Talk:take one's own life

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RFD discussion: October 2013–March 2014[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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.

It is the SOP reflexive of either take someone's life or take a life (at least one of which needs to be created). --WikiTiki89 15:06, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Instinctively keep, though now I look at the page it was actually me that created it. I don't remember it, but oh well! Mglovesfun (talk) 19:17, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
IMO delete per Wikitiki (but possibly have take a life or take one's life or take someone's life). The own makes it SoP for me; other things can be inserted there (e.g. "miserable life", "wretched life"). Equinox ◑ 20:04, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There is something idiomatic here, but it is a construction, not a phrase. We could handle it if someone's fully captured the open-ended part of it. The insertion of adjectives and determiners instead of of in addition to someone's puts it beyond what a dictionary covers. Not even the OneLook idiom dictionaries cover ANY form of this.
Among the 28 senses of take#Verb at MW Online was this group of three subsenses and two subsenses:
"16 a : remove <take eggs from a nest>
b (1) : to put an end to (life) (2) : to remove by death <was taken in his prime>
c : subtract <take two from four>
d : exact <the weather took its toll>"
B (1) is clearly intended to cover this but b (2) and d also seem close.
I wouldn't object to having lots of things redirect to a corresponding sense (which we lack, no surprise) in our entry marked with {{sense-id}}. That would give us appropriate coverage and aid folks in finding the meaning of the expression. If we had synonyms, then there would be at least one translation target. DCDuring TALK 21:37, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Move to take one's life and keep. Idiomatic. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 22:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I was thinking the own makes it idiomatic; where does that come from? Mglovesfun (talk) 08:50, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Pehaps you're right, haven't reached that sprachgefühl yet. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:39, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You will be lucky never to reach it, because the presence own does not make anything idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 17:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, right. Like mind one's own business? I admitted my own mistake, you don't have to be mean. You'll be lucky if you reach this level in a language, which is not your mother tongue. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 19:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, that was far from my intent. I think MG is not a good model to follow on this point, about own. That's all. DCDuring TALK 21:42, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a normal indicator/emphasizer/disambiguator associated with reflexive "possession". "He writes his own speeches". vs. ?"He writes his speeches." (ambiguous). "I was too worried about my own job to worry about his." DCDuring TALK 11:55, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if there should be one lemma (take a/someone's life) or two (take a/someone's life + take one's life), but as Equinox and DCDuring say, the "own" adds nothing. The translations and synonyms for take someone's life and take one's life are likely different, so I suppose it might be best to keep take a/someone's life and take one's life separate. Redirect this to take one's life. - -sche (discuss) 18:17, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We should probably do it that way for all collocations of the "light" senses of take, make, set, have, et al. as our contributors (myself included) can't really develop and maintain adequate coverage of the full range of definitions for such terms. Whether users are well served with this approach I doubt, but it hardly matters if we can't offer an alternative successfully. DCDuring TALK 19:11, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree; in my experience "he took his life" and "he took his own life" mean different things. The first one means "the male person killed another male person" and the second one means "the male person killed himself". Mglovesfun (talk) 19:21, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly the disambiguation contribution that own (qv) makes, as my example above should have made clear. DCDuring TALK 21:45, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But instead of limiting ourselves to idioms we probably should ease up and go for all collocations. That would distinguish us from other dictionaries (which don't have, eg, this as an entry), play to our strengths (a constant supply of new MWEs; a large number of intelligent, non-native speakers of English), and minimize the effect of our weaknesses (not so many native English speakers and an inability to write all the definitions required for highly polysemous and somewhat grammaticalized terms).
This is not intended to be sarcastic, but rather a frank admission that I have probably erred in fighting MWEs that were non-idiomatic sensu stricto (say, following MW Online), but are arguably idiomatic sensu lato. DCDuring TALK 21:42, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No it's not what I said, I didn't say "he took his life" was ambiguous, I said it could only mean "he took the life of another male person". That's the distinction that I'm claiming. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:52, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Take a life" is idiomatic for me. --Vahag (talk) 21:46, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@MG: These cites of "the suicide took his life" show that is not the case in everyone's idiolect. DCDuring TALK 22:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
google books:"he took his life" suicide demonstrates that "he took his life" means "he killed himself" quite often. (Indeed, plain google books:"he took his life" demonstrates that it means "he killed himself" most of the time!) - -sche (discuss) 22:11, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kept. bd2412 T 12:45, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

take life[edit]

To kill one or oneself. Do you feel any remorse for taking their lives all those years ago? Backinstadiums (talk) 18:07, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But "take their lives" is a form of take one's life, not of "take life". Equinox ◑ 22:04, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's a form of take someone's life, because you can't create a headword such as take oneself's life Backinstadiums (talk) 09:12, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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