”

• 2017, David M. Barnett, Calling Major Tom: the laugh out loud feelgood comedy‎^[3]:

  All those pencils in your pocket. You look sciencey. So few of our staff do, these days.

• 2013, Daniel Loxton, Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids‎^[4]:

  It sounds sciencey, it looks sciencey, and it can fool a lot of people into thinking it's scientific but there are clear reasons why it is not.

The pejorative definition pseudoscientific misses the neutral to positive use. The core meaning seems to be about appearance, with the reality part indeterminate. DCDuring (talk) 12:24, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to add sense 1 to this RfV, so that we get enough cites to have definitions in line with actual usage, there being no reliable dictionaries to, erm, consult.

The definition is "(informal) Scientific; of or pertaining to science." The first 20 cites I've looked at don't fit this definition well. DCDuring (talk) 13:49, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

For example:

• 1998, Rogers M. Smith, “Still Blowing in the Wind: The American Quest for a Democratic, Scientific Political Science”, in Thomas Bender, Carl E. Schorske, editors, American Academic Culture in Transformation: Fifty Years, Four Disciplines‎^[5]:

  True, most of us concede that quasi-experimental empirical research, today symbolized by multiple-regression equations, is in some sense the most "sciencey" part of political science.

To me this seems to refer to the appearance of science or scientific method. DCDuring (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

This is the earliest occurrence I found:

• 1925, This Quarter‎^[6], volume 1, page 132:

  It was going to be impossible for him to talk to Amy now, because she'd become more insistently Christian Sciencey than ever.

This demonstrates the long productivity of the suffix, but differs from the "inauthentic" gloss the suffix often has. DCDuring (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The only cite out of all those listed above that doesn't fit neatly into sense 1 is 1962. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:13, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how you could defend that assertion. They all deal with the appearance of science, not science itself. Sciencey is not synonymous with scientific, just as seem is not synonymous with be. DCDuring (talk) 17:37, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Agreed; "seeming of science" fits the meaning of most of those more than the current 1 or 2. (I'm not attached to the exact wording, though.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think the 1925 cite is a cite of "sciencey"; it's a cite of "Christian Sciencey".--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Sure, but, as I said, it demonstrates the productivity of the suffix with the sense involved. One can also find weird sciencey (See Weird Science (film)); rocket sciencey; social sciencey; computer sciencey, usually with a neutral valence. DCDuring (talk) 17:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 20:33, 19 April 2019 (UTC)