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Oldest tagged {{rfd}}s

new adiabatic lapse rate cooperation application domain in front of work on Uncle Scrooge damn and blast there Force careerist neerkijken op take time free variable all one's eggs in one basket BOMDAS Vespasian supposed to island chain harsh one's mellow queer one's pitch wind up one's bottoms blow one's chances be able to not a zack good job deaf and dumb bent as a two bob take a shot organ transplant forearm bone munjosprem degree of glory home side in back of two-wheeled waiting abandoning floo powder あるいて 歩いて rice noodle cosegregation call bullshit pull my finger dative of purpose soil pollution coug it Jefferson Jackson

Contents 1 May 2009 1.1 application domain 1.2 in front of 1.3 Uncle Scrooge 1.4 there 2 June 2009 2.1 damn and blast 2.1.1 damn your ass 2.2 ou 2.3 Force 3 July 3.1 dark green 3.2 take time 3.3 in layman's terms 3.4 free variable 3.5 all one's eggs in one basket 3.6 BOMDAS 3.7 Citations:make a killing 3.8 Vespasian 3.9 supposed to 4 August 2009 4.1 毛主席 4.2 harsh one's mellow 4.3 queer one's pitch 4.4 go to 4.5 wind up one's bottoms 4.6 not a zack 4.7 good job 4.8 be able to 4.9 bent as a two bob 4.10 take a shot 4.11 organ transplant 4.12 forearm bone 4.12.1 forearm bones 4.13 munjosprem 4.14 degree of glory 4.15 home side 4.16 in back of 4.17 two-wheeled 4.18 abandoning 4.19 fucking 4.20 ar 5 September 2009 5.1 floo powder 5.2 あるいて, 歩いて 5.3 rice noodle 5.4 cosegregation 5.5 call bullshit 5.6 striscie 5.7 pull my finger 5.8 neerkijken op 5.9 catty, chek, fan, tsun 5.10 dative of purpose 5.11 soil pollution 5.12 coug it 5.13 آروېدل 5.14 Washington 5.14.1 Jefferson 5.14.2 Lincoln 5.14.3 Jackson 5.14.4 Garfield 5.15 Arnold Schwartzenegger 5.16 t̼ 5.17 BitTorrent 5.18 grenader 5.19 messaggio di posta elettronica 5.19.1 messaggio e-mail 5.19.2 messaggio email 5.20 NMEA 0183 5.21 Invisible Pink Unicorn 5.22 little girl 5.22.1 Restore little girl 5.23 digitgrade 5.24 sjagerijnig 5.25 sjagerijn 6 October 2009 6.1 verbal assault 6.2 war of conquest 6.3 local history 6.4 Daffy Duck 6.5 harrowing of hell 6.6 figurative speech 6.7 cadre party 6.8 in the sun 6.9 island chain 6.10 laten ontsporen 6.11 achterom kijken 6.12 很少 6.13 industry 6.14 adiabatic lapse rate 6.15 sortir la poubelle 6.16 eventueele 6.17 polar question 6.18 sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof 6.19 bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk 6.19.1 lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk 6.20 why the dickens 6.20.1 what the dickens 6.20.2 go to the dickens 6.21 literary journalism 6.22 saccharification of wood 6.23 them two 6.24 us two 6.25 you two 6.26 what the Sam Hill 6.27 assume the position 6.28 Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm 6.29 take out the trash 6.30 how do I get to Carnegie Hall 6.31 snappy comeback 6.32 美国华人 6.33 狭叶薰衣草 6.34 right back 6.35 Bryce Canyon 6.36 nows 6.37 postal history 6.38 cooperation 6.39 silver jubilee 6.40 periodic structure 6.41 carpetbagger 6.42 posthumous work 6.43 and so on and so forth 6.44 façon de parler 6.45 rester là 6.46 faire savoir 6.47 faire la grève 6.48 accompagner de remarques 6.49 avoir du biceps 6.50 enlever la poussière 6.51 faire une remarque 6.52 as long as 6.53 signalling event 6.54 plue 6.54.1 plues 6.54.2 plus 6.55 adventure game 6.56 accutje 6.57 accutjes 6.58 user-generated 6.59 have a blast 6.60 Internet-based 6.61 witness panel 6.62 wax lyrical 6.63 pyow 6.64 Sav Kasabası 6.65 Romanian language 6.65.1 French language 6.65.2 Italian language 6.65.3 Spanish language 6.65.4 Arabic language 6.65.5 Russian language 6.65.6 Danish language 6.65.7 Dutch language 6.65.8 Hebrew language 6.65.9 Swedish language 6.65.10 Non-redirects 6.66 all to pieces 6.67 paternal half brother 6.68 אל שדי 6.69 all over 6.69.1 all over#Adjective 6.69.2 all over#Adverb 6.70 work around the clock 6.71 ace of clubs 6.71.1 ace of hearts 6.71.2 ace of diamonds 6.72 work against the clock 7 November 2009 7.1 wouldn’t’ve 7.2 phosporous 7.3 世界上最古老的职业 7.4 nickel and dime 7.5 baapaashkizige-giizhigad 7.6 vibraphone player 7.7 traditional Chinese medicine 7.8 கிழக்கு மேற்கு எம்ஆர்டி வழி 7.9 versnellingspooken 7.10 geluistapes 7.11 address formally 7.11.1 address informally 7.12 PSDP 7.13 Pokémon 7.13.1 Pokemon 7.13.2 Digimon 7.14 button mashing 7.14.1 final boss 7.15 boss fight 7.15.1 boss battle 7.16 Siralun 7.17 Session Bean 7.18 carnival 7.19 no biggie 7.20 Ptolemaida 7.21 look back 7.22 on one's soapbox 7.23 domesticated animal 7.24 why dontcha 7.24.1 why don'tcha 7.25 Good morning in Urdu 7.26 gagner du poids 7.27 Romance language 7.28 French Sign Language 7.29 American Sign Language 7.30 halt 7.31 hockey puck 7.32 faster-than-light 7.33 expedición de pescando 7.34 capital city 7.35 call on 7.36 lelietje van dalen 7.37 acceleration due to gravity 7.38 rod-shaped 7.39 kang-mi 7.40 admiral of the blue 7.41 ever so 7.42 exceedingly 7.43 melange 7.44 anatomical atlas 7.45 you suck 7.46 Mongolic language 7.47 three hundred 7.48 beureaus de change, beureau de changes 7.49 Kamboja 7.50 give back 7.50.1 buy back 7.51 quarantines

[edit] May 2009

[edit] application domain

def seems wrong. But also probably SoP. DCDuring TALK 01:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I can’t guess the meaning, so it isn’t SoP. It it’s really a term, it should be defined by somebody who knows what it is. —Stephen 13:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Confusingly, WP has two separate articles that don't link to each other: w:Application Domain (the Microsoft .NET software concept, which is what this entry was defining) and w:Application domain (unrelated broader term where a "domain" is a sub-discipline). I have rewritten the def (in the given Microsoft sense) to try to make it a bit clearer. Equinox ◑ 15:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it, in programming, an "application domain" is the (virtual) space in which the application rules as reserved by its liege, the .NET framework. This does make us into a bit of a shill for Microsoft. How does it work in other realms? Would this be a good use of {{only in}}, pointing at Wikipedia? DCDuring TALK 15:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this term exists only in the .NET world. Mind you, I think the same thing applies to delegate, and I'd be sorry to lose that. Equinox ◑ 15:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The closest in IBM mainframe programming is the "problem state" - the state in which application programs run, as opposed to "supervisor state" in which the operating system runs and can execute more powerful op-codes. SemperBlotto 15:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's entirely the same. The "application domain" isn't a restricted domain for applications only, like userland: it is per application, so you might have Excel, Word and Notepad all running in separate application domains (supposing they were .NET applications). Equinox ◑ 15:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. This really just seems like a metaphor to an outsider, but it must have a life of its own. Can the use of a metaphor by a single vendor and its minions be deemed independent use? Is Microsoft like IUPAC for chemical names and the French Academy for French, the authority on language within its domain? DCDuring TALK 17:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, Microsoft dictates the language of its own technologies, yes — not only because you must use their terms to be easily understood by other .NETters, but also because the languages tend to enforce the terminology. (For example, if you want to do something to an application domain in your source code, you are likely to have to instantiate the AppDomain class: that's its built-in name.) IMO, the real question is whether we consider the technology (.NET generally, and app domains specifically) broad and important enough for inclusion in a dictionary. I would say this is a relatively obscure term and I expect some proportion of professional .NET programmers haven't had to care about them. Equinox ◑ 21:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] in front of

Sense "facing (someone)": I'm not convinced that this sense is any different from "in the presence of" — at least, the examples suggest they are identical in meaning. If I am in front of a large group of people, I needn't actually be facing them — I could have my back to them — but I am still in their presence. — Paul G 15:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the definition was no good, but I changed it because I think "in the presence of" doesn't cover the implication of being the antonym of behind (as regards the 3rd def, I may be wrong but I was taught before can't be used in expressions like "in front of the house"). --Duncan 16:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep. good rewrite, except the example sentence should be moved - consider "in front of the hotel/theatre/cinema" (the hotel/theatre/cinema doesn't really have a presence). A front door/back door--Jackofclubs 19:03, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right. I changed the example sentence as well. --Duncan 20:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Good fix, but now how is the third sense any different from the first one? — Paul G 09:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As I was saying, I may be wrong, but according to what I was taught the "before" in the third def implies a queue, a sequence of events etc, so that you couldn't say "Both parties met before the castle [...]". But I admit that (even if I'm right) I'm not certain whether this would warrant the third def, or whether it's covered by the first one. --Duncan 10:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I have found a total of four senses: "ahead of" (queue), "outside the entrance of" (pace Jackofclubs), "in the presence of", and "facing" (a crowd, a mirror, a piece of equipment, a desk) from MWOnline and RHU. If you are "sitting in front of the window", does that mean you are not looking out the window? I'm not sure that even these four senses cover everything common. DCDuring TALK 01:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: "If you are "sitting in front of the window", does that mean you are not looking out the window?": I don't think it means that, no. At least, not always. google books:"sitting in front of the window looking" gives context for six hits (out of seven), and in all of them, the person is in fact looking out. —Ruakh_TALK 02:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Uncle Scrooge

Disney character; unlike Mickey Mouse, very unlikely to have any generic sense. Equinox ◑ 14:43, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Found cites and corrected the definition. —Michael Z. 2009-05-16 16:43 z

New sense looks fairly promising, despite a couple of citations with quotation marks, but the 1977 cite refers to an "Uncle Scrooge Money Bin" (a specific thing from the cartoon series, not something belonging to a "rich miser"), so perhaps that one should go. Equinox ◑ 18:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Move it to the citations page rather than just deleting. Even if it is not a perfectly qualifying citation for CFI, it may demonstrate how the term is used or contribute to the history of its adoption (or that of another term). You'll notice that in Schraeder 2005, it appears once in quotation marks, but later without, demonstrating that the author introduces it self-consciously, but then just uses it. In the “Money Bin” citation I would argue that Uncle Scrooge is used to introduce the Money Bin, so readers who don't understand the direct reference to the second term would still get the gist of it from the mention of the first. Also notable is that the very first citation may be a transcription of speech. —Michael Z. 2009-05-16 22:19 z

Well, I won't kick up a fuss about the one citation. Closing my own RFD, because the newly created sense seems dictionary-worthy. Equinox ◑ 22:22, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Good rewrite--Jackofclubs 18:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! —Michael Z. 2009-05-16 22:19 z

Keep as rewritten and cited. --Dmol 21:21, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

This is good too (okay, excellent), but what's wrong with the original definition? (edit:) Why not keep that as well? DAVilla 18:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Good question. I don't know if it is possible to find citations which meet CFI's requirement for attributive use and also support a definition of Uncle Scrooge as the cartoon duck. The subject sounds encyclopedic and non-lexicographical to me. In my opinion, the etymology and Wikipedia link already have all the encyclopedic details we need. But only the quotations will tell for sure.

Should we RfV all of the Disney characters for consistency? —Michael Z. 2009-05-21 14:47 z

I think they would all pass, that is, the major characters that we already include. I don't know what to make of attributive use, but it is cited according to both that and the proposed criterion of metaphoric use as well. DAVilla 03:36, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Unstruck after adding back original sense. Keep. DAVilla 03:36, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Huh? There are no quotations concerning cartoon ducks. —Michael Z. 2009-05-26 04:40 z

What good would that do? Do you really doubt this is what it means when not in metaphor? The only question is if it's "noteworthy" enough to keep, in the sense that it has entered the lexicon. Clearly it has. DAVilla 04:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Noteworthiness doesn't enter into WT:CFI#Names of specific entities. It says “attributively, with a widely understood meaning,” which describes sense 2, not 1. Barack Obama is noteworthy too, but the person and and the duck don't belong in the dictionary. —Michael Z. 2009-05-27 03:27 z

Thank you for stating the complete obvious. I though that a term entering the lexicon would be a compelling reason to include it, but you've just forged a rock solid rationale on what must be the most contested, ambiguous, and outdated section of CFI. I feel it almost a complete waste to make arguments that aren't taken into consideration in the slightest, other than to be dismissed out of hand. You position I will grant you is totally consistent with itelf, but not consistent with the fact that there are a great number of specific people, characters, and the like on Wiktionary already. If you disagree with this then please vote against my proposal and be done with it. Oh, and you might have to ignore Google Book hits like "Barack Obama supporter" and "Uncle Scrooge comic book". I'm not sure why you might find those sorts of quotations the least bit interesting, but they do meet the holy criterion of CFI section 32 verse 1. DAVilla 07:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The last two are direct references to the specific entities. An Uncle Scrooge comic book is a comic book about Uncle Scrooge. It is a mention of the actual (fictional) duck, not the use of a word stemming from the duck's name; it's as useful for CFI as “Uncle Scrooge said ‘quack.’” A person being mentioned, even a lot, is not the same as their name “entering the lexicon,” that is becoming a word in the language. —Michael Z. 2009-05-30 02:31 z

I agree completely (and not being sarcastic as I partly was above). Although I believe Uncle Scrooge has entered the lexicon, the quotation of "Uncle Scrooge comic book" does not support that assertion. It does however illustrate the literal sense that you disputed, and attributively so, where by attributive I mean in the grammatical sense of modifying a noun. I don't think this is a very good way to judge terms, hence the vote. If you can exemplify another use of attributive then by all means suggest that instead. The examples we have though are not applicable to the types of information we do include. As noted elsewhere, Empire State Building was given as an example of what we do not include until we voted to keep it after all, and you should also know that there are many types of fictional characters included besides just Disney. DAVilla 01:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I certainly do know. That guideline needs clarification, but perhaps not any substantial change (at least if we can agree on what it means). Also, the examples aren't helping with this.

“A name should be included if it is used attributively, with a widely understood meaning.” I believe this means something like “with a widely understood meaning, independent of its referent.” I think it is often applied this way. Does that sum it up? Is that an improved wording? —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 04:19 z

No mention of Charles Dickens?

[edit] there

rfd-sense: (in conjunction with verb be) In existence or in this world; mention of unspecified location, somewhere.

there is something amiss.

This doesn't seem right. Other dictionaries call this kind of usage a pronoun, which seems better to me. See there#Pronoun. DCDuring TALK 18:06, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Not really a pronoun, either. I'd lean towards calling it a preposed adverb. Consider:

There is something I'd like to say.

In the letter is something I'd like to say.

This helps (a little) to show that there is not functioning as the subject in the first example. It's merely a sentence order inversion from:

Something I'd like to say is there.

--EncycloPetey 18:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

It definitely originates as a preposed adverb, as you say, but its current usage seems to me to have spread out a bit. Firstly, there's certainly been semantic bleaching (consider e.g. "There's something odd here" — or for that matter, "In the letter there's something I'd like to say"); secondly, it's used in cases where I think any other preposed adverb would sound odd (consider e.g. "I expected there to be a problem", "He demanded there be an inquiry"); thirdly, many speakers have granted it singular status regardless of its complement (e.g., "there was an apple and a clock on the table"), and in AAVE it can sometimes (always?) be replaced with "it" (e.g., "people tell me it ain't no way", which I heard on the street last night). —Ruakh_TALK 18:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

And all of that can be explained by adverbial status, yes? The additional sentences you've given are still inversion of normal sentence order ("I expected there to be a problem." vs "I expected a problem to be there.") Contraction with the verb is not limited to one part of speech: "The boy's insane!" (noun); "Larry's gone home." (proper noun); "He's not here." (pronoun); "Now's the time to act." (adverb); "Clean's better than dirty" (adjective); "Never again's my motto." (phrase).

The question of "always singular" can be interpreted as "invariant because it's an adverb". Incorrect verb agreement is not limited to this expression, as I often hear manglings such as "We was late," or "None of you walk away now!" Using a singular verb when a plural form is traditionally used is a general phenomenon independent of the use of there. --EncycloPetey 23:44, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

So you would argue that in each of the following pairs, both versions are equally acceptable (or equally unacceptable, in the case of the last one)? :

• There's something odd here. vs. Here's something odd there.
• I expected there to be a problem. vs. I expected here to be a problem.
• He demanded there be an inquiry. vs. He demanded here be an inquiry.
• [pointing at a photograph] There's us. vs. We's right there.

If so, I suspect that you and I must spend time with very different sorts of people. (Note: I'm not specifically saying that it's not an adverb; I don't know for sure. It seems almost meaningless to apply terms like "adverb" and "pronoun" to a single use of a given grammatical word, when no other word shares its grammar. What I am saying is that I think that for many speakers of Standard American English, this usage is simply an expletive subject with delayed semantic subject, just like "it" in "It's well known that the sky is blue." This makes it very tempting to label it a pronoun, since English's only other expletive subject is a pronoun, and it definitely feels more natural to classify a subject as a pronoun than as an adverb.)

—Ruakh_TALK 00:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

If we permitted English words to be classified as "Particle", then that's where I'd prefer to see this go. Failing that, I prefer "adverb" (which is a very nebulous category) because it is so closely tied to the verb, and because the label of "Adverb" permits a broader range of functions than does "Pronoun". Oh, and yes, I have indeed heard people say "We's right there," or "There's us," although fortunately not so often now that I live in a different area. --EncycloPetey 01:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree that "particle" would be best. And yes, I've also heard both "we's right there" and "there's us", but I really don't see how you can view them as equally (un)acceptable. To me "there's us" is semi-acceptable in some instances and completely acceptable, albeit informal, in others ("Who all is coming?" "Well, let's see … there's the Smiths … there's the Joneses … there's us, of course … and … um, I'm not sure who else."), whereas "we's right there" is always quite unacceptable. (If I were a prescriptivist, I think I'd call "there's us" something like "O.K. in colloquial speech", and "we's right there" something like "please retake kindergarten".) —Ruakh_TALK 01:25, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

So I've thought about it further, and I think you may be right that insofar as we can't use "particle", "adverb" is more accurate than "pronoun"; there's not a clear line between usages like "there you are", where "there" is clearly adverb-like (specifically, I think it's an intransitive preposition), and usages like "there's many books there", where it seems to have ventured off the worn path of any POS. I mean, these two uses are very different from each other, but you can devise a fairly continuous walk from "there you are" to "there’s the book I was reading" to "there's the book I was reading" to "there's a book I was reading" to "there's a book there" to "there's many books there", and it's really impossible to say where on this path it stopped being an adverb and started being a pronoun. Or rather, it's too possible: any step seems reasonable, but none seems convincing. —Ruakh_TALK 18:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Is "it" also a "preposed adverb" by this logic? Somehow the etymology seems more important than usage in this classification decision. And we seem to be in disagreement with prevailing lexicographic practice. DCDuring TALK 18:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really referring to the etymology, but rather to the entire range of current uses, which includes everything from original and obviously-adverbial (or whatever) uses to ???!!!-ial uses that, according to your comment below, cispondian dictionaries call pronominal and transpondian ones adverbial.

As I said above, usage doesn't really support any POS very well. There is no POS that exhibits this sort of behavior. AFAIK English has exactly two expletive subjects: it (otherwise a personal pronoun), and there (otherwise an adverb/adjective/preposition/something). Neither one's expletive use is really predictable from its non-expletive use; and this would hardly be the first time that words of two different parts of speech have overlapping grammar (cf. adjectives and attributive nouns).

Overall, I really hate our need to discretely identify a word's languages, parts of speech, etymologies, etc. These things are not always discrete.

I'm happy to follow cispondian dictionaries in including a pronoun sense — that's certainly more convenient, as it gives us more room in which to explain the range of uses — but I don't see why we can't also follow transpondian dictionaries in listing it as an adverb. ("In existence; see pronoun section below.")

—Ruakh_TALK 19:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

That would be fine. I see that some "there [copula]" usage can have more than a hint of adverbial "placeness". Longmans DCE strikes me as a leader in grammar and usage presentation in a dictionary. That they choose to have the pronoun PoS is meaningful and makes it less of a cis-/trans- thing. DCDuring TALK 20:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Longman's also has an "in existence" sense under adverb, with these three clearly-non-pronoun example sentences:

The chance was there, but I didn't take it.

The countryside is there for everyone to enjoy.

Three months after the operation, the pain was still there.

These share the semantic bleaching, but not the grammar, of the "there is ___" uses.

—Ruakh_TALK 20:45, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to call those usages pronominal, related though they are semantically. They seem to me to behave more like most normal, boring adverbs. DCDuring TALK 22:31, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe you've mis-read Ruakh's comments. Those instances are marked as "adverb" in Longman. --EncycloPetey 17:35, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Longmans is a leader, yes, but that does not mean that they always make the best choices. I've been trying to decide why the "semantic coloring" argument does sit well with me, and have finally figured out why. Consider the reversibility / non-reversibility of the following parallel constructions:

* "There is an old house on the hill." / "An old house on the hill is there."

* "It is an old house on the hill." / "An old house on the hill is it."

* "Green Gables is an old house on the hill." / "An old house on the hill is Green Gables."

* "Decaying is an old house on the hill." / "An old house on the hill is decaying."

* "Scary is an old house on the hill." / "An old house on the hill is scary."

The first of each pair only sounds right for the first three. The fourth pair's first half sounds odd, and in the fifth pair, the first half of that pair has grammar that would only be found in a fortune cookie. So, an adjective or participle doesn't work for reversibility. In similar fashion, the latter half of the second and third pairs sound wrong. Neither a pronoun nor adjective works properly in the predicate position.

The question, then, is whether the first pair is a reversal in which the meaning is truly preserved, or whether there truly is a shift in the meaning and/or emphasis. I haven't fully decided how I come down on that issue. I can see both as having the same meaning, but perhaps not. Sometimes the second half of the first pair sounds normal, but it can also come out like Yoda-speak. It does seem a bit of an archaic form to me. --EncycloPetey 17:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand, but I'd like to. I think I agree with your readings of the naturalness of all of the sentences above. As to "there": to me the "place" senses could be considered adverbial in all cases. The usages that don't seem to fit are most clearly seen in: "There is a certain something about him that I really like." There_(!!!) could be pointing involved, but not plausibly. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

In some of the real cases involving what I consider the quasi-pronominal usage of "there", ambiguity remains because the sentences can be read with a "place" sense. But many cases have left behind even the most virtual kind of spatiality.

In "There is an old house on the hill.", "there" could be about "place", but it is more likely about existence. For it to be about place, it would need extra stress on "there". Then it might be equivalent to "An old house on the hill is there.", which doesn't seem very natural unless "there" is accompanied by physical pointing or is read as equivalent to "An old house-on-the-hill is there." (or "An old-house-on-the-hill is there.") DCDuring TALK 19:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Could there have been a pondian cleavage in labeling this. Tellingly, Cambridge American calls it a pronoun; Cambridge Advanced Learners shows the same usage as adverb. Oxford shows adverb. Longmans shows pronoun, as does Collins. Webster's 1913 shows both, but is reticent about calling it a pronoun as was Webster's 1828. Webster's 1828 expresses a somewhat reluctant acceptance of this "meaningless" usage. The other American dictionaries show pronoun, if they cover it (as WNW does not). I suppose that the label doesn't much matter, but keeping it an adverb gives more weight to etymology and Chaucerian usage than to the nature of current usage. DCDuring TALK 19:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] June 2009

[edit] damn and blast

[edit] damn your ass

These are nothing more than their components, but might be good to illustrate in usage examples or quotes at damn, blast, and/or ass. DCDuring TALK 17:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think damn and blast (and perhaps a couple of others, like bugger and blast) is idiomatic. AFAIK, nobody would say "blast and damn" nor "damn and shit". Equinox ◑ 19:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

damn and blast is about 50% more frequent at b.g.c. than blast and damn. "blast and bugger" is about as frequent as "bugger and blast". DCDuring TALK 15:18, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Delete, not idiomatic, not difficult to guess the meaning, and for damn your ass surely at the very least this should be damn someone's ass - you can damn anyone's ass, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

The entry is of what is claimed to be an Interjection, but would possibly better belong under a Phrase header and categorized grammatically as Category:English imperatives with others that form independent sentences. We have several of these imperative forms, "go to hell" but not "go home". We treat shut up (“‘be quiet’”) in a usage notes. The only PoS header at [[shut up]] is Verb. All invective has a grammar, mostly identical to normal grammar, with a few remarkable exceptions, like -fucking- and -bloody-. I am torn as to how to present these. If they are deleted, users will reinsert them. Blocking the entry might be an option, but makes us seem prudish. One or more appendices on invective, oaths, euphemisms, and similar subjects with lists of common non-idiomatic collocations and a lot of entries using {{only in}} would be my long-term preference.

Redirects seem the best alternative at the moment. DCDuring TALK 23:39, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

But to what? damn? Probably, but why not blast for the second one. A page can't redirect to multiple pages. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:05, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep damn and blast as a strongly set phrase (yes, I would keep hell and damnation too). Delete or conceivably redirect damn your ass. Adequately covered by your ass. Er, so to speak. -- Visviva 13:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

If it were really "set", why so many "blast and damn"s. There is clearly a productive grammar of invective by which terms like this are formed. I'm not sure that such grammar is well covered in CGEL (Damn their eyes!), but a grammar it is. I'll have to see if I can get a hint of that grammar from The "F" Word, 3rd edition. 2009. Delete. DCDuring TALK 17:48, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, that is odd. But something peculiar is going on with the b.g.c. counts. The hits for "blast and damn" run out at 388. The hits for "damn and blast" run out at 400. "That's odd", said I, so I tested "damn"; the hits ran out at 341. :-/

For a second opinion, I turned to the BNC; it gives 14 hits for "damn and blast" vs. 1 chance collocation for "blast and damn". (COCA yields 1 and 0, confirming Britishness). Absent further evidence, it seems setphraseish. If our invective coverage ever gets up to snuff, I daresay we can find some useful things to say about it.

Per the lemming test, I note that Partridge has an entry for this. Actually three entries; one for the interjection and one each for a noun and a verb that bear further investigation. -- Visviva 02:44, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Doing the search from the US gives me 19 hits for "damn and blast" and more than a hundred for "blast and damn". Not a single one in the damn/blast order is after 1922. On News the ratio is 10:1, so perhaps the order is becoming set. Is 5:1 an adequate threshold of setness of order? DCDuring TALK 12:13, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. I had done the bgc search with "full text only". I can reproduce my earlier results on relative frequency on US bgc. Subtracting the Partridge/Oxford mentions and "God damn and blast" makes it even more nearly equal. DCDuring TALK 12:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted damn your ass. Less of a consensus for the former. Keep going. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ou

I notice we've just deleted the Japanese entry for ojo which acted as a mini index to ojō, ōjo, and ōjō. The Chinese entry for ou acts as a mini index to ōu, óu, ǒu, and òu.

All of the arguments for and against seem to apply equally to both languages.

The specific arguments which resulted in deletion in that case were:

• romanization with no indication of vowel length seems to be what you might call a "common misromanization".
• This is what {{also}} was designed for.

See Talk:ojo

The only linguistic difference is that the diacritics for Japanese indicate vowel length whereas the diacritics for Chinese indicate tone.

If we have no policy that "mini indexes" are suitable for languages whose romanization indicates tone but not vowel length then the existing policies must be applied equally to all languages.

The only other difference I could identify in the Japanese page from the Chinese page is the format. If the issue is the format then this should be clearly stated rather than the arguments in the previous RFD. — hippietrail 07:04, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Note that Fantizi is also currently under RFD for being a Chinese romanization without dicritics. — hippietrail 07:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep. We have several thousand of these entries, one for every Chinese language. While that alone is not a basis for keeping them, they are not indexes, but definitions. It is easy enough to come across texts containing transliterated Chinese phrases where the diacritics are left out altogether, meaning that the reader looking up the term will not know which tone to use (or even which tones can be used for a particular word, or that the Chinese language has tones). We have two alternatives - have a short definition indicating that ou is a Chinese word which is missing a necessary accent (akin to a common misspelling), or to list all the Chinese words for which this error can be made in each unaccented form (which, in some cases, would yield a list of hundreds). I suggest that it would not be worth the labor of removing these thousands of entries to the end of making our dictionary less informative. bd2412 T 18:44, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

All of these points apply equally well to Japanese other than the "status quo" argument. We have of course made much more sweeping changes in the past so I'm sure we have any real basis for keeping status quo as a basis for policy, de facto or otherwise. Changing the first-letter capitalization of the entire Wiktionary a few years ago was a much bigger change for instance. — hippietrail 08:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Well then let me reiterate what is really my primary point: these entries properly define the words as they are actually used in print. We would fail as a reference if a person reading a Chinese transliteration with missing diacritics could get no sense from this dictionary how the words in the text before him are actually defined. bd2412 T 17:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't this logic apply to every romanization scheme for every language? At some point, our users have to learn to use the Google. It's one thing to have all common romanization schemes represented in the real entry (which we can and should do); it's another thing to treat them all like they were words in their own right. That said, my objections would evaporate at once if there were three citations of this being used to convey meaning (that is, not merely being quoted for pedagogical or analytic purposes). Maybe some of those Mandarin children's books that have allegedly been written in Pinyin omit diacritics? I would try to find out, but funny thing -- after years of intermittent debate, no one has yet provided so much as the title of a single Pinyin book. -- Visviva 14:17, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

On that note, I've just discovered the Pinyin Bible. Why didn't anyone mention this before? It certainly forces me to moderate my attitude (though not with regard to this particular class of entry). -- Visviva

Delete, ridiculous. And I'd love to RFV ōu, óu, ǒu, and òu, for that matter. It has never been satisfactorily explained why transliterated Chinese and Japanese should get a free pass around here. -- Visviva 02:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, no dismabiguation pages on Wiktionary. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:48, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Force

rfd-sense: defined strictly in a fictional universe sense. Doesn't have citations that support any other sense. COCA has plenty of hits for may the Force be with you. I would expect that there is some definition that could be written and attested using no more than one cite of "may the Force be with you" that did not seem like it was written by a LucasFilm publicist or Starwars fanchild. DCDuring TALK 18:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

At the local book store, in the men's room there is a note on the garbage can that says "do not compress by hand" under this a joker has written "use the force instead". This is a use of the term force in colloquial English. RJFJR 01:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely. All we need are:

1. a definition and
2. evidence consistent with our attestation standards (with the term capitalized).

We already have the term in lower case. I'll be happy to insert an rfdef to get some in our crack corps of definers to compete to provide some good definitions. DCDuring TALK 01:25, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

google books:"god or the force" pulls up many irrelevant hits, but also a fair number that seem potentially relevant. Some explicitly mention Star Wars — I'm not sure if that's an argument for or against keeping the sense — and some seem to be using "the Force" unhumorously and unselfconsciously (much as one might write "the Holy One" or "the Father") — but a few, such as this one, seem to fall in the narrow but perfect band where they probably mean the Star Wars Force, but don't say so explicitly. But I don't know how to make certain of that. (There are probably other such searches we can try; "god or the force" was just my first thought.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That one actually does mention Star Wars as a source of scenarios for use in therapy, twice, but not close to the particular quotation. —Michael Z. 2009-09-12 06:58 z

Are you saying that the quote is

1. broad-sense attributive use of "the Force" to support the fictional universe Proper noun;
2. evidence of its use as a synonym for an abstract deity; or
3. evidence of something else?

I'm not expecting to be up to this one. It's just not as much worth the effort as some other causes in which I've been taking an interest. I'm not finding this as much in my current range of interests as collocations and prepositions. DCDuring TALK 03:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm saying I think it's your option #1, but I'm not sure how to make certain of that. (Some of the other hits do fall into your option #2, though.) Re: being up to it: Totally understandable. No pressure. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 18:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July

[edit] dark green

Green that isn't especially bright. I suppose this was only added by somebody conscientious who wanted to include all of the standard computer colour names. Equinox ◑ 18:56, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd say keep on the basis that there is dark green, dark blue, dark red, and dark gray/dark grey, but not dark purple nor dark yellow nor any other color I can think of. --EncycloPetey 20:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Why do you think there aren't dark yellow and purple? There's plenty of usage. Equinox ◑ 20:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If that's the case, then I reverse my position. However, it is my experience that certain colors are never described as "dark", such as magenta, white, black, chartreuse, etc. Only a few of the basic seven colors in the visible spectrum are usually preceded by "dark" or "light", as well as grey and brown. --EncycloPetey 20:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

1. I contend that most colours can take "dark" (e.g. yellow and purple, as above); "white" and "black" may well be exceptions, because of their extreme nature, but 2. In those cases, it is just that those colours cannot be dark by their very nature; it's like saying we should have big giant simply because there is no big dwarf (they are never big). Isn't it? Equinox ◑ 20:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the logic of keeping based on "dark" not being a universal modifier of all possible color words or any of an arbitrarily selected list of color words. This would seem to be a principle of broad application yielding extreme results. "Dark" and "light", "pale" and "deep", "fluorescent", "dayglo", "yellowish" and other modifiers can be applied to vast numbers of color words (though not all) without adding one iota to the value of Wiktionary.

The other OneLook references have only redirects to "green". DCDuring TALK 21:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete. @EncycloPetey: "Dark black" and "light black" are rare — so rare that this b.g.c. hit, by a well-respected linguist, gives them the ungrammaticality asterisk — but they are nonetheless attested, as may be seen (for example) in this b.g.c. hit. But even if we trust the former, it doesn't seem to support creating these entries, because it argues that this ungrammaticality follows immediately from the semantics of the component words. —Ruakh_TALK 23:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no "dark yellow" color, and I don’t know what "dark red" would refer to, but dark green, dark blue, dark gray, and dark brown refer to certain fairly specific colors. Different languages have very different numbers of single-word terms for different colors, from as few as two or three to hundreds. It just happens that English does not have a commonly used or understood single-word term for the colors light blue, dark blue, dark green, and so on. Russian, OTOH, does have, and light blue is голубой, dark blue is синий. Dark yellow is meaningless and can’t be used without graphic examples or detailed explanation. dark green is a very common term and people pretty well agree on the shades that it covers, and it is as specific as just green. There are even more precise terms, such as process green, but they tend to be technical. —Stephen 23:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

There have been scientific studies of the effect of language on color perception; I wonder if any of them might be relevant here? If I recall correctly, speakers of languages that distinguish light blue and dark blue are faster at finding the "odd one out" among a group of dark blue squares with one light blue square and vice versa, but no faster at finding the "odd one out" among a group of blue squares with one green square and vice versa. In other words, even though words like "light blue" and "dark blue" have distinct one-word translations in some languages, that doesn't mean that English-speakers will necessarily have those as distinct concepts. (BTW, I'm not so sure that "dark green" at least is all that specific; playing around with the "Edit Colors" control in MS Paint, I find that I'm quite happy to use "dark green" for everything from a deep, blue-infused forest green all the way to a very muddy yellow-green. Certainly when I hear "dark green", without more information, I picture a specific shade of dark green, but if I then saw the thing described, I'd instantly correct my picture, and I don't think I'd even realize that I'd pictured something different. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of "dark yellow".) —Ruakh_TALK 02:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In English, dark orange is called brown and light red is called pink. That doesn't keep people from using those phrases though. The boundaries between hues like blue and green are specific to language. In the rainbow there is a continuous spectrum between them, and by the way there are also combinations of color not present in the rainbow. One distinction that a lot of languages make is between blue (like a navy blue) and what we might call baby blue. These are actually different hues, not just a shade or tint. DAVilla 05:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per others' comments: SoP.​—msh210℠ 00:03, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, it's a green that's dark. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] take time

to take one's time is idiomatic. Neither of the senses shown for this term is. DCDuring TALK 03:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

• Weakish keep, I don't think [[take]] + [[time]] covers this, so it's better to keep than to delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

  What sense of "take" is missing? Is it just a problem of finding the right sense at "take"? Ie, is take just too long to be usable? Is there any evidence that users need entries like "take time"? I certainly don't think that it meets existing WT:CFI#Idiomatic phrases. DCDuring TALK 13:29, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Just a neutral observation: this could be used in a third way not in the entry, where time is being taken away: "I arrived at the old prison a little late, and then walking through the facility took even more time from the visiting schedule" (2006). And take does badly need some cleanup, e.g. (in)transitivity indicators (it hardly means "to have sex"), dodgy senses ("To choose", just because of "I'll take [carry away with me] the blue plates"?). Equinox ◑ 14:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

There are few of the longer entries that don't resemble the Augean stables. Unfortunately it may take mortals more than a day per entry. Where are our Hercules? DCDuring TALK 15:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I found a lingustic article about "take", which I've not yet read. See Talk:take. DCDuring TALK 20:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

• To be more explicit:

  Sense 1 (To require a comparatively long period of time) is take (“‘require", "need’”) + time (“‘a quantity of availability in time’”)

  Sense 2 (To volunteer to spend one's time (doing something)) is take (“‘appropriate’”) (from other uses) + time (“‘a quantity of availability in time’”).

Accordingly, it does not meet WT:CFI.

In contrast, we do not seem to have take someone's time, as opposed to take one's time. I greatly prefer the coverage and wording of "take" in Longman's DCE to ours. A few more senses, more distinctness, much broader range of meanings. DCDuring TALK 13:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete per above. Doesn't seem to meet our criteria. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] in layman's terms

No OneLook reference except us thinks this is an idiom. DCDuring TALK

An important collocation, but could refer to any of six senses of layman and more than one sense of term. Not idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 16:48, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Keep, idiomatic, difficult to translate, figurative (etc.) Mglovesfun (talk) 04:27, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Opinion? Mglovesfun (talk) 07:10, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't refer to clergy or to periods of time. Keep (and frankly I might merge the non-professional and lacking expertise senses of layman). DAVilla 05:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] free variable

SoP.​—msh210℠ 19:36, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Is it not a technical term in mathematics? Certainly the current definition is well beyond WT:CFI, so delete unless it can be attested as a specific technical term, not a variable which is free. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

It is just a variable which is free, q.v.​—msh210℠ 20:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Keep.

With the current definition from programming, the term "free variable" appears to be SoP only because its meaning is explicitly listed in the entry "free" -- "(programming) Of identifiers, not bound". The same applies to "free variable" in logic, which is currently undefined.

If "free variable" gets deleted, other terms may follow. They include algebraic number, per the definition of algebraic -- "(Of a number) which is a root of some polynomial", which makes "algebraic number" technically a sum of parts. Likewise transcendental number and even complex number, as complex has the definition "(mathematics) Of a number, of the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is the square root of −1."

I fear that these cases provide a method of how to artificially make a lot of two-word technical terms of the form <adjective> <noun> appear sum-of-parts, by providing their definition at the adjective, of the form "Of <noun>, definition". Imagine I get rid of red dwarf by adding to red the definition "Of a dwarf star, small and relatively cool one of the main sequence".

I do not know what WT:CFI says to these cases, but to me all these sum-of-parts seem somehow artificial or odd. I would like to see free variable, algebraic number, transcendetal number and complex number included.

Some of the concerned entries: algebraic number, algebraic integer, bound variable, cardinal number, complex number, free variable, imaginary number, rational number, real number, transcendental number, free software, open set, closed set, complete graph, normal distribution. --Dan Polansky 22:51, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

See especially prime number, where this discussion already happened. Equinox ◑ 02:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought it was time to revisit the issue.  :-)  (The previous discussion is at talk:prime number.)​—msh210℠ 18:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

But note, Dan (and others), that people speak of a variable's being free, without tying the word free into the phrase free variable: google books:"variable is free".​—msh210℠ 18:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the adjective and the noun is separable, not glued together, in most of the listed cases.

For informal comparison outside of bounds of WT:CFI, many general dictionaries have "prime number"[1] and "complex number"[2], while only few general dictionaries have "free variable"[3]. --Dan Polansky 22:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no doubt that it's important to include prime number, and I agree with Dan Polansky's reasoning. But, for free variable, I don't know. Lmaltier 18:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I am always looking to break phrases down to components, but I don't see the point in the case of well-defined terms like this and many other mathematical and scientific terms. The parallels among, say, logical, mathematical, computing, and linguistic senses seem real, but each use of "free" is quite distinct and doesn't occur except in close proximity and obvious reference to "variable". I would think we could make a CFI argument for this. Frankly, I'd even prefer not to try to do the forced one-collocation, one-context definitions at "free". Wouldn't it make more sense to have some sense at free that accentuated the parallels and directly referred users to the entry at free variable which contained the context-specifics? DCDuring TALK 00:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The math/logic sense of free for variables is used in reference to variables only, of course, but not always with the word variable. E.g., google books:"is free in the statement|predicate|formula" -"variable is free" (some of which do use variable, but many, many of which do not).​—msh210℠ 17:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps subsenses s.v. free-?​—msh210℠ 17:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Weak keep, I did ask for this entry to be cleaned up into "common English", but since nobody's proposed bound variable as SoP I don't see why this should be deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] all one's eggs in one basket

We have entries at put all one's eggs in one basket#Verb and don't put your eggs in one basket (redirect) and don't put all your eggs in one basket#Proverb. I don't think the RfDd entry has value at either end of a redirect or in itself. DCDuring TALK 16:58, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Having said that, the two examples use have instead of put, so maybe this should be the "lemma form" and the others should be redirects, or whatnot. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:57, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I neglected to mention that COCA shows "put" to be by far the most common verb with this. The examples would need to change to reflect that. I was thinking to add redirects for the most common variants. The problem is that we have two variables in the formula for generating redirects: "V and NP's eggs in one basket". "Put" and "your" are the most common even after subtracting the usages of the full proverb. Normally I would strongly favor having the shortest phrase. But these formulas aren't fixed, so with our too-simple search users often wouldn't find the lemma. But in this case I was thinking to simply use all the most common collocated forms and redirecting to the verb phrase unless the collocation had "don't" in which case it would go to the proverb.

We need to find out whether Google et al take our redirects seriously. If they don't we may need to somehow stuff these variants into tags that they take seriously or go to soft redirects. Clearly this is getting to be an example of a common generic problem that requires some research and testing, a BP discussion, data collection from corpora like COCA, and some bot work. Of course if we don't want to bother with "imbecilic" (not my word) users we may be able to dispense with such concerns and rely on users to find lemmas. DCDuring TALK 11:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] BOMDAS

Discussion moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

Just checking: do we accept mnemonics? There's a big slippery slope out there. SemperBlotto 15:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

p.s. But an appendix would be a good idea.

See also pemdas (which should probably be moved to PEMDAS) and BODMAS. If we keep this, what about my very excellent mother just served us nine pickles?  :-)  Anyway, isn't this a question for RFD? — I mean, there's certainly attestation of this term; the nominator seems to be asking whether it's idiomatic.—msh210℠ 16:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was pizzas. But shouldn't it now be something more along the lines of "my very excellent mother just served us nothing"? ; ) L☺g☺maniac chat? 14:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Citations:make a killing

Nominated for a speedy delete, but seems to merit a discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. The quotes are interesting in as much as they show the possible/probable etymology of the the idiom. Though etymologies of idioms can easily seem to be folk pseudo etymologies, it seems unwikilike to exclude idioms from etymological discussions. Such efforts seem like a good path to recruit new blood, sorely needed. A proper heading on the Citations page and a reference to it under an Etymology heading would probably be useful.

OTOH, The quotations have little to do with current usage and don't belong in usage notes. They don't attest to the current idiomatic meaning.

Keep clean up. DCDuring TALK 11:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete citations and usage notes. I find it excessively speculative, even over-the-top, to treat these quotations as illuminating an etymology. I moved one quotation from this page to a usage note in the main entry, just to retain a minimal acknowledgment of this early "buffalo hunting" usage (although I never would have added any of this "buffalo hunting" stuff myself). The remaining quotations are almost all inappropriate since they do not intend the idiom being defined and, in addition, the variant forms of the term in these quotations contain extra words (showing that this usage is not even a set phrase). I don't see either the citations page and or the usage note as contributing substantively to the entry. There's nothing to clean up here -- just remove this stuff. -- WikiPedant 17:22, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

But the actual idiom allows extra words; see google books:"made a huge killing", for example. —Ruakh_TALK 17:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello Ruakh -- Yes, there may be alternative forms of the actual idiom. But these quotations do not represent the idiom. These quotations are literal assertions, and when you've got variant forms of a literal SoP expression, you've got nothing or at least nothing (no idiom, no set phrase) that belongs in a dictionary. -- WikiPedant 05:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Kept, may merit an RFC but that depends on whether it has been improved since the start of this debate. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vespasian

Is this part of the new pan-inclusionism or does WT:CFI apply? DCDuring TALK 16:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nom, Mglovesfun (talk) 17:33, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I can scarcely imagine this meeting the CFI, but it should have its month on RFV.​—msh210℠ 22:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

There are modern people named Vespasian; e.g. one John Vespasian. I don't see why this can't be redefined and kept as an article about a surname with a link to Latin Vespasianus in etymology. --Vahagn Petrosyan 22:42, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

It could be kept as a name element in Latin, at the very least. I can't think offhand of any attributive use of the emperor's name. The only argument I could imagine for keeping it is if we decided to start keeping all the English "short forms" of ruler's names. However, I'm not happy with where that leads. There are only a very few names of specific people that I can see keeping (e.g. Napoleon). In that case because (1) there are several people in history by that name, but only one is usually meant, but more importantly (2) it is used as an attributive noun (e.g. "Napoleon age"). --EncycloPetey 04:25, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] supposed to

I think this presents better at supposed#Adjective. The to is normally considered part of the mandatory following verb. This should probably be a redirect to supposed. We seem to be the only OneLook dictionary with the entry at supposed to. No OneLook dictionary has an entry at "be supposed to" either. DCDuring TALK 20:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

As often as not, no following verb. It’s colloquial and very idiomatic. I think most people do not see it as being related to suppose or supposed. The case is similar to that of used to. We should keep such a common, idiomatic term. —Stephen 14:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

What are the numbers?

I wonder whether it is used more or less often than other expressions that are sometimes truncated by dropping their referent. Do you think the definition given is adequate? Does the entry provide adequate grammatical information and usage notes?

Should we include all terms that drop the referent? DCDuring TALK 15:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think splitting supposed and supposed to is the best solution, maybe using {{also}} at the top of the pages. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Keep. It appears, it is almost synonymous with should. Definitely idiomatic. --Rising Sun 11:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I usually prefer my synonyms to be the, 1., same part of speech or, 2., play the same grammatical roles.

1. What part of speech would "supposed to" be?
2. supposed to is a past participle followed by a particle. It needs to be preceded by a form of "be" and followed by a bare infinitive. The "be" form could be a present, a simple past, or perhaps some other forms. In this sense "should" is followed by the bare infinitive for a present or "have" and a past participle for a past.

Synonymy is, in any event, irrelevant and, still less, near synonymy. "Did go" is a near synonym for "went", but wouldn't be an idiom in my book. DCDuring TALK 20:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

By what objective test is it idiomatic? The Rising-Sun opinion test generates a different result than the DCDuring opinion test. The Other-Lexicographers test says it is not idiomatic, Wiktionary being the only OneLook reference work (including translating dictionaries) to have it.

When we say something is an "idiom" we don't just mean that it is "idiomatic" in the sense that it comes trippingly from the tongue. That would describe any common collocation. DCDuring TALK 13:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I note that [[supposed#Pronunciation]] is currently missing the pronunciation of this usage (with final /-st/ instead of /-zɪd/). Whether this is better addressed by adding that pronunciation there, or by considering supposed to to be an idiom with its own idiomatic pronunciation, I don't know. —Ruakh_TALK 14:23, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Would a pronunciation difference between "I'm supposed to do this." and "I'm doing what I'm supposed to." count as evidence of "supposed to" being an idiom? I would have thought that an absolutely standard transformation, even if a pronunciation change were to accompany it. For that matter, would the existence of "s'possta" as in "It's one of my s'posstas" be serious rather than suggestive evidence that "supposed to" was an idiom? DCDuring TALK 16:22, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we might be miscommunicating. The pronunciation I'm referring to is the de-voicing of "supposed"-'s final consonant cluster in these senses. "I'm supposed to do this" can be used literally, with the passive voice of "suppose", to mean "It's supposed [by …] that I do this", in which case the <-sed> is voiced (/-zd/); or, it can be used perhaps-idiomatically, with the expression "supposed to", to mean (e.g.) "I am required to do this", in which case the <-sed> is unvoiced (/-st/), presumably due to anticipatory assimilation from the /t/ of to. You see the same thing, BTW, with used to; cf. "this is what I used to do it" vs. "this is what I used to do". —Ruakh_TALK 17:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I have intentionally (?) retained my ignorance of IPA so as to remain one of the imbeciles. Consequently, yes, I missed your point, on which I have nothing to add. Notwithstanding the mis- part of the communication, your question reminded me of stress difference as possible evidence supporting the possible idiomaticity of some usage of "supposed to". Any thoughts on that? DCDuring TALK 17:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't know what stress difference you mean. In some kinds of compounds, shifting stress can be a sign of idiomaticity (a "black bird" is just a bird that's black, a "high school" is just a school on a mountaintop, etc., whereas a "blackbird" can be albino, a "high school" can be in the valley, etc.), but I don't see how that applies to "supposed to". The only pronunciation difference I see between the "supposed to" in "I'm supposed to do it" and that in "I'm supposed to" is that the former can have /tu/ ("too") or /tə/ ("ta"), whereas the latter strongly prefers /tu/ ("too"); but then, I think you'd get the same effect from a vowel ("I'm supposed /tu/ ask him about it") or a pause ("I'm supposed /tu/, what? Lie?"). Right? —Ruakh_TALK 18:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, not only don't I know IPA, I don't listen too well either. I was actually just looking to see if there is any passing for making presenting "supposed to" as an idiom headword in its own right rather than just redirect to supposed. That some contributors want it to be separate is suggestive, but I'd like some Pawleyesque rationales because I don't see it.

[edit] August 2009

[edit] 毛主席

Mandarin for "Chairman Mao". As a specific entity/title combination, this fails to meet WT:CFI. --EncycloPetey 04:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

10,000,000 google hits, a common term and we should have it. While the English translation may seem unnecessary to English-speaking natives, an American trying to read a Chinese text that includes the term 毛主席 needs to be able to look it up in a dictionary just like any other Chinese term. —Stephen 06:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

indeed!![i'dwish mONOLITHIC ENGLISH NATIVSPEAKERS'd'vMOREMPHATY!!!![nCFIneedsVASTLY EXPANDED,we alno thisisaMAMOTHproject fromstartez,ifnolike,WOTHE HEL IS1DOIN'HERE?!?--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 02:55, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

So, we should have George W. Bush, because there are a lot of hits and becuase a foreigner trying to read an English text that includes the term "needs to be able to look it up in a dictionary just like any other term"? Sorry, but those arguments have never been part of our criteria for inclusion. --EncycloPetey 15:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

VERYMUCHSO,INDEED!!CULTURAL REFmakeSTUDYIN'THE TARGETLANGUAG HARD,even4me [w/engl]as basicalyA DIALECT SPEAKER,flemish--hel,even w/DUTCHtexts i'd'v thisprob[asNOTmy culture,idontno their actreses undundund>1.line linguistic resours=dict here need2say"W-u.s.-pres.2000-8,bro of+ref2wp",easy,nice,clean'n'HELPFL2USER--urCFIwereDEAD-WRONG SINCE INCEPTION,n its OVERDUE[sinsu guys like2interpret'emALA LETTRE[dc's arbitrary side-takin'apart]like abunch oflil'kids inkindy{"the cfi-teacher said"},orbrainwashed"this is a{trad.} dict.{cryinvois}"-adults] 2THOROUGHLY REWRIT'EM,or atleastREALIZE THT ALL PROPERNAMES [N SOPs asoon as a/1SINGL USER'D BENIFIT fromit]needINCLUSION instedev usin'wt as ur PRIVATPLAYGROUND[cantu erect ur ownclub4/2thatpurpose?-imhere2help get wt2itsGOAL=UNIVERSAL RESOURS4theLANGUAG-QUERYIN'partevHUMANITY,most ofwhich'DNOT CARE LES'bout althe"howmany angels dancin'ona needltip"scholastic 'n'obstructin'altercations here,laced w/an overdose evsophistry'n'falacious reasonin'just4"goodmeasure"soitseems.--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 03:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Should be treated eaqually without discrimination whether Máo zhǔxí, Confucius, Mencius, Lenin, Stalin, etc.

And Shakespeare, this seems to be a policy issue rather than a single deletion request. Probably requires some sort of vote, rather than just keeping or deleting this entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

indeed!!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 03:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Shakespeare is at least claiming attirbutive use, which for me makes it meet WT:CFI. I'd happily delete the others as "names of specific entries with no other lexical merit. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd at least keep Confucius out of that list, since the corpus of his works is also referred to by that name. I think the principle there is that works of certain authors come to be so well known, that they are referred to by the name (or part of the name) of that author. "I was reading Ovid last night." "I couldn't understand the language of the original Chaucer." "My copy of Sophocles is falling apart." We've had that particular conversation before, although I don't recall which particular author's name was under discussion. --EncycloPetey 04:10, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Oppose If it were simply "a chairman named Mao", then I would agree. While that is surely the etymology, it also more specifically means Mao Zedong. Thus it is not simply a sum of parts and has a specific lexical meaning that is not necessarily apparent without a definition. 118.103.10.2 02:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Should have Bush, with a definition that refers to George W., but not George W. Bush specifically. Should have Jefferson, referring to the historically important Jeffersons such as Thomas, and Washington referring to the important Washingtons. But those are English names and not at all the same sort of term as 毛主席. For a Chinese term such as 毛主席, we need a definition of the full term, not just part of it the way we can do with many similar English terms. You are trying to judge Chinese terms by their definition rather than the term itself, which is an elementary error. It’s the reason that we cannot look up a common Chinese term such as 成龙 (Chéng Lóng]] here. —Stephen 03:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

requester has NO idea bout chin.[onliLIMITEDview of CFI<presumably short4CHRIST!F*INTRIES!]yet demands DEL-am i the only1 who thinks such is INCONGRUOUS, HILARIOUS n PLAINLY WEIRD?!?as they say in flemish:"schoenmaker,blijft bij uw leest". ps names/woteva USERSneed oughtbeINCLUDED!npl,FAKattr-use,good4nuttin wishwash,if onli such"contributors" 'dHoudini-away'emselvs[beterstil:'dput inaPOSITIVefet:)='dbe a GIANT LEAP4wt,but'elas, justnILUSIONmonvieux..--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 07:17, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Allow me (despite the fact that I don't speak any variety of Chinese) to put this into perspective for people who know nothing about Chinese (yes, I know that me saying that seems kind of odd since I know almost nothing either but I digress). Let's say that one day in one country in which some antagonistic group were oppressing people. One day a "hero" arose and put a stop to their antics. Let's just call this hero "Kiyoshi Tsukasamoto"(random idea there; no special reason why I chose that aside from the fact that I just felt like stringing together a Japanese name). It doesn't stop there though; the antagonists still trouble the people but the hero still continues to guard the people and drive away the opposing forces until they finally give up (or are decimated; whichever you prefer ;).

Now jump forward many, many years to when he dies. Even when after death the people who he saved still remember him. Perhaps during his lifetime people came to refer to him by a special name as a term of the deep respect they held (and still hold) for him. Something like "Kiyoshi the Pure/True/Just/etc. or Guardian Kiyoshi. This "Chairman Mao" is a term like the ones I used in my story, especially the second one. Finally, the last thing I'll say is IMO real terms like these should be included in Wiktionary. 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Palk-ta![darn input-prob ofmine..--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 02:55, 5 September 2009 (UTC) Kept per discussion above. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] harsh one's mellow

Relatively novel uses of harsh#Verb as verb and mellow#Noun as noun, but not a fixed phrase. Many substitutes for both are possible. DCDuring TALK 14:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I feel obliged to not vote as I've never heard of it, and the definition makes very little sense. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

weak keep - <has kids who used to use it> - Amgine/^talk 22:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] queer one's pitch

queer (“‘spoil’”) one's [sic] pitch (“‘sales presentation’”). Non-idiomatic combination. DCDuring TALK 15:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I feel obliged to not vote as I've never heard of it, and the definition makes very little sense. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I've never heard queer as a verb outside this phrase, which makes it idiomatic as far as my experience goes. Equinox ◑ 15:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That's why we need to rely on corpora. Following are objects of the verb queer (“‘spoil", "ruin’”) found in COCA: friendship, things (3), deal, offer, paradigm, that (what I had to do), project, status, runs (football plays), collar (arrest), him ("queered him good by living"), re-election, assignment. This sense of queer#Verb seems more common outside academic (cultural studies, gay studies, social sciences) and gay activist writing, AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 15:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] go to

I'm not sure that there are any current idiomatic senses of this. Of the four given, the three that bothered me most were the following:

1. (transitive) To move towards: Go to bed!
2. (intransitive) To advance, be positive or make a decision" Go to!
3. To attend an event or a sight.: We went to a concert for my birthday.

The second might just need an archaic tag.

I could understand giving verbs like "go", "have", "get", "take" and a few others some kind of special treatment, but this doesn't seem right to me. It seems misleading. DCDuring TALK 22:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't see anything that this article offers right now that isn't go (verb) + to (preposition). Having said that, without an example, I don't know what #2 means. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The first one needs to be deleted, but we could start a separate entry for "go to bed" which is an idiomatic expression for "put yourself to sleep". The second one needs an example, because I have never heard it used in that way. We could delete it until someone finds an example. The third sense should stay. It is idiomatic; not literal. The whole page could be delted, but I think it is useful because some languages, such as Arabic, make a distinction between "to go to" and "to go" (to go away, to travel). Gregcaletta 01:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

• The only one that is dictionary material to me is the archaic imperative or interjection: "go to!" - it's totally opque to me whenever I run across it. All of the other senses require an entry exactly as much as go into, go beneath, go up etc etc. — hippietrail 02:33, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] wind up one's bottoms

To wind up one's (?) bottoms. Datedly SoP. (Possible misuse of reflexive "one's" for "someone's") DCDuring TALK 12:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems like WT:RFV material to me, I've never heard of it, since surely it's not just wind + up + one's + bottom is it? I cant guess the meaning from that, and I'm a native speaker. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It is just wind up (“‘complete", "finish’”) + one's + bottoms (“‘affairs’”). The difficulty is mostly in the archaic nautical figurative use of "bottom". It seems the nautical equivalent of "tidying up one's affairs" as before a long trip. Why would anyone xpect to be able to read an 18th century seaman's diary without looking up individual words? Understanding this use of "bottom" would help one decipher the decentralized financial management approach epitomized in "every tub in its own bottom". DCDuring TALK 16:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Right, delete. More votes please, Mglovesfun (talk) (sorry, I forgot to sign this) Mglovesfun (talk) 10:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this phrase less obsolete than bottom generally is, though? I have no idea, myself, but if so, I'd say keep this as non-SoP. Otherwise, yeah, delete.​—msh210℠ 23:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] not a zack

[[not]] [[a]] [[zack]] ("an Australian coin, $A 0.05"). ~"not a dime", "not a farthing", "not a nickel". DCDuring TALK 03:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete, not idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:55, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Zack in this sense (and another similar) is listed as rare and has another sense not so marked. The phrase not a zack is not so marked. Perhaps it's worth a keep then: someone looking up the constituents wouldn't know what it means. Not sure, though.​—msh210℠ 00:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] good job

Two senses seem non-idiomatic. "A job with good prospects" and "a task well done". DCDuring TALK 03:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete or remplace with "literal, see good, job". Mglovesfun (talk) 08:52, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: Wiktionary:Milestones. --EncycloPetey 04:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

As entered then it was OK. It was just the interjection.

I don't think that the "literal" tag is right. The right tag is something like "compositional", but more intelligible to normal people. No tag at all might be better. DCDuring TALK 11:21, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] be able to

• Strong keep. (1) It is the semantic infinitive of "can", since "can" is defective and doesn't have a morphological infinitive. (2) It has many translations to infinitive of "can" in other languages. —AugPi 20:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Translations can go s.v. can, no? (In fact , they're there already, it seems.)​—msh210℠ 20:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Though common in Latin, in English it is unusual for an article on a present tense verb form (non-infinitive) to be used as a lemma, which is what is happening here. The only proper way to say the infinitive of "can" is to "be able to", so some users may want to look up translations under "be able to" instead of "can". So in this case, I don't think some duplication would hurt, as in the case of "color" and "colour", which both have translation sections. —AugPi 21:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Strong keep (now just keep, Mglovesfun (talk)), these already passed rfd in French, plus you can't take away the "be" or the "to" and keep the meaning, so definitely idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't follow. Of course you can't take away any part of the phrase and keep the meaning: that's true of this blue door also. But the phrase means be + able + to precisely the way be unwilling to means be + unwilling + to, and the same for other adjectives (willing, predisposed, inclined, (un)likely, (un)ready, etc.). How do you figure this is idiomatic? On another note, how is frwikt's RFD process relevant? (Do they have CFI of English phrases precisely like our CFI of English phrases?)​—msh210℠ 20:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Keep, per above. --Vahagn Petrosyan 20:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Redirect to [[able]]. Good to have the phrase is case someone looks it up (since it's the semantic infinitive, as AugPi points out, of can), but not as an entry, since it's just the sum of its parts.​—msh210℠ 20:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
• Redirect to [[able]], per msh210. —Ruakh_TALK 20:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to redirect to can, since be able to means (infinitive of) can and not able, and if someone were looking for the translations of be able to, s/he could find them under can? —AugPi _(t) 03:22, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The article for can mentions be able to under its Usage Notes, whereas able does not mention anything about the usage of be able to. —AugPi _(t) 03:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

You might be right about that being the most useful redirect target. Why else would someone type in the term for a search? The drawback is the utter lack of transparency for someone typing it in who is not looking for the translation. Hitting the "back" button doesn't help because the search box is cleared. Though your recommendation is probably expedient for the most common case, it seems to violate a fundamental principle of how a redirect ought to work. Is there some way around this? The usage note is not an ideal for a normal redirect.

Perhaps a redirect to the Usage note section itself? Still a little confusing but at least the right text is there. DCDuring TALK 04:06, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

• Does anyone have any arguments was to why this meets WT:CFI? The arguments and associated votes for this entry are irrelevant if they do not overcome the basic hurdle of some kind of idiomaticity. That "be able to" is synonymous with a putative missing form of "can" is not a consideration in CFI. If editors would like such a consideration to be a factor or some kind of "utility for translations" consideration to be a factor, we have a Beer Parlor for such conversations. There are senior contributors who support that view. Perhaps someone could formulate a coherent proposal. Perhaps some other wiktionary already has implemented such a standard for inclusion. We could even start an appendix of deleted entries with translations to facilitate their restoration when, as, and if CFI is changed. DCDuring TALK 23:28, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  • If an English phrase translates to single words in most other languages, and if the phrase is unique, in the sense that there is no other substitute for the infinitive of can, then that gives me reason to think that be able to is idiomatic. —AugPi 23:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

    That specific argument has been explicitly and repeatedly rejected as having no bearing on CFI, which contains all the criteria which can support the inclusion discussions on this page. While we are discussing irrelevant considerations, I note that none of the the monolingual OneLook dictionaries include "be able" or "be able to" as idioms. That includes dictionaries of idioms that have little reason to exclude terms that are idiomatic. Idiomaticity in the sense we use it is a monolingual phenomenon. If you would like to make it a multilingual phenomenon please make a coherent argument at the Beer Parlor. DCDuring TALK 00:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

    @AugPi: not at all. English uses the adjective "able" the way many languages — including English — use verbs. By this argument, "be sick" are "be ill" are idiomatic because there's also "ail"; "make angry" and "make mad" are idiomatic because there's also "anger"; and so on. Further, even if we accepted this argument, it would only support an entry for "be able", not for "be able to"; in Spanish, for example, "was able to do" = "podía hacer" = "{was able} {to do}". —Ruakh_TALK 01:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

You might have a point there. Two points, in fact. —AugPi _(t) 03:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

• • • The "common sense" argument (to me) says that we are talking about deleting one of the most common verbs in English, maybe in the top 100 or even the top 50. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

      Your assertion assumes that it is a verb. The collocation is a verb + adjective + particle. The collocation functions like a verb as to many such collocations as Ruakh pointed out. "Common sense" is not part of WT:CFI and is often a source of error. If you would like "common sense" to be part of WT:CFI, please start a thread on WT:BP.

      Following is a list of a few of the most common (many hundreds of occurrences at COCA) adjectives that fit into the slot occupied by "able" in the challenged headword: good (better, best); easy (easier, easiest); necessary, possible, hard, likely, important, difficult, willing, sure, ready, glad, critical, reluctant, sorry, nice, surprised, great. That "can" is defective does not change the status of this as a candidate headword. DCDuring TALK 15:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete DCD has it spot-on. Why are these arguments, having nothing to do with our CFI, put forward repeatedly? Why is a group of intelligent people wasting so much cumulative time? Instead of arguing "set phrase" or "direct translation" a 100 times, why don't you guys just once write a proposal to add this to the CFI? —Michael Z. 2009-08-14 15:22 z

I’ve been trying to get CFI fixed/improved for years. It is much easier said than done. —Stephen 20:06, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete, based on DCDuring's analysis. --EncycloPetey 03:59, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

KEEP! I agree with AugPi, since I just looked it up as a unit and looked at this page to see the debate -- 2 September 2009

Keep, without prejudice against the well-reasoned arguments for deletion above. It seems to me that there is a sufficient basis for reasonable disagreement on whether this is sum of parts or not; as such, I cannot comfortably support deletion. -- Visviva 18:08, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Added: I would also be OK with a redirect. It does seem that a strong case could be made for an entry at able to, which has an entry in MWDEU -- especially since a full entry for able would already be quite long. -- Visviva 04:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

DeleteRedirect I am finally able to work an exemplification of another argument into my summary: not a set phrase, not a verb phrase, not a verb, not an idiom of any kind. DCDuring TALK 19:17, 20 September 2009 (UTC) Redirect is nicer to users. Perhaps also at least the positive forms could be redirects also to able per SGB below. DCDuring TALK 20:52, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep, at the very least as a redirect. Counting the various cardinal forms such as "am able to", "is able to", "am not able to", "won’t be able to", "were able to", and so on, it surely must be one of the commonest phrases in the English language. If nothing else, it should have a hard or soft redirected to able. —Stephen 20:06, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• IMO the strongest case for this to have an entry is the simple fact that millions -- perhaps billions -- of ELLs worldwide have learned it as a unit, the non-defective equivalent of "can". It seems to me that the same rationale that we have used for including various non-lexical bits of Unicode would apply: it may be worthwhile simply to have an entry explaining what this is, why it is not technically a word, and where further information can be found. -- Visviva 04:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:57, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] bent as a two bob

bent (“‘crooked’”) as a two bob (“‘cheap’”) watch/note/etc. The fuller forms (bent as a two-bob watch and bent as a two-bob note may be valuable as redirects to two bob or even bob. Also nine bob. DCDuring TALK 19:49, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] take a shot

To try. It doesn't seem to be a non-SoP idiom. Certainly not a set phrase. One can "give it", "have" a shot. One can take a "run", "stab", etc. And there are more meaningful combinations of [[take]] and [[shot]] than there are meanings of either constituent word alone, none with any less claim to be idiomatic, IMHO. DCDuring TALK 00:24, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

• delete, Mglovesfun (talk) 07:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards 'keep and adding additional senses. One can "take a shot" (to the body) in boxing, or "take a shot" (of tequila). This seems highly idiomatic to me. --EncycloPetey 05:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Once we go that way we can easily have as many attestable senses at take a shot as at take or even more. If we were trying to show our independence of conventional lexicographic thinking it would be a bold way to do so. I also believe that every single sense would violate WT:CFI. For example: boxing: take (“‘accept", "undergo", "endure’”) a shot (“‘punch", "blow’”) (previously missing, not in many dictionaries!, common in sports etc.) (Does "take" also mean "receive", "suffer"?) Also: for drinking: take#Verb could be senses 1-4; 7-10; 12, 21; 15, 23-4 (in groups of decreasing likelihood) with shot#Noun (“‘measure of alcohol’”). Though I cannot imagine these collocations being rapidly attested, I think that most of them are attestable. I don't know who would be helped by such a cumbersome presentation. Further, I find it impossible to believe that we should depend solely on the subjective opinions of the few editors and fewer native speakers who are welcome to participate in these discussions to determine which of the various collocations are to be included and which not. DCDuring TALK 18:25, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] organ transplant

SoP.​—msh210℠ 22:07, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Not SoP, since the term would never be used to describe the transfer of a pipe organ from one cathedral to another. Applies only to a single sense of organ and is a set phrase, never "organ transfer". --EncycloPetey 05:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't seem ambiguous to me, so I'd say delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Would you want to keep or delete organ donor? --EncycloPetey 03:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind (in the least) keeping both, but I don't think there's anything in WT:CFI that justifies it. It's not one iota idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I see a difference between the terms in idiomaticity.

The "organ donor" entry includes the common US slang sense of motorcyclist, especially one riding without an effective helmet. An organ donor in the US and probably elsewhere refers to someone who has formally given permission for his organs to be harvested for the benefit of organ recipients. Properly defined in that sense it would seem to fall under the Pawley legal/institutional term criterion.

delete "Organ transplant" doesn't seem to make it on either basis, judging from what I read. DCDuring TALK 22:43, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Set phrase, and it is idiomatic with reference to the surgery. One could conceivably refer to the transplanted organ itself as the organ transplant ("my left kidney is an organ transplant") but common usage of the phrase is in referring to the procedure. bd2412 T 03:14, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] forearm bone

forearm (attributive) + bone. Compare leg bone, although hip bone and shoulder bone do exist. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know medicine, and perhaps to someone trained in that field hip bone and shoulder bone are SoP, but to me (and, I suspect, most laymen), they're not, since hip and shoulder are joints, not bones, and hip/shoulder bone does not merely mean "any bone that adjoins the hip/shoulder". But delete forearm bone as SoP.​—msh210℠ 17:05, 19 August 2009 (UTC) 21:40, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

We also have:

• in the head: frontal bone, parietal bone, temporal bone, occipital bone, sphenoid bone, ethmoid bone, zygomatic bone, malar bone, hyoid bone, vomer bone, nasal bone, turbinate bone, lacrimal bone, palatine bone, mastoid bone, otic bone, stirrup bone, alveolar bone, Wormian bone
• in the extremities: capitate bone, heel bone, cuboid bone, hamate bone, tarsal bone, carpal bone, cuneiform bone, intermediate cuneiform bone, lateral cuneiform bone, medial cuneiform bone, navicular bone, scaphoid bone, innominate bone, pisiform bone, lunate bone, elbow bone, metacarpal bone, calf bone, long bone
• other: sesamoid bone, epipubic bone, pneumatic bone,

A few of these are clear deletes IMO (calf bone, e.g.).​—msh210℠ 17:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If fibula is actually also called calf bone (which it is according to dictionary.com) it should be kept. How else would we poor non-natives know which of the two bones of the lower leg it is? --Hekaheka 19:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

True. Actually, I didn't realize we have two bones down there, which is why I said to delete calf bone. Again, though, that entry has not had deletion requested.​—msh210℠ 20:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually I think most of the above list should be kept. Of the forearm bone itself I'm not so sure. If the use of the term is commonplace, it might be considered a set phrase referring to both ulna and radius, and neither of them specifically. --Hekaheka 19:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

elbow bone might merit inclusion due to multiple senses, one of which only refers to a part of a bone. If that is typical, these might need to be addressed one at a time, especially the ones that use a common word (like "long", "calf", nasal") before "bone". DCDuring TALK 18:32, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I do think they need to be addressed singly, and did not mean to imply otherwise. The only one we're discussing so far, AFAICT, is forearm bone (and, below, its plural).​—msh210℠ 18:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] forearm bones

And we also had forearm bones, just added by 史凡, speedily deleted by SB as SoP. 史凡 raised, in the TR, whether it ought have been deleted, so I'm bringing that issue here, too. Delete, I say.​—msh210℠ 18:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC) 21:40, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I shoulda said what its content was. It was just the {{plural of}} template (and appropriate headers and inflection line).​—msh210℠ 18:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

mye,itgoes w/the sg forearm bone entry[savd onlyafterwards,asstruglin'w/etyl fmt :).ihadmy ownconcerns:

1. bones of f-a.
2. sop

butfrom educationalpoint[=uln+rad,saykids mitewonder"wotr f-a bones actualy]+/prafrasd:morethanjustsop[wotisa fa bone->TWOthings,NOTdeducible fromjustheadparts ofentry(tho most asults kno as=comn kno-ldg]>ithought/deemd itworthwhile[tho tad encyclopedic praps]+incl.realife ex.--ta4movin btw:)

ps i1.thought ofputin info i/plentry,but changdmymind i/daproces,c vasa deferentia[nkept/savdboth]:)--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 19:34, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Apart from the education point, in some animals there seems to be

1. a single forearm bone, usually called the ulna and sometimes the forearm bone;
2. a partial fusion of the ulna and radius forming a unit sometimes called the forearm bonel
3. two separate bones of which the ulna seems to be sometimes called the forearm bone.

And, of course, the forearm of many animals is more readily understood as a forelimb, whether foreleg or wing or flipper.

Also, there are many uses on fiction that refer to "the" forearm bone as if it were a single unit, even in a human. If we gave an anatomy quiz to admins here, would they all know that our upper limbs had one bone and our lower ones two, without recourse to cheating by palpation? I don't think it is just the children who may have a fuzzy understanding, it may be authors and readers and even us. We can dismiss all of this as error, of course, but that does seem just a mite prescriptive.

I am not sure that I understand this correctly, but it seems rash to delete it. DCDuring TALK 20:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep both. DCDuring TALK 21:00, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• as anonativ:howdoiknowhichr incl.i/legbone??
• iAMtraind>we'dalv'em![astheyrdiscreetentitys>sucinct def+ref2wp,aswe'dw/alproper names[nothati cap'em,bone nams;)--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 21:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

nope-asperbelo:rad+uln notdeduciblfromparts[same4legbons:[meta]tarsus incl?,toe bons?2me=al legs,but2anativ layman??-furthermor, my languagedozntv theword legbons,howdoikno???.--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 21:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC) We also ha

If fibula is actually also called calf bone (which it is according to dictionary.com) it should be kept. How else would we poor non-natives know which of the two bones of the lower leg it is? --Hekaheka 19:17, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

agree--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 21:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC) eh-singly=?here

• imyview:atleasthavastub,saysphenoid bonelinkin2sphenoid

soneedsexpansionlol--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 21:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete as sum of parts. Yes, the specific bones will be variable between species, and so will "wrist bones", "skull bones", "leg bones", etc. Consider that "wrist bone" can mean any of the bones in the wrist. Each of these bones has a name and a distinctive shape. Do we therefore have an entry that lists each possible wrist bone for every species (in some there are more bones)? No. This is content for an encyclopedia. The lexical content of the term "forearm bone" is "bone in the forearm". --EncycloPetey 03:49, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

i'dgo4wt tobe abroaddict>a.bit of grammar[ala Swan,whichsome entrys ractualy~dict.styl],gazeteer/geo,bitencycl.,phrasebooki/SHORTish entrysREFERING2wp,wm-books,etc>userFRIENDLY,klik-efficient[here:guidance2find wotevastuf:)[thoputinboundaryshard,irealiz

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leg_bone k,nofoot lol<therisETYL2that,when1.used,changin'use praps-thatdef.sthWE'dbedoin~placenames[who rtheynamd after,lit.quotesundundund--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 04:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and they deal with topics in their articles. We are a dictionary, and deal with words in our entries. The principles of organizing an encyclopedia do not apply here because our goals are quite different. --EncycloPetey 14:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

there isOVERLAP--likalthose discusions here'bout saytheDEF OFA WORD[lexicografik1]-itookmejust2weeks dealin intesivly w/apliedlinguistics waybak i/oz2c thatMOSTofthose holy/bigwordHOTOPICS/TECHN.TERMSrpoorly defind>wotsthepoint inalthefiting??encycl do alilbitof linguistiks[ipa,etyl],weneed2HELP'EMw/that[styloid-ipa?spica-etyl?let alone spica splint--have funsearchin i/wp..]>INCLUDING WP entrys [w/justLILdef-flesh,that indeed4wp],doinOURJOB w/etyl,ipa etc andsoHELPourusers.[imtrulyfedupw/althese mostlynarowsens def getinpalmdofasTHEdef[ex.:WOT IS A DICTIONARY,answerREALYNOTASTRAIGHT4WARDasu regulars'dlik2makebeliv,ncomin downw/big[policy usay?perdef>{punintended ;)}ALWAYS IN FLUX]stiks isntv.RESPECTFULeither],aweaknes esp.ofalthoseSOFTsciences as sociology,psychology etc imo[lookatsuch wp-entrys,howlers!!],nlet alonethe impresion itmaks uponanewby]

• nmostofthose"dict.constraints"had2do w/SPACElimits["so we'lmakesomARBITRARYCRITERIAup"]-why esp.here onaproject ofsuchunprecedenteddimensionppl rso"closed"2wotburgeonin'technologys cando4them-itleavesmebafled,butrealy..:(
• nthisimhoPERVERS/DESTRUCTIVfocus on"shalwe deletethisentry,yea?!{hyper-tone intended.}"[mywatchp.isnowINUNDATEDbythem--isCREATINstuf realysoborin??]-rwe here2BUILDUPor2smashea others efortsunderthepretensofGARDIN'THEGRAIL--itsaWORKINPROGRES,4krist'sake..--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 15:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] munjosprem

Unused neologism, unsuccessfully coined in the 1990s. --Ivan Štambuk 00:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems like and RFV case to me. Since I can't understand the language, I'm unlikely to be able to cite it or confirm that it can't be cited. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] degree of glory

I nominate this entry for deletion because it is sum of parts (degree of glory). For example kingdom of glory and degree of heaven (see here for usage example) all mean the same thing. 98.166.138.172 14:35, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I've read the Wikipedia article, (well its introduction) and I tend to think this is a proper noun and should be spelt either Degree of glory or Degree of Glory. I certainly can't guess or work out what it means from degree + of + glory, I think we should treat it as a proper noun and decide if it meets CFI that way. I think it does. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

More input please... Mglovesfun (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] home side

Do this and away side (home team, away team) meet CFI? Probably not, but let's hear some more opinions. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:49, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• languagelearnersNEEDthis[SKINFROMWHOSENOSE2'vthem ay?!?
• urbeluvdCFIneedCOMPLETOVERHAUL.
• nowgo'ndosthCONSTRUCTIV!

[iwasofree2coRECTurpost asursuchaDESTRUCTIVPURIST-itakafairbit,butherzLIMITS!]--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 14:29, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please make a proposal to amend WT:CFI so that we can apply our resources to more entries. I know that we have already made all of our existing entries as good as we know how to. We need most especially to add entries that other dictionaries omit. It is particularly important that we make sure that language learners never have to work through the meaning of a phrase using entries for the constituent words. Better we should lexicalize everything. Let a billion collocations bloom. DCDuring TALK 16:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please make a proposal WHENI CANINPUTto amend WT:CFI so that we can apply our resources to more entries. I know that we have already made all of our existing entries as good as we know how to.UR2BUSY'DELETIN'4THAT2HAPEN We need most especially to add entries that other dictionaries omit.INDEED-MYSTREETNAME:IWANT ETYL,OBSCURSPORTSTERM-IWANT PLAINENGLIS EXPL ETC. It is particularly important that we make sure that language learners never have to work through DICT=GOLDSTANDED,NEEDS ENTRYSthe meaning of a phrase UHAVNO DEEPLEARN/TEACHING OF2NDLANGUAGE EXPERIENS,N'HENCE LAKPERSPECTIV ,AOTH BOUTHE 'CONSTANTGUESIN'N'WORKIN'OUTREQUIRD INTHATTPROCES.using entries for the constituent words.LIKE GOIN'THRU THE28SENSESOF'OFF' JUST COS SB POSTEDAN INCOMPEHENSIBLTECHN.DEF-NOTX. Better we should lexicalize everything.YES!! Let a billion collocations=NOTORIOUSTUMBLIN'BLOK4LEARNERS bloom. MYCAPS---史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 02:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more input, please comment! Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] in back of

This functions as a preposition to make adjectival and adverbial phrases. It can't be an adverb (taking no object), can it? DCDuring TALK 19:02, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You seem to be right, but for those of us not so hot on English grammar, can you explain this? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:13, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

It is like WT:TR#circles around. It cannot be used grammatically without a true noun as complement. (BTW, not a gerund or something that can sometimes serve as if a noun) Most dictionaries would not call this a preposition, but I think it is indistinguishable in its grammatical function from normal one-word prepositions. I will take a closer look to make sure of this last point. In contrast, in back functions as an adverb. DCDuring TALK 21:02, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] two-wheeled

NISOP. Equinox ◑ 23:22, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete as pointless; one–sixteen-wheeled (as well as many greater even numbers) are all easily attestable viâ Google Book Search. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:08, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep. It's a word. Would you propose to delete understandable? It's easily understandable too: understand + -able. Never forget that the definition is not the only part in the pages (you seem to forget examples, translations, anagrams, etc.) Lmaltier 12:38, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Delete, what we really need is to look again at wheeled and check that it is perfectly clear. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that two-wheeled = two + wheeled. It's more two wheels + -ed. But, anyway, it's a word (with, possibly, anagrams, translations, etc.). Lmaltier 16:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

asianlearnersNEEDsuch entrys+tr-hanger.NI=?--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 02:44, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it means "having two wheels". There is no reason to have five-or-more-wheeled, but the common terms two-wheeled, three-wheeled and four-wheeled should be kept. —Stephen 20:51, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

but this word is considered as comparable in the page, which seems absurd to me. Lmaltier 20:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, two-wheeled is an absolute. It cannot be more two-wheeled. —Stephen 06:02, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

one-wheeled — 744 BGC hits;
two-wheeled — 3,300 BGC hits;
three-wheeled — 1,551 BGC hits;
four-wheeled — 3,140 BGC hits;
five-wheeled — 553 BGC hits;
six-wheeled — 1,089 BGC hits;
seven-wheeled — 419 BGC hits;
eight-wheeled — 926 BGC hits;
nine-wheeled — 68 BGC hits;
ten-wheeled — 687 BGC hits;
eleven-wheeled — 21 BGC hits;
twelve-wheeled — 624 BGC hits;
thirteen-wheeled — 10 BGC hits;
fourteen-wheeled — 146 BGC hits;
fifteen-wheeled — 26 BGC hits;
sixteen-wheeled — 162 BGC hits;
eighteen-wheeled — 198 BGC hits;
twenty-wheeled — 52 BGC hits;
twenty-one-wheeled — 2 BGC hits;
twenty-two-wheeled — 13 BGC hits;
twenty-three-wheeled — 4 BGC hits (though only one seems to be in the right sense);
twenty-four-wheeled — 125 BGC hits;
twenty-five-wheeled — 105 BGC hits (e.g., [4]);
twenty-six-wheeled — 8 BGC hits (e.g., [5]);
…and so on. All semantically transparent, all unidiomatic. I see no qualitative difference between two-, three-, or four-wheeled and the other n-wheeled. Delete them all or keep them all. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I've added the missing sense "(in combination) Having the specified number or type of wheels" to [[wheeled]], and say to delete this SOP.​—msh210℠ 20:55, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I looked up one of your so-called transparent unidiomatic attestable examples, fifteen-wheeled — 26 BGC hits;
, and the ones I saw where about "fifteen ‘wheeled vehicles’" (fifteen vehicles with wheels). We only need one through four, and no need at all for five or more. —Stephen 03:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

[6], [7]. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:42, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

If we're going after these, the equivalently formed nouns two-wheeler, three-wheeler, four-wheeler, ..., eighteen-wheeler, ... would seem to be as deletable/keepable as these adjectives. That said, because of its common use to designate the standard tractor-trailer combo rather than any generic vehicle with eighteen wheels, entries for eighteen-wheeler and eighteen-wheeled are in my opinion warranted, but since the other combos aren't normally evocative of one particular combination, delete them. — Carolina wren discussió 16:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

These entries may be a rich source of RfV candidates. But I don't see how we can delete any one of them that has a sense other than "having N wheels".

The "-wheeler" entries are more likely to have more meaningful definitions. I'd vouch for two-wheeler, three-wheeler, and four-wheeler and also bet on some truck "-wheelers": ten-wheeler, fourteen-wheeler. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree on the "-wheeler" entries, but isn't "two-wheeled" just two words joined by a hyphen to make a two-word adjective? How does it differ from "red-coloured" (for example)? Dbfirs 23:11, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I would be willing to argue that two-wheeled is a special case, since the wheels may be side-by-side and joined by an axle or one in front of the other with no axle. A "two-heeled vehicle" may be a chariot or a Vespa. Both are two-wheeled, but what that means is very different between the two vehicles. --EncycloPetey 02:44, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep everything up to four for absolutely no reason other than we keep low numbers like three hundred and three-dimensional. DAVilla 05:32, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Per Lmaltier, if you consider hyphenates as one word (or per CFI not an "expression") then it should be kept as words don't have to be idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] abandoning

rfd-sense: Noun. The act of abandoning. Sense included in participle form. Usexes for participle include one for such use. DCDuring TALK 01:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

• Isn't the second example sentence a use of the gerund rather than the present participle. I thought that the present participle could only act as an adjective, not a noun - but maybe I'm too old-fashioned. SemperBlotto 07:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

  I had labeled it as "gerund" on the right of the usex. Perhaps I should insert the tag on the left, but we don't normally have any tags for usage examples.

  I am trying to get at how this ought to be presented. CGEL insists that there is no reason in current English to make a lexical distinction between gerund and participle and they make a pretty good case. But calling it a "gerund-participle" seems ugly. Quirk et al in the other grammar also seem to not find merit in a lexical distinction, but I don't own that one so I can't check. I am not sure how long before Quirk et al. (1985) the gerund/participle terms started to diminish in favor. I do not think that the vocabulary of gerund and participle is as deeply ingrained among users as the parts of speech vocabulary so I am inclined not to take it too seriously. I am open to discussion on this and don't see why wiktionary should be on the bleeding edge of terminology change. This just doesn't seem like the bleeding edge to me. DCDuring TALK 18:19, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I was gonna say RFV, but it's already cited in the article. May as well keep it now. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] fucking

Noun. Act of sexual intercourse. This seems to be a gerundive use of the participle-gerund/-ing form rather than a separate PoS. I have already borrowed the usage example and inserted it with two others under the participle. What should be done with the translations and synonyms if this is deleted? DCDuring TALK 16:58, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

My initial reaction before researching is keep and mark as countable - how attestable is fuckings? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:17, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Google Books gets 436 hits for fuckings in English, ergo keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Very many gerund-participles/-ing forms form plurals. It is not really a mark of anything distinctive, though we have taken it as such in the past. I would be perfectly happy if the gerund usage example under the verb had a plural to illustrate this. It is somewhat analogous to the situation with attributive use of nouns. Almost all (all?) nouns are sometimes used attributively. We only have an adjective sense if there is a change in meaning or it used predicatively, gradably, or with a change of meaning. In the case of participles, I think we serve users better by indicating that any of the verb meanings can be used as participial adjectives, as gerunds, or to form progressive verb constructions.

This is a departure from our past practice. This and remaining and #abandoning are test cases for the development of a new approach to -ing forms more consistent with the treatment in modern grammars.

My understanding is that each gerund is also a noun denoting an activity, hence a hyponym of "activity". Examples include "swimming" in "I like swimming" and "climbing" in "Climbing can be dangerous". What I like in "I like swimming" is an object, so "swimming" as occurring in this phrase is a noun.

Having a noun section in each gerund may seem redundant, but so may seem having an adjective section in each of the past participle entries, such as defiled. Formally, it seems correct to proceed in this way. The noun sections of gerunds are valid targets for translations, unlike the verb form sections for part participles. --Dan Polansky 20:54, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

It is unfortunately not quite as simple as that. In "The several royal fuckings we got were memorable", we have a noun as evidence by modification by determiner and adjective and the plural. In "their royally fucking us will long be remembered" it is more verbal, being modified by an adverb and having an objective complement. Both serve as subjects.

If every verb can also function as a noun, then why do we need a separate lexical entry? It is not different from the situation with attributive use of nouns. I see no reason to favor any one of these uses.

The translation target problem gets us into the problem of polysemy as well. In my experience most discussion about "fucking" was not about the sexual act, but rather some kind of adverse experience administered by someone or something. Would we need a translation table for each of the three uses of the participle-gerund form and the noun in each of the verb senses that existed? That would seem to be 4 times the number of base senses of the verb. Do all languages use fuck in ways that structurally parallel English to generate these four uses of ing forms? Do they have the same number of literal and figurative senses. DCDuring TALK 22:00, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not saying that every verb ("swim") can function as a noun; I am saying that most gerund forms ("swimming") are also nouns. In "I have been swimming", "swimming" is a verb form, while in "I like swimming", "swimming" is a noun.

As regards the replication of verb senses in noun entries, we have it anyway with those terms for actions and activities that are not formed using "-ing", such as "replicate"-"replication", "donate"-"donation", "analyse"-"analysis", etc; duplication also arises in "analogy"-"analogous", "homology"-"homologous", and also in pairs resulting from the addition of "-able".

Consider swimming at OneLook® Dictionary Search: most dictionaries feature "swimming" also as a noun.

I am here concerned not with "fucking" in particular but with the class of all gerunds, including "swimming" and "climbing".

Do I understand correctly that you propose that we remove noun senses from most gerunds? --Dan Polansky 08:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

After some research: from what I now hope to understand, "gerund" does not refer to any form ending in "-ing" but rather only to those occurrences in a sentence that act as a noun. So an occurrence of "swimming" that acts as a present participle is not a gerund. What distinguishes gerunds from pure nouns denoting activities such as "analysis" is the ability of gerunds to be modified using adverbs, as you have pointed out.

If we remove noun sections from "-ing" entries, gerunds remain unrepresented. Currently, gerunds are usually represented as nouns in Wiktionary. Gerunds should not be represeted as present particles; they are gramatically distinct from them. --Dan Polansky 09:17, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

A problem with placing them under Nouns headers is that they are arguably misrepresented there as they cannot be treated as normal nouns in some regards in many circumstances. The two leading modern English grammars don't seem to find the traditional Latinate grammatical categories satisfactory. I would be intrigued to find out how the most popular modern advanced ESL texts handle the divergence of traditional and modern grammatical treatment. If this is still somewhat in flux, as I suspect it is in ESL texts, then a good treatment might be to have a grammar appendix, a one- or two-sentence usage note, and/or a See also directing users to an "Appendix:English uses of of the participial form of verbs".

Other dictionaries have finessed this presentation issue by not having a full entry for inflected forms of English verbs. If they have a separate entry for a verb-derived noun ending in -ing, it is not a gerund or participle AFAICT. Our having separate entries for the participle has created the issue by tempting contributors to add -ing Noun sections where normal dictionaries (print or online) would not have a separate entry. We would need to actively discourage users from adding such sections by providing them with a rationale for not doing so. (The same sort of problem arises for common noun uses of Proper nouns and attributive-only adjective use of nouns.)

If we accept that a gerund is a verb form (and some Google books that I have seen do that), we can place a gerund line next to present participle line, to render in the "climbing" entry:

1. Present participle of climb.
2. Gerund of climb.

or

1. Gerund and present participle of climb.

That should make gerund explicitly represented without the need of having a misleading noun section. I accept your point that a noun section is an imperfect represenation of a gerund.

As regards the tentative noun "fucking", I have no comment on that; I was only concerned with gerunds in general and with tentative verb-derived nouns ending in "-ing". --Dan Polansky 21:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The general case is of more interest to me as well. Your suggestion is very constructive. It is not unlike what CGEL does. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

And fuckings will quite easily meet CFI, so if we delete the noun fucking that's gonna cause a problem, isn't it? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this would need to be handled. But we already don't have plurals for a large number of gerundial uses of participle forms. (It is my belief that almost all participle forms have attestable gerunds ending in -s, though it may be tedious to separate the plural gerunds from the plurals of derived true nouns.) I can imagine some technical approaches that I cannot implement but could possibly specify, but I don't think we are deep enough in technical skills to count on that. DCDuring TALK 14:25, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I would feel happier about DCD's approach if we recognized "Participle" and/or "Gerund" as a PoS, but I don't see that as likely to happen for English (and that approach isn't without problems of its own). We've already agreed in previous discussion that participles can be given an Adjective section, under certain circumstances, so why not a Noun?

One big concern I have about the proposed solution is the handling of subsections like Quotations. Consider: If we define quoting as "gerund and present participle", then how do we sort the quotations when some will be a gerund use and some will be a participle use? Whatever we choose to do, we need to keep these two items separated for the sake of quotations, synonyms, translations, etc., because the grammar and meaning as a participle and as a gerund are distinct.

Also, what happens to gerunds like being that have become nouns to a higher degree? A being refers to a concrete noun, and is seldom used to mean an abstraction or action as most present participles do when they become gerunds. Likewise, some gerunds are regularly modified by adjectives, which is not possible for a verb. Consider racewalking, competitive eating, offset printing. Are we to have these listed as nouns, but have walking, eating, and printing merely as "verb forms"? This sets us up for inconsistent treatment and much confusion among our users.

The underlying problem is that a gerund is neither wholly a verb nor wholly a noun. I have the same (or a similar) problem in Latin with participles, gerundives, gerunds, and infinitives. Latin has the additional problem that such forms also have a set of inflected forms beyond the ones for the verb. English does not have the degree of inflection that Latin has, but the question of "plural" gerunds is similar. You can see how I've handled Latin participles at entries like amāns, amātus, and amandus. The relation to the verb is indicated in two ways: by the PoS Participle, and by the Etymology from the verb.

For gerunds in Latin, I've had to use the PoS Gerund, because of grammatical complications (see laborāndum). These complications include the fact that the Latin gerund has a fixed gender (neuter) and lacks a nominative form. Neither of these points can be inferred from a verb, which lacks entirely both gender and case. That is, Latin gerunds have attributes not found in verbs, inflect like nouns and adjectives, and function grammatically like those nouns and adjectives. The only things that tie them to a verb are the stem and base meaning, but that is true of all nouns and adjectives in Latin that derive from verbs, and there are many such nouns and adjectives that are not gerunds but have been formed from verbs by means of a suffix. So, these nouns and adjectives share with their root verb a suffix and base meaning, even if they aren't gerunds. I can therefore find no internaly consistent justification in Latin for treating Gerund as a "verb form". --EncycloPetey 20:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Departure from the old PoS terms in English seems inadvisable to me because it drives a wedge between us and normal users. For languages approached more formally, like Latin, any terminology that is used in instruction seems acceptable by the same standard, though some monolingual English users who might be looking up a Latin word will be flummoxed by terms like gerund.

Just to clarify one point while I try to digest the rest: In English there definitely are cases where there is a pure adjective (gradable, etc) or a pure noun (usually a shift in meaning or derivation from a noun, possibly in ME or OE). These always need to treated separately.

The general question of what points should be not be handled lexically but rather by grammar notes summarizing descriptive rules of broad applicability (within the language) and how we should help users find such notes must exist in almost all languages whose grammars have been documented. DCDuring TALK 20:51, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you about summarizing descriptive rules, etc. And, as you can see, I've phrased much of my preceding comments as questions, partly to stimulate discussion and raise points but partly because I have no solution that wouldn't retain significant problems. If I thought I had a solution that would work, and which would satisfy the various needs and concerns in this discussion, I'd present it. For now, the best I have are some issues and methods not previously mentioned.

Latin gerunds will flummox most users of Wiktionary no matter what we call them; they're advanced grammar in the language and have many oddities beyond the ones I've noted above. In addition to the other considerations, another reason I went with using Gerund as a Latin PoS (after mulling over the issue for years) was to highlight to the user that something really weird is going on, and that they might need to seek additional information. When I understand Latin gerunds a bit better myself (by that I mean their actual use, and not just the brief mention they usually get in textbooks), I intend to write an Appendix concerning them as a grammatical aid. --EncycloPetey 21:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I would like all -ing entries to have two sections. A verb section defined as "present participle of" and a noun section defined as "gerund of". But the grammar police won't let us talk about gerunds these days. SemperBlotto 21:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• You're nicked, sunshine. Ƿidsiþ 16:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I've created Appendix:English gerund, to be updated and renamed as we sees fit. --Dan Polansky 12:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think "fucking" in this sense is a gerund at all, I think it's a real run-of-the-mill noun. For example:

• 1996, Joe Orton, John Lahr, The Orton Diaries, p. 204:
  • 'Oh I needed that,' he said, 'I needed a good fucking, you certainly know how to fuck.'
• 2008, Bertrice Small, The Captive Heart, p. 365.
  • She'd pay for her boldness in a few minutes when he put her on her back and gave her a good fucking.

If we were talking about swimming or climbing here, we'd probably say "I need a good swim" or "they had a good climb", not "a good swimming" or "a good climbing". There's no question that a swim or a climb is a noun, and "fucking" is being used in the same way. bd2412 T 19:29, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Which attribute of the usage would you point to in order to establish a distinct noun nature not possessed by -ing forms of other verbs: modification by adjective, modification by a determiner, pluralization? Modification by "a" and pluralization are indications of countability, rather than nounhood per se. "There was much swimming and climbing" suggests that some determiners can modify the -ing forms you chose for contrast, but that they are like uncountable nouns. "There is good swimming and great climbing there, but only in the Summer." establishes adjectival modification.

Or is the criterion a semantic one? That there is a distinct "instance-of" sense?

The long-standing practice here of relying on pluralization to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the noun nature of -ing forms is defensible, but not quick as obviously correct as I had thought for these many months. DCDuring TALK 01:13, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well then:

2007, Ray Gordon, Annette Declan, The Upskirt Exhibitionist, p. 181:

• I was sure that I couldn't endure three fuckings in each hole, but there was no point in protesting.

Anyway, kept per discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ar

This is the oldest tagged RfD (October 2007). ar#Romanian. I can find no record of it having been posted. Has this now been resolved? DCDuring TALK 20:01, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the same person that posted am#Romanian saying "clean up or delete". That is, it definitely exists but it needs cleaning up. I'll try and do it tomorrow. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:35, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

It definitely exists but I can't find the meaning given in the article. It is accord to ro:ar a conjugated form of ara#Romanian, but that's not what the Romanian sections says right now. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:16, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I inserted {{attention|ro}}, which I should have two weeks ago. DCDuring TALK 21:11, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

We al agree it exists, so kept and requesting cleanup. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] September 2009

[edit] floo powder

Moved to WT:RFV#floo powder

[edit] あるいて, 歩いて

Was marked as {{delete}}, but since I don't know anything about Japanese... Mglovesfun (talk) 08:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Added an essentially same entry 歩いて to the subject.

In my opinion, it is a combination of two words, a verb form 歩い and a particle て, and should be considered as SoP. Including this kind of combinations can lead to a disastrous situation, exactly like that in other areas where we dare to exclude sum-of-parts entries. --Tohru 14:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Contrary to the entry, this is not an adverb in Japanese. It is the verb 歩く (aruku) conjugated to aruki with the -te suffix. Popularly called the "te-form", the medial -k- drops out in colloquial language.

Japanese verbs (and adjectives) conjugate and various suffixes attach to those conjugations. Listing all of those patterns is not both not practical nor very realistic. Thus the norm found in all dictionaries is to list it in a base form recognized by Japanese speakers. That is 歩く here. But just to give an idea how unpractical it is to list other forms, no matter how useful they may be to learners, here is a basic list of entries that would need to be created just for this one verb:

• 歩いて
• 歩いた
• 歩いたら
• 歩いたり
• 歩かぬ
• 歩かず
• 歩かない
• 歩かなかった
• 歩ければ
• 歩けれど
• 歩けれども
• 歩きます
• 歩きました
• 歩きません
• 歩きませんでした
• 歩け
• 歩けよ
• 歩こう
• 歩かなくて
• 歩ける
• 歩けない
• 歩けます
• 歩けなかった
• 歩けません
• 歩けませんでした
• 歩かせる
• 歩かせない
• 歩かせます
• 歩かせません
• 歩かせませんでした
• 歩かれる
• 歩かれない
• 歩かれなかった
• 歩かれません
• 歩かれませんでした
• 歩かせられる
• 歩かせられない
• 歩かせられなかった
• 歩かせられます
• 歩かせられました

Also, you will need to create entirely hiragana versions for each as well. And then romanized versions as well. We have now just tripled the list. And this list is hardly even comprehensive; there are many more patterns and variations. Now duplicate for each of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of verbs. This is insane and needs to be avoided. Bendono 14:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is this a problem? We already add conjugated verb forms in Italian, Latin, Spanish, and French. Latin has more than 100 inflected forms for a regular verb, yet the number of inflected forms hasn't been an impediment to creating those entries. Since the forms follow patterns, we use bots to generate the forms. There's no reason I can see for not doing the same in Japanese. --EncycloPetey 16:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, trying to include all words of all languages is insane, but we try to do it nonetheless. The number of forms you mention is not very large compared to Italian verbs (no usual dictionary would list all Italian forms included here). This is a general comment, because I don't know Japanese. Lmaltier 14:35, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Then here are my candidates, though this is still far from completion:

Verb phrases of 歩く

• 歩い
• 歩いたが
• 歩いたけど
• 歩いたけども
• 歩いたけれど
• 歩いたけれども
• 歩いたころ
• 歩いたころで
• 歩いたころでなく
• 歩いたころでなくて
• 歩いたころでなくては
• 歩いたころでなくても
• 歩いたころに
• 歩いたころにでも
• 歩いたころには
• 歩いたころは
• 歩いたぞ
• 歩いたとき
• 歩いたときで
• 歩いたときでなく
• 歩いたときでなくて
• 歩いたときでなくては
• 歩いたときでなくても
• 歩いたときなら
• 歩いたときならば
• 歩いたときに
• 歩いたときにでも
• 歩いたときには
• 歩いたときは
• 歩いたとした
• 歩いたとしたなら
• 歩いたとしたならば
• 歩いたとしたら
• 歩いたとしたらば
• 歩いたとして
• 歩いたとしよう
• 歩いたとしようが
• 歩いたとするが
• 歩いたとするけど
• 歩いたとするけども
• 歩いたとするけれど
• 歩いたとするけれども
• 歩いたとすると
• 歩いたとするとき
• 歩いたとするときに
• 歩いたとするなら
• 歩いたとするならば
• 歩いたとすれば
• 歩いたなら
• 歩いたならば
• 歩いたの
• 歩いたのよ
• 歩いたよ
• 歩いたら
• 歩いたらば
• 歩いたわ
• 歩いたわよ
• 歩いて
• 歩いていただいた
• 歩いていただいたとき
• 歩いていただいたときに
• 歩いていただいたときには
• 歩いていただいたなら
• 歩いていただいたならば
• 歩いていただいたら
• 歩いていただかなければ
• 歩いていただき
• 歩いていただきましたら
• 歩いていただきます
• 歩いていただく
• 歩いていただけたら
• 歩いていただけたらば
• 歩いていただけませんか
• 歩いていただこう
• 歩いている
• 歩いているとき
• 歩いていない
• 歩いてください
• 歩いてくだされ
• 歩いてくださったら
• 歩いてくださらなかったとき
• 歩いてくださらなかったとしたら
• 歩いてくださらなかったら
• 歩いての
• 歩いては
• 歩いてよ
• 歩いてるとき
• 歩いてるときで
• 歩いてるときでなく
• 歩いてるときでなくて
• 歩いてるときでなくても
• 歩いてるときに
• 歩か
• 歩かない
• 歩かないぞ
• 歩かないったら
• 歩かないとしたら
• 歩かないとしよう
• 歩かないなら
• 歩かないの
• 歩かないのよ
• 歩かないよ
• 歩かないわ
• 歩かないわよ
• 歩かなかった
• 歩かなかったら
• 歩かなかったとき
• 歩かなかったとしたら
• 歩かなかったら
• 歩かなかったわ
• 歩かなかったわよ
• 歩かなくて
• 歩かなくてね
• 歩かなくても
• 歩かなくって
• 歩かなくってね
• 歩かなくっても
• 歩かなくってよ
• 歩かなければ
• 歩かん
• 歩かんとき
• 歩かんときに
• 歩かんときにでも
• 歩かんときには
• 歩かんか
• 歩かんかい
• 歩かんの
• 歩かんのか
• 歩かんのだ
• 歩かんのだけれど
• 歩かんのだわ
• 歩かんわ
• 歩かんよ
• 歩き
• 歩きたい
• 歩きたいか
• 歩きたいかな
• 歩きたいかも
• 歩きたいぜ
• 歩きたいったら
• 歩きたいって
• 歩きたいってば
• 歩きたいとき
• 歩きたいときに
• 歩きたいときにでも
• 歩きたいときには
• 歩きたいの
• 歩きたいのか
• 歩きたいのかも
• 歩きたいのだが
• 歩きたいのです
• 歩きたいのですよ
• 歩きたいのなら
• 歩きたいのならば
• 歩きたいよ
• 歩きたいわ
• 歩きたいんだったら
• 歩きたいんなら
• 歩きたくて
• 歩きたくも
• 歩きたくない
• 歩きたくないから
• 歩きたくないとき
• 歩きたくないときでも
• 歩きたくないときに
• 歩きたくないときには
• 歩きたくないときにも
• 歩きたくないなら
• 歩きたくないの
• 歩きたくないのだ
• 歩きたくないのだよ
• 歩きたくないのよ
• 歩きたくないよ
• 歩きたくないわ
• 歩きたくないわよ
• 歩きたくなかった
• 歩きたくなかったとき
• 歩きたくなかったときに
• 歩きたくなかったときには
• 歩きたくなかったけど
• 歩きたくなかったけれど
• 歩きたくなかったけれども
• 歩きたくなかったの
• 歩きたくなかったのだ
• 歩きたくなかったのだよ
• 歩きたくなかったよ
• 歩きたくなかったら
• 歩きたくなかったわ
• 歩きたくなければ
• 歩きたくなさ
• 歩きたければ
• 歩きたさ
• 歩きながら
• 歩きながらで
• 歩きながらでは
• 歩きながらの
• 歩きなさい
• 歩きなさったとき
• 歩きなさったなら
• 歩きなさったのなら
• 歩きなさったのでは
• 歩きなさって
• 歩きなされ
• 歩きなされよ
• 歩きなされば
• 歩きなはったら
• 歩きなはって
• 歩きなはれ
• 歩きなはれば
• 歩きなはれよ
• 歩きました
• 歩きます
• 歩きませぬ
• 歩きませぬか
• 歩きませぬよ
• 歩きません
• 歩きませんか
• 歩きませんったら
• 歩きませんってば
• 歩きませんてば
• 歩きませんとも
• 歩きませんよ
• 歩きんさい
• 歩く
• 歩くころ
• 歩くころに
• 歩くころにでも
• 歩くころには
• 歩くころは
• 歩くぞ
• 歩くとき
• 歩くときが
• 歩くときなら
• 歩くときならば
• 歩くときに
• 歩くときにでも
• 歩くときには
• 歩くときは
• 歩くで
• 歩くな
• 歩くなら
• 歩くならば
• 歩くなよ
• 歩くの
• 歩くのでございましたら
• 歩くのでございます
• 歩くのでございますか
• 歩くのでしたら
• 歩くのでしたらば
• 歩くのです
• 歩くのですか
• 歩くのでございます
• 歩くのではございません
• 歩くのよ
• 歩くのなら
• 歩くのならば
• 歩くよ
• 歩くわ
• 歩くわよ
• 歩け
• 歩けど
• 歩けども
• 歩けない
• 歩けないかも
• 歩けないから
• 歩けないぞ
• 歩けないです
• 歩けないとき
• 歩けないの
• 歩けないのかも
• 歩けないのだ
• 歩けないのだが
• 歩けないのだから
• 歩かないのだとしたとき
• 歩けないのだとしたときに
• 歩けないのだとしたときには
• 歩けないのだとしたら
• 歩けないのだとしても
• 歩けないのだよ
• 歩けないのだわ
• 歩けないのに
• 歩けないのよ
• 歩けないよ
• 歩けないわ
• 歩けないわよ
• 歩けなかった
• 歩けなかったとき
• 歩けなかったときに
• 歩けなかったときにでも
• 歩けなかったときには
• 歩けなかったときは
• 歩けなかったの
• 歩けなかったので
• 歩けなかったのでは
• 歩けなかったのに
• 歩けなかったのよ
• 歩けなかったら
• 歩けなかったよ
• 歩けなかったわ
• 歩けなかったわよ
• 歩けなくても
• 歩けなくなる
• 歩けなければ
• 歩けば
• 歩けませぬ
• 歩けません
• 歩けん
• 歩けんぞ
• 歩けんのだ
• 歩けんのだよ
• 歩けんよ
• 歩けんわ
• 歩こ
• 歩こう
• 歩こうか
• 歩こうかな
• 歩こうぜ
• 歩こうぜよ
• 歩こうったら
• 歩こうってば
• 歩こうってばよ
• 歩こうと
• 歩こうとした
• 歩こうとしたが
• 歩こうとしたとき
• 歩こうとしたときに
• 歩こうとしたときにでも
• 歩こうとしたときにも
• 歩こうとしたところ
• 歩こうとしたところで
• 歩こうとしたなら
• 歩こうとしたならば
• 歩こうとしたの
• 歩こうとしたのよ
• 歩こうとしたら
• 歩こうとしたらば
• 歩こうとしたわ
• 歩こうとして
• 歩こうとしてみた
• 歩こうとしてみたの
• 歩こうとしてみたところ
• 歩こうとしてみたところで
• 歩こうとしてみたところでも
• 歩こうとしてみたわ
• 歩こうとしてみます
• 歩こうとしてみませんか
• 歩こうとしてみる
• 歩こうとしても
• 歩こうとしなかった
• 歩こうとしなかったです
• 歩こうとしなかったの
• 歩こうとしなかったら
• 歩こうとしなかったわ
• 歩こうとしなくても
• 歩こうとしなければ
• 歩こうとすると
• 歩こうとするとき
• 歩こうとするときでも
• 歩こうとするときに
• 歩こうとすれば
• 歩こうよ

I guess the list can be longer than 1,000 entries for sure (I will do so if such a demonstration is actually needed). This is the situation we have to handle per each Japanese verb when accepting such combinations. And I just don't know how to set appropriate criteria for them. --Tohru 14:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the laugh, Tohru. 散歩でも歩きましょうｗ Bendono 14:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If you can learn to use a bot like the one we use for generating forms of Spanish verbs, then you could successfully create as many Japanese verb forms as you like in a very short time. --EncycloPetey 16:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If this is a completely regular agglutinative action, then other than a lack of spaces, I don't see a difference between these and potential English entries such as have not been speaking, or the decision to not include the entries for English possessives. As the issue is presented I support deletion. However, if there exist any irregular combinations, I would conclude that including them would be needful, tho all but the irregular cases could easily be handled with bot support as EP points out. — Carolina wren discussió 16:39, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the point: almost all of those, including the entry up for deletion, are not verb forms. They are sum of parts. More specifically, the verb aruk- (walk) has only four distinct forms: aruk-a, aruk-i, aruk-u, and aruk-e. (No, I am not forgetting aruk-o; leave me a message if you are curious.) Every thing above is derived by attaching various suffixes to these forms, occasionally followed by specific phonological changes. What would the POS be? Verb is not appropriate. Perhaps Quasi-Verb Phrase? Partial Predicate? The whole concept of a headword for Japanese is completely screwed up here on Wikipedia. Creating entries for the above would only compound the problem further yet. Bendono 16:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Plus, I should have noted that I omitted variant forms that Bendono mentioned above, from the list. Once counting them, the number will easily reach ten thousand. Please don't forget it is the number of entries belonging to one verb. --Tohru 17:09, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I hate to point this out, mainly because I'm against it, but we have lots of Spanish 'contraction' entries like llámame (call me) which I'd quite like to see deleted, but nevertheless they're here. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:49, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It may seem impractical and terribly difficult to you, but we have exactly the same situation in hundreds of other languages, many much worse. In Arabic a verb can easily have over 20,000 different forms, and each form can be spelled in a multitude of ways. We include these forms, certain the more standard forms such as your -te verbs. The part of speech would be verb form, with an explanation in the definition line that it is the conjunctive of 歩く. Just as we do with Spanish and French, these Japanese verb forms can be handled by a bot. —Stephen 18:36, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

RE Bendono: I am not missing the point. The exact situation you describe exists in Hungarian, where the plan is to create the entries, even though we don't (yet) have a bot to handle those. Hungarian uses attached postpositions (like suffixes) instead of prepositions. Words formed by the attachment of a suffix are vaible as entries here. Especially so since a non-native or learner of the language may not recognize the suffix for what it is. --EncycloPetey 20:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

<joking> Well there's a way to get ahead of French wiktionary, just add hundreds of thousands of verb forms from every language imaginable . . . :) </joking> I don't really have an opinion on whether or not these get added/stay or not, possibly tending toward keep. L☺g☺maniac chat? 21:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a key distinction between suffixes and particles, certainly for languages such as Korean and Japanese (and, I think, Hungarian). My understanding has been that, while we include root+suffix forms -- that is, true inflections -- regardless of quantity, we do not include word+particle, which are just two words that happen to be written as one, as with the English 's. In the name of sanity and all that is holy, I hope we will continue to maintain this distinction. I don't know how/if this issue applies to the above list . In Korean, at least, some "verb forms" are real forms and some are not -- 하겠어 is a true inflection, but 하겠어요 is inflected form + polite particle. -- Visviva 23:26, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

How do you define "particle" for this disctinction? Most of my Latin books dealing with the subject indicate there is a very fuzzy line between suffix, particle, and inflectional ending. Would you modify your definition when you consider that many, many Latin verbs are formed by prepending a preposition to a base verb? (See the derived terms under Latin sum (“‘I am’”), for example). These aren't formed from prefixes in Latin, as similar words are in English, because the prepended item is a word (preposition) in its own right. Likewise, Hungarian adds postpositions to its nouns, and functionally these are inflectional case endings (and the endings are treated as such in grammars). For Spanish, a pronoun (or two) is often added to the end of a verb, and we include these words (e.g. dímelo) even though the added ending is not much different from the "polite particle" you mention. --EncycloPetey 23:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I would define particle as "something that authoritative grammars agree is a particle". :-) That is, I think that any decision on what does and doesn't count as a word in a language needs to be bookended by a serious review of native-language and Western grammatical literature. The less similar a language is to English, the more critically necessary such a review is. The fact that I haven't seen anybody citing even, say, Martin's Reference Grammar of Japanese gives me pause that we would be making any sweeping judgments here. I don't know the first thing about Hungarian, but previous discussions here had suggested that the particle/suffix distinction was fairly strong in Hungarian grammar. If that's true, I hope that we would take this distinction seriously, rather than striking out on our own.

In the case of Korean, the South Korean and Western grammatical traditions, AFAIAA, concur in distinguishing particles from suffixes, which actually create new words/forms. (North Korean grammarians tread a somewhat different path, as one might expect, but the NK grammar texts I have managed to acquire are not really authoritative.) My initial efforts at treating Korean noun-particle combos as declined noun forms were rebuffed, and I have come to believe that this is correct -- both as a matter of grammatical fact and a matter of best Wiktionary practice. Regarding the polite particle 요, which can glom onto anything, verb, noun, adverb or determiner, with consequences that are pragmatic/discursive rather than semantic or syntactic, I can't imagine what purpose including its compounds would serve. -- Visviva 04:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Keeping an eye on the bigger picture here, we're trying to be a useful dictionary, i.e. a resource to which someone can turn when they see an unfamiliar word (or idiom) and need a definition. If inclusion of the above will enable someone to obtain that benefit, and said phrase can not be readily understood by reference to its component parts, then we should include it. Quite frankly, since this is the English Wiktionary, and our readers are less likely to be able to figure out how to put together strings of Asian characters, then we should lean towards being more inclusive of such matters. bd2412 T 03:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

But if it can be demonstrated that these are simply collocations -- that is, independent words written together, which would be unsurprising in a spaceless language like JA -- there is an easy solution; include any collocations that are common enough to be plausible searchterms in the entry for the content word. Problem solved: no spurious entries, and users can easily find the information they need -- indeed, more easily than if we had a separate, content-free entry for each such collocation. Again, I would just like to see some authoritative sources on which items from the above list are, in fact, inflected forms. Might be all of them for all I know. -- Visviva 04:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

(e/c) User:Carolina wren has made a good comment. All of the above forms completely and automatically generated by a regular agglutinative process of attaching various particles and suffixes. So far there have been many comments about comparison with other languages, but beside myself and Tohru, few from anyone who actually speaks Japanese. So to give an idea what some of the above phrases mean, here is a brief selection with English translations:

• 歩かせられなかった

  was not made to walk

  歩か ― 歩く (aruku), verb, imperfective form

  せ ― せる (seru), auxiliary verb, imperfective form

  られ ― られる (rareru), auxiliary verb, imperfective form

  なかっ ― ない (nai), verb, continuative form

  た ― た (ta), auxiliary verb, terminal form

• 歩いたときでなくても

  even though not the time that (I) walked

  歩い ― 歩く (aruku), verb, continuative form

  た ― た (ta), auxiliary verb, attributive form

  とき ― 時 (toki), common noun

  で ― だ (da), auxiliary verb, continuative form

  なく ― ない (nai), adjective, continuative form

  て ― て (te), continuative particle

  も ― も (mo), binding particle

• 歩いたとするならば

  if (one) assumes that (I) walked

  歩い ― 歩く (aruku), verb, continuative form

  た ― た (ta), auxiliary verb, terminal form

  と ― と (to), case particle

  する ― する (suru), verb, terminal form

  なら ― だ (da), auxiliary verb, hypothetical form

  ば ― ば (ba), continuative particle

• 歩いていただかなければ

  if (I) could not have (you) walk

  歩い ― 歩く (aruku), verb, continuative form

  て ― て (te), continuative particle

  いただか ― 頂く (itadaku), verb, imperfective form

  なけれ ― ない (nai), auxiliary verb, hypothetical form

  ば ― ば (ba), continuative particle

• 歩きたいかな

  (I) may want to walk

  歩き ― 歩く (aruku), verb, continuative form

  たい ― たい (tai), auxiliary verb, terminal form

  か ― か (ka), sentence-final particle

  な ― な (na), sentence-final particle

• 歩きたくないときにも

  even when not wanting to walk

  歩き ― 歩く (aruku), verb, continuative form

  たく ― たい (tai), auxiliary verb, continuative form

  ない ― ない (nai), adjective, attributive form

  とき ― 時 (toki), common noun

  に ― に (ni), case particle

  も ― も (mo), binding particle

As BD2412 said, we are trying to create a "useful dictionary, i.e. a resource to which someone can turn when they see an unfamiliar word (or idiom) and need a definition." I fully agree. However, a learner of English should not be able to expect to look up non-idiomatic phrases such as even though not the time that I walked and find a definition and translation any more than the reverse situation. Bendono 04:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I segmented the above phrases based on a practical version of the Japanese school grammar, UniDic [8], which is used by The National Institute for Japanese Language [9] to annotate the biggest Japanese corpus ever built (Modern Written-Japanese Balanced Corpus [10]). You can see something similar is going on here between these Japanese and English constructions. --Tohru 17:04, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

he'D>FUZY BOUNDARYw/PHRASEBOOK here--onceUSERhasthatINFO>pushthe buton>wp,books etc,integrated oras isnow,4further elaboration'n'EFICIENTlearnin.

btw,awcanweNOT'v wii as aJ-entry??[i'd2go2wp to c the kana&ipa4engl,grrr..:(--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 05:57, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete. First of all, I always try to defer to those informed on the language in question, who all seem to be favoring delete. Additionally, both Carolina wren and Visviva have made some prudent and subtle distinctions. Take the first word of γλαῦκ’ εἰς Ἀθήνας for example, it is an abbreviated form of polytonic {{γλαῦκες}}. The dropping of the last couple letters does not form a distinct word, but it a regular feature of Ancient Greek morphology. As such, we absolutely cannot make an entry for γλαῦκ’, as every single word in Ancient Greek (and every inflection of those words) is subject to the same possible droppings. To be sure, we are not a paper dictionary, and can include a lot more than paper can, like inflected forms, but we need the SOP rule to make the project feasible. We need to expect a minimum of knowledge about the language from our readers, otherwise we'll end up having to have an entry for all possible sentences in the language. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:19, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Japanese natives have a very weak sense of what at word is in Japanese. Since the writing contains no spaces, words are not delimited in the spelling. Speakers of Indo-European languages, OTOH, have a strong sense of what a word is. When we transcribe Japanese to Roman script, we invariably spell these forms as a single word, not as a verb plus a particle. We write mite, ite, tabete, kite, shite, hataraite, aruite, itte, hanashite, atte, kaette, notte, sunde, yonde, katte, de. We NEVER write mi te, i te, tabe te, ki te, shi te, and so on. Some call this the conjunctive form, but most grammars that I have seen simply refer to it as the gerund (like English -ing words). In my experience as a linguist, particles are always separate words. The postpositions may be considered particles: ga, wa, o, ni, e, kara. Also the sentence-ending words such as ne, ka, zo, yo are particles. In my definition of particles, inflexions and suffixes, the -te of the gerund (hataraite, shite, sunde, kite) is a suffix, not a particle. —Stephen 09:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I can go with this. If the people who actually work on Japanese entries consider that this is not a word, then delete, absent some strong evidence that they are mistaken. Now, if people only could have shown that same consideration on some Korean RFDs with hideous results.... -- Visviva 07:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain how, in my opinion, a good online dictionary could handle this. A pop-up dictionary Perapera-kun (Mozilla Firefox Japanese dictionary plug-in) knows that 歩いて is a form of 歩く and translates it as such, ie. -" to walk", NJstar Japanese Word Processor displays the following (like with any verb form): 歩いて【あるいて】 <Verb - Gerund>; (v5k,vi) to walk; (P). It can even generate verb forms from a dictionary form. It would be ideal if we had this here and not just for the Japanese language but the implementation seems complicated. --Anatoli 08:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

This would be an excellent way for a mirror or other reuser to handle it, IMO. And IMO, if we take care of the content that matters, mirroring will take care of itself. Being prisoners of this incarnation (on ill-suited software running on servers administered by an organization that cares little for our needs), there is only so much we can do for the end-user. -- Visviva 10:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

If we collectively present this problem to the WMF people, I think they'll try to help us solve it. If I'm understanding you correctly, what we want is something that works like Google Translate-plus-definitions, yes? bd2412 T 15:58, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Not sure Google Translate can always handle all forms correctly but there's sure some AI there, which looks not just at the dictionary forms of words. Can you give an example, please? --Anatoli 11:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Give an example? Not really, no. I'm not a programmer! bd2412 T 04:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't really seem that different from having bot-created entries for each inflected form. Which is what I assume we would want, long-term. -- Visviva 09:52, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep, I'm the one who originally made the 歩いて page, and I was always taught that it was a verb form of 歩く. A lot of people post an extreme number of possible verb forms and I suppose it would be absurd to include all of those but I don't agree that those are verb forms! I would possibly call 歩きたい a verb form but 歩きたくなかったときには is not and I find it a misleading reductio ad absurdum. In the previous example 歩きたくなかった is the negative past form of 歩きたい, but とき and には are separate forms. This is my idea: The conjugation table for 歩く is not ridiculous:

The form in question is both included in the conjugation table and it has an equivalent translation in a lot of languages which makes it a good candidate simply for the reason of linking to "by foot". Simply let users create entries for forms in the conjugation table. --BiT 11:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep. As Petey Mentioned above, Latin has quite a considerable number of verb forms. I think Lithuanian has more, if you count the participles and their forms. Lithuanian adjectives can have 150+ forms. Multiply 2 genders x 2 numbers x 7 cases x 3 degrees of comparison. Some of the forms coincide with each other, but not as many as say Slovenian. The issue here is differentiated between a verb form and verb phrase. "Aruite" is a verb form whereas 歩きたくないときにも "arukitakunaitokinimo" is a verb phrase. Verb forms should always be included, verb phrases should not (with conditions). — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, now we're getting somewhere. Taking my own advice from above, I've taken an uninformed look into Martin's Reference Grammar of Japanese [11]. Martin has a rather lengthy discussion of these V-te forms in section 9.2, beginning on page 475; he uses the term "gerund". There does not seem to be any question that he considers these to be verb forms rather than verb+particle compounds; he calls them verb forms, writes them as a single word (which he does not do for particles), etc. Unless somebody has a better grammar that comes to a different conclusion, this is good enough for me. Keep, as ===Verb===. -- Visviva 09:52, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Not really, and you are mischaracterizing Martin. Like grammatical past tense or other such constructions, Martin talks about a grammatical gerund. He writes this very appropriately as V-te (ex: kai-te, kai-de, kasi-te, kat-te, kot-te etc), ie with a dash followed by te. He is very careful about this point because Japanese grammar does not recognize a verbal te-from. If you read the whole discussion, it is nothing more than the adverbial form (which he calls infinitive here) with -te added.

Here is another point: "It is usually assumed the forms of the copula (such as da, na, no, ni ,de etc.) and the various postnominal particles (such as ga, o, kara, made,; gurai, dokoro, etc.) are attached to the noun to make a single phonological word" (page 34). So, shall we now add entries for 犬が, 犬を, 犬の, 犬に , 犬から etc? This is obviously nonsense, but not according to Latin grammar. But this is not Latin grammar.

The above Conjugation chart is ridiculous. Only the stem forms belong, and that could be improved. -te is not part of the verb. V-te is not a lemma and hence inappropriate. "But with do it in language X..." is fine for language X. Leave it to people who actual understand the language and do real work with it. Bendono 14:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

semi-strong KEEP. Okay, I can't speak Japanese but there are some things I would like to say. Regardless of whether we keep this or not some of the crap surfacing here is pissing me off :P

ex: 歩いたときでなくても - even though not the time that (I) walked

As people have said that is NOT a verb form >_> It's a sentence (fragment) and that should be blindingly obvious to anyone who can read Japanese as "とき" is a noun. So just because you could transliterate the whole string of characters as *aruitatokidenakutemo rather than something like aruita toki de nakutemo. Therefore, saying that that is a verb form is absolute BS. 50 Xylophone Players talk 17:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] rice noodle

Is noodle made from rice. --EncycloPetey 02:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It's similar to corn dog. 24.29.228.33 02:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it isn't. A corn dog is not a dog made from corn; it is a hot dog cooked inside cornbread. --EncycloPetey 02:33, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

needed4chin.tr-l 米粉which isNOTstreit4wed.--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 05:45, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

We can use rice noodle for the translation. Note that the individual components are linked. We do not create new English entries solely for the purpose of housing foreign translations; that isn't one of the WT:CFI criteria. --EncycloPetey 05:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

ppl mite wanaGIV'IN da searchmask r.n just/inorder2find say chin.tr-l>cfi needHUGELY EXPANDED!!!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 12:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

We had someone come here yesterday and look for "what is a scientist?" That does not mean we should have an entry for what is a scientist? The fact that people might want to look up a particular collocation is not, in itself, reason to have an entry for it. You can always create a Category:Pasta and a Category:zh:Pasta where all the various words for pasta in Chinese can be listed. You could also create an Appendix:Mandarin words for foods. Either of these approaches will allow users to find the translation. However, we should not have an English entry for something just because it can be used as a translation for a word in some other language. --EncycloPetey 13:31, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete per above, Mglovesfun (talk) 20:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete this SoP.​—msh210℠ 16:51, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

• Keep, this is what the thing is called in English. Rice noodles are (to me) a single semantic concept (also an important part of Asian culture). Also consider that they are often contrasted with egg noodles (which are made with wheat as well as egg; just as rice noodles can also contain tapioca and other thickeners). Ƿidsiþ 12:35, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I think a rice noodle is not the same as a noodle made of rice. I believe it is a special definition of noodle, and not similar to the noodles we are familiar with in American and German cuisine. Also, I am not sure that what part of the rice kernel the noodle would be made of, or how the rice is processed to make the material in question. —Stephen 12:42, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] cosegregation

Rfd-redundant. The medical term seems to be the same as the genetics term, just written from a physician's point of view. this may need a physician's attention.​—msh210℠ 19:55, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] call bullshit

Is this transitive or intransitive? Because 'I call that bullshit' just seems to be call + bullshit. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

See G.B.S.: "call bullshit on". † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

This seems more like an RfD matter. One can call "X" on someone or something where X can be any of several words such as "foul", "time", "penalty", "interference", "dibs", "challenge", and possibly "out", "in", "fair", "point of order", "objection", "exception". In general, if the utterance of X is a brief speech act under some set of rules, then it may be possible to "call X on" someone. If so it would be a productive construction (not fossilized, not set). I need to check to see whether this contains a phrasal verb and whether the phrasal verb does or should appear at call on or call something on someone or whether it is just SoP. DCDuring TALK 23:50, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

---

The preceeding is from WT:RFV#call bullshit, please continue the discussion here. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:20, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

As you point out Doremítzwr, that's call bullshit on, which is not the word we're discussing. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:36, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete They're the same. Any construction of “I call bullshit [on that]“ is sum-of-parts. Different from “I call that bullshit”, but we only define terms, not explain basic grammar. —Michael Z. 2009-09-11 13:15 z

Here are some quotations:

• with indirect object: that little familial affirmation has given me the confidence to call bullshit on a lot of things. I call bullshit on… BlG BROTHER
• etymology: In PM parlance, what I did in this story was call bullshit. This is in reference to the card game Bullshit, where you win if you get rid of all the cards in your hand. In each turn of the game, a player states which cards he’s playing as he places them face down into a pile. He is not obligated to tell the truth. So, if at any time another player thinks the first player is lying, she can “call bullshit” and force the first player to show his cards. If the accuser is right, the first player takes all of the cards in the pile (a major setback). However, if the accuser is wrong, she takes the pile.
• in a dictionary: call bullshit expr v : call someone’s bluff or question their veracity, “I call bullshit!”
• in another dictionary, as an interjection with I: I call bullshit
  An expression of distaste or aggravation used to call someone out on a complete falsehood. A way to say that something is at odds with a generally accepted truth.
• in the same text, the idiomatic: We often call bullshit when faced with something we regard as ridiculous, irrelevant, or misguided. and the sum-of-parts: Cohen resists the view that there is one criterion for bullshit, and argues that the difficulty in giving a consistent criterion across all the cases of what we can and do call bullshit rests on the difference between what constitutes bullshit in itself and what constitutes the production of it.
• another unidiomatic use: One doesn't have to be a detective to have a nose for bullshit, but it takes a certain hard-boiled courage to call bullshit by its name.
• in dialogue: “Little girl, have you lost your mind?”
  “They say you’re so scary tough. I call bullshit.”
• and so on: You may exaggerate any anecdote told in a bar by 50% without recrimination; beyond that, anyone within earshot is allowed to call bullshit.

Do they convince? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Convincing, yes, I don't doubt that it is an attestable phrase, but admittedly SOP. I don't know quite whether to delete it or not. I'm reluctant to quickly delete everything that appears "SOP". L☺g☺maniac chat? 16:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the etymological derivation from the card game Bullshit shows, I think, that this isn’t just an ordinary grammatical construction wherein the noun bullshit could be substituted with any other. What other constructions are claimed to be synonymous herewith? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:14, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

To call foul is just like to call bullshit. As is to pledge allegiance. To call foul on someone is just like to call bullshit on someone. The "call bullshit by its name" quote is irrelevant to this, but the others all seem good. That the game gave currency to one collocation wouldn't seem to change the apparent fact that the form preexisted the game, which seems to have borrowed something common in outdoor games and brought it to the word of board games, from which it has spread into broader realms of discourse. One would not have to have ever heard of the game to grasp the likely intended meaning of the speaker who uses the expression.

Is "I call bullshit" includable as a speech act? To include it would mean that almost any sentence of the the form "I hereby declare...." would be a candidate for inclusion. Would we be obliged to enter the entire US w:Pledge of Allegiance (and presumably all the other ones in their applicable languages) as a headword because it is a speech act? I hope not.

Should all player or official "calls" in games become entries? traveling (basketball); fair ball, foul ball, strike one (baseball}; intentional grounding (American football). Maybe, just like bullshit. Should whatever form is used to report the "call" be deemed an idiom? I think not. In individual cases the terms may have acquired some kind of idiomatic status, but they would seem to need to establish it on a case-by-case basis. DCDuring TALK 16:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I have a feeling there’s a disanalogy somewhere, but since I can’t seem to put my finger on it, I s’pose that I shall concede this case. Hard redirect to call something (on)? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

More like a usage note in call.

But are you guys seriously taking at face value the etymology “reference” quoted above? I call bullshit on anyone who accepts Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management as an authority on etymology. —Michael Z. 2009-09-16 00:16 z

Delete, anyone care to actually comment on call bullshit? This is not the Tearoom you know. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] striscie

Misspelt, according to WT:FEED#striscie. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:02, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I think asking User:Barmar might be a good first step. If it's a pure error, we can speedy delete it. If it's fine, then it's a speedy keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] pull my finger

A previous RFV passed without citations being provided (see Talk:pull_my_finger). However, I don't doubt that it can be cited, and this is an RFD. Same rationale, though: "It's a common phrase, but since it doesn't actually convey meaning beyond the strict literal sense, it doesn't seem to belong here." Stephen said "I agree, the meaning cannot be guessed from the words. It implies that the finger is a fart lever"; but that is not the implied meaning, is it? It is just a literal request for the person to pull the finger. If it meant "I am going to fart", it would be a standard idiom, not the joke/prank. This seems like having an entry for "Look into my eyes" (stating that it implies hypnotism) or even "Hand it over" (implying, unguessably!, that money is wanted when a bank robber says it). Equinox ◑ 23:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm of two minds about this one, but I did find one attributive use in b.g.c. (for "Pull My Finger" conditional program). --EncycloPetey 23:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep, I think. With respect to meaning, it seems quite clear to me that the expression has a meaning and not a literal one (i.e, it is not simply SOP) and that the meaning is pretty specific. It is a humorous or insulting challenge, inviting the interlocutor to induce a fart in the speaker. Equinox's 2 examples are arguably not in quite the same situation, since "look into my eyes" can have a very wide range of contexts and implied meanings and "hand it over" contains the wide-open pronoun "it". But, what endears me most to this entry is the fact that the first time I encountered it I found it quite useful. I had never known what "Pull my finger" meant, though I'd heard it a few times (the most recent when Michael Caine uttered it, mockingly to the bad guys, in Children of Men). This entry explained it to me, performing precisely the function that a dictionary is intended to perform. So I think it's a valid, helpful entry. -- WikiPedant 00:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is easy to cite in lower case. Most uses are in upper case and seem to derive from novelty dolls. And many are in quotes which makes it more likely that they are mentions. OTOH there might be enough in attributive use to support the upper case version. I found one for lower case. DCDuring TALK 01:03, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Weekly World News‎, v. 20, no. 49, Aug 31, 1999, Page 23:

• Gasbag hubby makes me pull his finger! Dear Dotti: My husband makes a big show of passing gas and actually makes me pull his finger when friends or neighbors drop by.

2007, Andrew B Brandi, The Warrior's Guide to Insanity‎, p. 68:

• He's not asking you to pull his finger, and he doesn't belch in front of your friends, demonstrating some new form of human speech.

2006, Larry the Cable Guy, Git-R-Done‎, 143:

• I remember he actually teared up at his father's funeral. Later I realized it was because he had told the deacon to pull his finger at the gravesite and he farted. He was crying so hard from laughing, it looked like he was in mourning.

Based on the foregoing, move to pull one's finger. bd2412 T 02:16, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but it should probably be pull someone's finger. Leave pull my finger as a redirect. -- WikiPedant 03:56, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Or more simply pull a finger, since that has a fair amount of usage as well. A possessive pronoun is not a necessary component of this phrase. — Carolina wren discussió 04:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] neerkijken op

Tagged in July 2009 by User:CodeCat who claims to be a native speaker. According to him, it's unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:34, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

If we had neerkijken that might help. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:03, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

(Thanks AugPi) look down + on to mean look down on. If it means to condescend, shouldn't this be kept, in which case we're missing look down on because that's idiomatic. So keep, assuming my analysis is correct. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] catty, chek, fan, tsun

At a local lexigraphy meeting over the weekend, a member pointed out a number of entries from Wiktionary. I will have more to say later, but for now one class of entries in particular were quite troublesome. After investigating the Wiktionary guidelines, I believe the following are invalid:

• catty#Etymology 2
• chek#English
• fan#Etymology 3
• tsun#English

Generally the same comments for all above words:

• "Romanization of the cantonese word [fill in blank]". Romanizing a word into Latin characters alone does not make it English.
• Does not appear to satisfy any of the four criteria given at CFI:Attestation
  • Clearly widespread usage: does not appear in any English dictionary at hand, including several large international editions, nor can I find any such widespread usage in actual English lexicons
  • Usage in a well-known work: none. The single reference is to a Hong Kong legal document under the heading of "Chinese [language?] unit". At best that would make it a legal term limited to Hong Kong, but still not "clearly widespread" or "well-known".
  • Academic journal: apparently none
  • Three independent instances spanning at least a year: again, none
• Our groups has two Cantonese speakers. They both said that while they knew the word in Cantonese, that they would not expect these words meaningful in an English context and would replace it with a number in metres.
  • In my opinion, a transliteration of a word from another writing system is still a word of the associated language, not an English word. bd2412 T 02:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

catty appears in MWOnline and probably in Websters 1913. t'sun appears in a units of measurement glossary. I didn't find the others, but there may be some other spellings. I haven't done searches for citations, but at least these two would seem to warrant move to RfV. There is nothing about transliterations what would mean that a transliteration that had attained usage in English couldn't be in wiktionary. For example, nyet and troika are arguably transliterations. I would just submit each of these to RfV to see if they are attestable in English. They might appear in some travel books or something commercial about Hong Kong, for example. DCDuring TALK 03:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Predictable but, why not an RFV? If the meanings given can be attested in English, why not keep them? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree, RFV. One cite for chek is pretty easy to find on b.g.c.; it wouldn't be terribly surprising if there were two more, somewhere amidst all the scannos and typos. There is no a priori reason to assume that these are not words; they should go through the standard verification process.

But regarding this meeting... These people have the time to pore over Wiktionary content, identifying words that they think are out of place -- but they don't have the time to flag the entries for verification or cleanup? Or they just think such things are beneath them? I gotta say, it seems kind of douchey from where I sit. -- Visviva 09:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] dative of purpose

The definition is wrong; this is just use of the dative to show purpose. I don't think it merits lexical coverage. --EncycloPetey 02:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep — this and the other forms of the dative, ablative, genitive, &c. are useful to learners of Latin (like me); moreover, this phrase is idiomatic (e.g., this cannot mean, in Scots law, a “decree dative of purpose”). † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

There is always some context in which an utterance is interpreted. To start there is the context of what language is being spoken. Then there are culture, realm of discourse, conversation-specific context, and audience-specific context. If one is in a group of English-speaking students of linguistics who know what "dative" means, is this not obvious? Isn't it just the details of how one author of school of thought specify this that may vary in encyclopedic detail, not the one- or two-line definition? DCDuring TALK 18:47, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete or improve, it's not claiming to be idiomatic or context-specific, the article says it's a dative used to indicate purpose. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there a sense of "of" that means "used to show"? It's a phrasing that has always seemed very odd to me; the Latin dativus finalis seems significantly more SOP than its English calque. -- Visviva 12:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I had always understood these "X of Y" constructions to be fixed terms of art in classical studies. Certainly "dative of service" and "dative of (the) end" also exist, but looking at the very few b.g.c. hits for "dative of intent" and "dative of intention" is instructive -- all are more or less one-off references to constructs in modern languages (Malayalam in one case, Lithuanian in another, English in a third).

Also, if this is SOP, how is it that the "dative of goal" (or "terminal dative") is apparently not identical with the "dative of purpose"? [12] I'm not seeing the SOPness, so I have to go with keep for now. -- Visviva 12:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a quick look through one of the little Latin handbooks I own (one from Oxford Univ. Press) to see which "datives" it lists. It includes: "dative of advantage and disadvantage", "dative of separation", "'ethic' dative", "'polite' dative" (both with the single quotes), "dative of the agent", but not "dative of purpose" (although an entire section is devoted to expression of purpose). Another of my little reference books has "dative of advantage and disadvantage", "dative of reference", "ethic dative", "dative of possessiion", "dative of agent", "dative of purpose", "predicative dative". As you can see, only two of these match between the two references, one of them even adds a "the" or single quotes, thus showing that "X of Y" is not a fixed term. There are certain collocations that are more commonly encountered, but their form and nomenclature are not fixed. --EncycloPetey 13:23, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] soil pollution

You can pollute a lot of things; soil, air, water. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:52, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep We already have air pollution and water pollution. But other stuff exists isn't a valid argument, so here's a better one: lead pollution is the the pollution of something by lead, mercury pollution is the pollution of something by mercury, but soil pollution is not the pollution of something by soil. In general the phrase <noun> pollution has two possible senses, only one of which will be valid for a given noun. — Carolina wren discussió 21:06, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the argument in WT:CFI terms.

On its own terms, "special-interest legislation" and "pollution legislation" similarly use have the attributive nouns in different relations to the head noun of the phrase.

"Air", "water", and "noise pollution" are terms that other dictionaries seem to find worthwhile, while "soil pollution" is not. I suspect that it has something to do with the legal recognition afforded the first three. It may also be that the notion of making dirt "dirty" or soling soil didn't take. Soil contamination isn't in other dictionaries either though. DCDuring TALK 21:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The cites on b.g.c for air and water each number in the tens of thousands, while for soil it numbers only in the thousands. There's also the slight problem that the synonyms ground pollution and land pollution exist for soil pollution, tho of the three soil is the most common. Attestation clearly is not a problem, and idiomaticity clearly is a common issue for all of these save perhaps light pollution where clarifying that it doesn't refer to a low level of pollution is a second issue. However, that reasoning also applies to soil pollution, as the combination could refer to pollution by soil (“‘excrement’”) unless one realized it has a particular idiomatic meaning of pollution of the soil (“‘dirt’”).

I did a closer look at the b.g.c. cite before committing the above as an edit and you know what? It seems that back at the start of the 20th century, soil pollution was not concerned with chemical pollution, but biological. I'll work some on the entry to have it reflect the change in meaning. — Carolina wren discussió 23:37, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

The Rosenau quotation might simply refer to ordinary soil pollution, specifically by manure or sewage. From the Google snippet views, the book appears to use pollution in the conventional modern sense elsewhere. —Michael Z. 2009-09-16 01:28 z

Doesn't change the fact that the quotes there for soil pollution and from other sources of the era, the only concern about soil pollution that was mentioned was biological, and nothing about chemical pollution. In contrast, in this page from a 2004 book about poultry management, [13] it bothers to mention specific types of chemical contamination that might result, but only mentions in passing biological concerns, and it by far is an exception among modern quotes in considering biological problems. Show me any quotes from the pre-1923 (i.e copyright-expired) era mentioning "soil pollution" in a context other than concerns about biological contaminants such as hookworm and I might change my opinion.

There's also this snippet [14] from a 1965 source that suggests that this term would pass the "ground beef" test, though frankly I'm not a fan of that test as I feel that regulatory definitions are encyclopedic in nature.

Finally, I've also come across one 1887 [15] two 1898 [16] [17] and one 1921 [18] cites of the form "soil-pollution", so the hyphenated form can be cited as a rare word, in which case not including the unhyphenated form would be silly. — Carolina wren discussió 04:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that by the mid-20th century people and public agencies had become more aware of sewage controls, but w:Love Canal and w:Rachel Carson's Silent Spring were yet to make the papers. But whether we're dealing with shit or PCBs, soil pollution usually refers to “pollution of soil. There are lots of recent examples of organic soil pollution. —Michael Z. 2009-09-16 04:50 z

Yup. This and other editions by Rosenau include quotations related to hookworm disease:

“The soil can take care of a large amount of pollution and will often yield ground water free of undesirable substances and bacteria.” [19]

“Prevention mainly depends upon the avoidance of soil pollution near homes. This usually involves the introduction of appropriate latrines combined with discouragement of the habit of promiscuous defecation...”[20]

“Human Habits. Hookworm infection is sharply correlated with those human habits which concentrate feces in moist, shaded places (places that are repeatedly visited). Only nominal attention to proper fecal disposal may be sufficient to prevent the spread of infection.”[21] [p 1189, listed under “soil pollution” in the index]

 —Michael Z. 2009-09-16 04:37 z 04:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

There is also "soil contamination", somewhat less common. These entries certainly have some value as translation hooks, and constitute "set phrases" without much doubt, but I am agnostic as to whether they are really a good idea overall. Incidentally, if anyone is still thinking about quantitative metrics for set-phraseness, the mutual information score for "soil" and "pollution" in COCA is 3.67. "Water pollution" is 5.9, "air pollution" is 8.35, "ozone pollution" is 8.75, and "transboundary pollution" is a whopping 10.98. "Soil contamination" is 6.00. (...if we were to ever adopt a certain MI score as a basis for inclusion, it would have some very interesting effects...) Haven't checked other measures or corpora. -- Visviva 17:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] coug it

Links cleaned up and appear to be from a single source and author. Is this slang noteworthy? --WRE451 03:49, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

If it could be attested it could be. For example if we could get three uses in newspapers reporting on the teams over more than a year's time. DCDuring TALK 11:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] آروېدل

Avestan Pashtun submitted this for speedy deletion with this comment:

correct spelling is اورېدل citation

However, with no knowledge of Pashto, I brought this here, Since for all I know this could be a variant spelling or common misspelling that Unidad gave us. If we do need to delete this, we also need to inform the Korean wiktionary. — Carolina wren discussió 04:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

You don’t notify the Korean Wiktionary, you just move the Korean to the proper spelling. You can either leave the redirect as is, or add {{delete}} to it, which will be taken care of by someone there. —Stephen 17:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the Korean for you. —Stephen 18:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Washington

[edit] Jefferson

[edit] Lincoln

[edit] Jackson

[edit] Garfield

Does not belong in Wiktionary. --Yair rand 18:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Most good dictionaries have them (at least, American dictionaries have them). Why don’t they belong, do you think? —Stephen 18:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

See WT:CFI#Names of specific entities: "...George Walker Bush thus should not be included. ...and Jeffersonian (an adjective) should be included, Thomas Jefferson (which isn’t used attributively) should not." --Yair rand 19:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson are two different things. Which one are you talking about? —Stephen 19:07, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm talking about Jefferson definition #2:

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826); the third President of the United States (1801–1809), principal author of the US Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential founders of the United States. Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Embargo Act of 1807, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). --Yair rand 19:14, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

move the actual people to the etymology where there are other sense. Conrad.Irwin 19:24, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The examples in CFI, ELE and elsewhere are not authoritative. For example "information" is claimed to be the exemplar of an uncountable noun in App:GL, when it actually has a sense that forms a plural.

Our standard for the proper nouns senses is actual attestation of attributive use of the word, which is an RfV matter. The cat Garfield seems more likely to have such attestable use than the president. DCDuring TALK 19:26, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Strong Keep (all). They are used, singly, in very many texts to mean the US president with that surname. People need to know that meaning. SemperBlotto 07:08, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete sense. As surnames, they should be kept; of course. But the meaning a specific person with that surname is something common to all surnames and to everybody (including you and me), and would be best addressed through a link to the Wikipedia page dealing with this surname. Otherwise, notability criteria would be necessary, and they should not be required here (all words are accepted). Lmaltier 14:17, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

There's no need for notability criteria. The only criterion needed is that the surname alone is used to refer to the person, without the referent being explained or obvious from context. Most US presidents, Canadian and modern British prime ministers, etc., meet this test without much question; not because they meet any standard of encyclopedic notability, but simply because their surnames have demonstrably entered the lexicon. Similarly Foucault, Kant, Hegel, Bach, Beethoven, et al. -- Visviva 16:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Your own surname used alone has probably entered the lexicon, at least for some people that know you. But I don't think you would like to enter yourself as a sense of this word. This is what I mean by notability criterion, and this is why I don't think it's a good idea. As a word, it's a surname, nothing else. However, if the translation of this word in a language (e.g. Russian) is different depending on the person, all possible translations should be given, with appropriate comments. Lmaltier 21:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, supposing that my surname -- let's call it "Smith" -- had indeed entered my friends' lexicon. And suppose that at least three of my friends had published independent works which referred to me as "Smith", without any further explanation, because they assumed that the reader would immediately understand the Smith to whom they referred. In such a case -- and only in such a case -- I would certainly merit my own sense in the Smith entry. -- Visviva 09:35, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I think that what you explain is a typical example of a notability criterion. Lmaltier 05:48, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

• Move to RfV for attributive use citations. All accept "Garfield" have a reasonable to excellent chance of being attestable in attributive use. I enjoy demonstrating errors in our own documentation, so "Jefferson" will get my immediate attention. DCDuring TALK 16:17, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

• Strong keep per SemperBlotto. There should be no need for attributive use (as there would be for "James Garfield" or "Thomas Jefferson") because these are not proper names in the first place. If policy says otherwise -- and I don't think it actually does -- then the policy is wrong. -- Visviva 16:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
• Strong keep for all, as per SemperBlotto. Usage is effectivly attributive, as it means the president without other mention being included. Should also accept most major world leaders. --Dmol 21:55, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

You missed the part where the guideline says “attributive,” and not “eddectively attributive.”

Everyone, please don't waste your and my valuable time by voting—this is not about self-gratification. Either get on with citing these “words” according to the guideline, or propose a change to the guideline. —Michael Z. 2009-09-19 23:56 z

Why cite if someone decides it's not such a matter? If it were kept, it might not be RfV'd. Once it is here it has to play out. I'm not sure that the process can be simplified when both matters are potentially at issue. DCDuring TALK 00:15, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

AFAICR we have always treated RFD as a vote. Not saying it's particularly wise, but it is what we've done. As for the guideline, it says clearly that surnames should be included. And if we're going to include them, it should be rather obvious that we should include all senses that a person might encounter and need to look up. -- Visviva 09:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

No ... it was never a "vote", and never intended to be; the idea is that there is, or should be, a right answer. The bolded "keep" or "delete" is just a way of highlighting the summary of an opinion. See, for example, at the top of WT:RFV: Verification is accomplished by the gathering of information, not of votes. Robert Ullmann 09:30, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

But this is RFD, not RFV. I could have been more precise and said that we always treated votes as indicators of consensus (or the lack thereof). It has generally been considered highly improper to delete an RFD'd entry that has a majority of editors (or even a large minority of editors) opposing deletion. If that really doesn't sound familiar, I can only conclude that we have been contributing to different projects. ;-) -- Visviva 09:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I think in that case, surnames like Jackson and Johnson are missing a lot of senses. However I'd like to see these deleted as POV and just generally that surely a lot of people called Adams, Jackson etc. I wonder if George Washington could be cited attributively, would it meet CFI? I say yes, it's a proper noun, widely known and used attributively, right? There's nothing that prohibits it in our rules. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:31, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes WT:CFI confirms it. Therefore I added Michael Jackson to Jackson and RFD'ed it at the same time. Genius! Mglovesfun (talk) 08:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I've already got two attributive uses of Michael Jackson. This is an excellent example of of why this proper noun policy makes no sense. Why is attributive use so important? As far as I can see, we never refuse proper nouns as long as they are used attributively. I'd be pretty surprised if more than three cites for George Washington weren't available. WT:CFI#Names of specific entities actually says "...George Walker Bush thus should not be included unless used attributively. Again, George Walker Bush has a legitimate chance to get an entry here. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:41, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Attributive use is important because it gives us something useful to say about them, as a dictionary. If a proper name is used only to refer to its literal referent, a Wiktionary entry for that name serves no purpose to anyone. If it used as a byword to suggest some particular quality, that is a fact that even Wikipedia is unlikely to include, but which might nonetheless be of great significance to someone puzzled by a name's appearance in a particular context. Likewise for surnames; going to w:Jackson (disambiguation) is not going to give the user much insight as to which of the people listed there is likely to be the "Jackson" mentioned without any context whatsoever in some work. Thus again, there is something useful for us to say about such usage. -- Visviva 09:28, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not at all convinced there are even three cases where "Jackson" is used to refer to the singer without "Michael Jackson" being specified somewhere nearby (particularly since he isn't exactly the only pop singer by that surname). I'm sure there are some Jacksons besides Andrew who would meet this test, but I doubt if there are very many. -- Visviva 09:18, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I think I could get three attributive uses for Michael Jackson though. It took me about 2 minutes to get 2. Anyway, I'd better bring this up on WT:BP. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:26, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so may I add the senses of specific US presidents to RFV right now, or am I prohibited until this RFD is closed? —Michael Z. 2009-09-20 23:09 z

There's no rule, but some knuckles have been rapped for opening an RfV while the RfD was active. If the conversation seems over and this is deemed kept and closed, then the RfV can be opened with a link to the archived discussion.

BTW, If anyone would like to challenge some two-part human names, the following are available for consideration: Arnold Schwartzenegger, Britney Spears, Brigitte Bardot, and Marilyn Monroe. DCDuring TALK 23:40, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

As long as you'll accept any three works that refer to the president as "Garfield" without identifying him elsewhere, I think RFV would be fine. But if that's not the case, it would kind of seem to me like you were trying to use RFV as cover for a policy agenda, which would be somewhat uncool. -- Visviva 11:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

(from a wrongly created sub-section, Mglovesfun (talk) 19:33, 25 September 2009 (UTC)) If you delete the George Washington meaning, you will only have to inlcude it in the etymology anyway to explain why the city and state are called Washington. Keep. --Richardb 09:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

We do that kind of thing routinely, with a link to the Wikipedia article on the person. I believe that the community considers it a the best way to handle such things. Marilyn Monroe for an example. That entry is also an example of the kinds of usage that might justify keeping a full personal name. DCDuring TALK 12:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete, see WT:CFI#Given and family names. This sort of entry could go very far, how about Tony Blair in Blair, or John Major in Major. Sports stars and singers and very well known, how about Michael Jordan in Jordan or Britney Spears in Spears. I'd love to RFV these, but since CFI is so vague on the names of specific entries, nobody would know if they had passed or not, so I think a pure vote like this is best. What do SemperBlotto et al. think of that?

[edit] Arnold Schwartzenegger

A misspelling of a specific entity, the only citation accompanying an actual quotation of the person. No secondary meaning. —Michael Z. 2009-09-21 05:30 z

It's not breaking any CFI rules though. Delete just based on common sense, but as I say, no CFI logic for deleting it that I can see. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Could someone direct me to the consensus on what makes something a common misspelling vs an alternative spelling vs an excluded not-so-common misspelling? What is the proportion and/or absolute numbers of misspellings that is required for it to be common misspelling? Or is this just a vote? DCDuring TALK 15:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we have any. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:09, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Deleted on the grounds I would speedy delete this if I found it lying around as "not dictionary material". Mglovesfun (talk) 17:58, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Restored on the grounds that:

1. the above grounds don't/shouldn't apply to an item on this page.
2. it is a fairly common misspelling of an entry that has not been shown to be not meet CFI. (Not that we actually have any explicit criteria for "common" in misspellings.) DCDuring TALK 19:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, unstruck. Delete as not dictionary material. I think anything can be misspelled, but we don't need an article in every case. FWIW we could add Georges Bush as a common misspelling of George Bush in French. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe should be deleted as a consensus, as Mzajac (who nominated it) and I say delete, and nodody says keep. Anyone wanna keep this, just say so. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

A b.g.c. there are 612 raw hits for this spelling and 1382 for the correct one (an error rate of 30.6%). Those are edited works. That is so common that we would call it an alternative spelling if it happened for a normal word. If it very much higher we'd probably tell him that he was spelling his name wrong.

I am appalled that this should be deleted on the arbitrary grounds advanced with so little support. The stated grounds seem arbitrary and capricious. I know of no valid grounds for deleting this, especially in the absence of any explicit standards of any kind for discriminating between common misspellings and any other kind or between misspellings of Proper nouns and of other kinds of terms. It is enough to make one wonder why this particular Proper noun is getting this treatment. DCDuring TALK 19:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes: Keep. DCDuring TALK 19:29, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess misspelling of proper nouns are rare on here, especially of a specific entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Arnold Schwartzenegger is an entry, but was under RfV challenge at the time of this RfD. I think that invalidates the stateed rationale for the challenge. DCDuring TALK 19:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm more of a holist. Rather than applying the rules rigidly, I try and think if the entry is helpful to the reader or not. As pointed out, WT:CFI is so vague if you ask 100 different people, you'll get 99 different opinions on what it means. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:03, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

If 30% of the uses in edited works get this wrong, but one's intuition missed this, then perhaps one's holism needs more parts. Rules, data, and logic are three parts that enrich and validate my own holism. They have the advantage that they are sharable, that is, as objective as we can realistically get. There's plenty of room for holism in making rules, selecting and analyzing data, applying logic, and, especially integrating it, all in a way that doesn't create unproductive conflict. DCDuring TALK 16:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] t̼

Do we want all possible combinations of IPA letter + diacritic(s)? I hope not. -- Prince Kassad 21:08, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's easy to see why someone would try to look it up. This (if I have the right one) is a pretty difficult character to generate, or even isolate. But I agree that having separate entries for each of these combinations is not tenable. Could they simply be hard-redirected to the diacritic? That's likely to be what the user is looking for, in any case. -- Visviva 06:31, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably keep, what harm is it doing? What are the negative effects of keeping this and or seeing new ones created? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:18, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be the usual argument against creating SOP entries, viz. policy and maintenance. The total number of valid character-diacritic combinations is somewhere in the thousands, and if these are all real entries with content, they would all need to be updated whenever someone wanted to adjust or improve our IPA coverage. Imagine if every time you wanted to improve the entry for "car", you had to also fix the entries for "yellow car", "blue car", etc. On the other hand, the SOPness of these is anything but obvious to the untrained eye. -- Visviva 15:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I think they’re different; cf.  ̼ with  ̫. They are both combining forms. Are there stand-along “modifier letter” forms of all these diacritics, or only some? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:59, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

That would be this block and this block, I assume. Doesn't look like there's any 1:1 correspondence. I'll admit I just ended up pulling a likely candidate out of that second file; I have no idea if that's the diacritic in the current entry or not. But that's kind of the point -- we need to address these in a way that doesn't assume the user to be of superhuman savviness, but preferably without tossing our principles in the dustbin either. -- Visviva 17:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Question: are there any languages that use IPA combining diacritics as part of their writing system? If so, hard redirects are probably not a feasible option. -- Visviva 17:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

How about purely SOP definitions like the ones given to English affixes coöccurring with interfixes (e.g., partheno- = parthen- + -o-)? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That could work, though the formatting would take some thought. The combining diacritics have a way of not rendering at all in isolation, but also look very odd when bound to a hyperlinked whitespace character. Maybe we could have Unicode's description of the diacritic (lowercased) as the display text on the link? -- Visviva 03:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

How about  ̼  and  ̫  (with punctuation spaces on both sides this time)? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 03:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That looks pretty spiffy to me. This seems like a low-future-maintenance solution that would not sacrifice user value. Hopefully others will weigh in. -- Visviva 04:51, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. BTW, if that particular spacing doesn’t do it for you, feel free to compare use with the other spacing widths on my user page (User:Doremítzwr#Useful symbols, § Useful symbols yet to be added to MediaWiki:Edittools, §_§ Punctuation). † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 08:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] BitTorrent

Nominated a while ago, can't find discussion, and deleted by User:Jackofclubs. However, this is not just a piece of corporate software, it is a protocol and possibly a generic way of referring to like file sharing programs. —This unsigned comment was added by DAVilla (talk • contribs).

Are protocols exempt from the usual restrictions on proper nouns? I suppose it would sort of make sense if they were, and they're obviously useful things for us to have entries for; but I can't recall this issue being raised before. In any event, I would be inclined to delete sense as far as the specific BT client goes (absent CFI-compliant citations, of course). -- Visviva 06:38, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep, keep the protocol sense. It's a huge phenomenon and a word that many people will need defined for them if they come across it unawares. Tooironic 23:59, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] grenader

I was thinking grenadier. I don't think this is correct--Volants 10:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Changed to rfd-sense. Dunno. Seems like an rfv issue to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:19, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] messaggio di posta elettronica

[edit] messaggio e-mail

[edit] messaggio email

Not in the slightest idiomatic. If you know what email and messaggio means, you can realise that it's an email message (deleted English entry). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:56, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

algudstuf4learners(lots ofwords/day uno..) w/readers[asme4chin+cedict/mdbg >pl c dalite,vote4cfi-expansion..[sop,pr.nouns

• ps[2mglovs: more oldfrench'dbe cooltho/j'aime bien,moi[d'uno how2saydad i/o.f. btw?]!!:P--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 15:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep. To me it does not mean "email message", it just means email. They like to be more precise in Italian than we do in English, where a simple email can be any part of speech and have concrete and abstract senses. —Stephen 16:43, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Italian isn't the only language that does this. E-mail in a lot of other languages doesn't mean "a piece of e-mail", it means to the "system for transferring messages from one computer to another". We wouldn't say "an e-mail message" in English, but it's exactly what they would say a lot of the time. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Delete messaggio di posta elettronica as pure SoP. If email in Italian only refers to the system sense the entry there needs a gloss to indicate that. Either keep messaggio e-mail and messaggio email or delete if an adjective sense for email could be appropriately added to the Italian entry. — Carolina wren discussió 17:40, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep messaggio di posta elettronica as well. The word email is a very recent loan in Italian (as it is in many other languages) and messaggio di posta elettronica is the proper term for it. —Stephen 19:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I should point out, people can comment on these separately above if they wish. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept all, 2 months of no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] NMEA 0183

A maritime communications standard. Just like ISO 639. DCDuring TALK 11:19, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Should presumably go the same way as #BitTorrent, which has not gotten much input thus far. I can see some value in having a full set of standards and protocols, along the lines of having a full set of Unicode characters and SI abbreviations; but if kept they should really be labeled ==Translingual==, not English. (unless we want 7000 language sections all saying the same thing.)-- Visviva 11:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

We are part of a larger project. This is exactly the kind of thing that WP is good at. We have {{only in}} for this kind of thing, if we even want that. ISO 639 should also be in our glossary, but otherwise merits the same treatment. There are a great number of standards bodies and standards. The ones that are compositional are particularly suspect, but we have others: 802.11, 802.11a, 802.11n. Also 1040, W-2, 1099; Category:E numbers.

The situation is somewhat analogous to our handling of Translingual two- and three-part species names. In that case we have chosen to have the components, but not the species names. Both WP and Wikispecies have them covered. (We do have the vernacular names.) DCDuring TALK 11:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Seems (partially at least) like a WT:BP#Translingual question to me. If it's changed from English to translingual, I see no reason not to keep it. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm having a hard time coming up with any plausible rationale for this one. Wikipedia doesn't really make an effort to have complete lists of these, but that's mostly because such lists are readily available, usually from the sponsoring organization. Delete this and its ilk, I guess. -- Visviva 14:45, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I should maybe add that I think the question of keeping the names of standards (which is probably not a great idea) is quite different from any keeping terms or symbols specified within such standards (which in some cases is essential to our mission). Deleting ISO 639-3 would be very different matter from deleting enm. -- Visviva 15:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

For the language codes, we might well want to have our own appendix rather than pretend that, say, "sga" meets CFI or go through the exercise of proving it. It might enable us to have some content in an appendix that wouldn't meet WP standards.

For the sake of argument, what about 10W-30, which appears 9 times in COCA vs 0 for enm and cmn. I could see being very inclusive about such abbreviations and codes, especially the systematic ones. The motor-oil grades seem to be perfect for a table reminiscent of the kinds of tables that dictionaries have often had for weights and measures, calendars, etc. Sometime WP has them and sometimes not. Such tables can be implemented as templates or as appendices. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

10W-30 seems like a perfectly reasonable entry to me (as would 10W-40, 5W-30, etc.) It's attestable, not a proper name, and not sum of parts to any non-engineers. Certainly a tabular appendix would be useful as well, but need not preclude the existence of entries.

SI units, language codes, and Unicode entities, among other issues, are together making me think that it is reasonable to make a general exception to attestation requirements for closed sets of terms that are defined in a widely-accepted standard. The whole point of these standards, after all, is that even if no one has actually used zeptoohm or sga or ✵ in all the history of language, there will be no real question of what is signified (well, except perhaps for the last one); these are more like an arcane sort of verb inflection than like qualitatively new words. And because they 'are part of a closed and widely-accepted set, it is quite likely that someone will run across them and want to know what they mean -- thus meeting the most important criterion for inclusion. ... But anyway. I guess I'll save this argument for when you decide to RFD all of ISO 639. ;-) -- Visviva 16:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

My Germanic heritage prefers things "regelmäßig". I am suspicious that we turn a blind eye to non-CFI-meeting wikijargon, linguistics terminology, language codes, or have very fine distinctions for linguistics terms. It reminds be of US Congress repeatedly exempting itself from application of, say, workplace laws against sexual harassment. We should be eating our own dogfood. Getting rid of wikijargon was one of our finer moments.

Broader use of {{only in}} sending folks to WP and redirects sending folks to our appendices would be my preferred option. Rather than putting language codes through RfV (not that I would dare), we should have our own appendix and use redirects to point to the code there or the entry for the language if we have the entry. (Reminds me of {{spelink}} for species). Whether we want to have and maintain the list of standards or think someone else (WP or issuer, probably) should is a lesser issue. There are clearly instances where we can perform a service by collating different terminology systems, sometimes something much better done with a table than with a wordy definition. See {{Paper-B}}.

NMEA 0183 is compositional. The user searching for "NMEA 0183" would be reasonably served by NMEA and its associated wikipedia link. A user searching for 10W-30 would probably be better served by a redirect to an appendix that contained a table and an explanation of the "grammar" of the system rather than an entry. DCDuring TALK 17:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Name of a specific entity, perhaps. Prescribed name and usage. This kind of thing might be acceptable with a technical-usage label like {{communications}}, but I'm not convinced that “closed-set” is important. Authoritative medical dictionaries are full of hundreds of variations of names of diseases and conditions which are portmanteaus from other-language dictionaries, and might have never been spoken aloud.

10W-30 is different. It's used every day by common people who drive cars. —Michael Z. 2009-09-25 00:40 z

[edit] Invisible Pink Unicorn

See #Flying Spaghetti Monster above. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Note that IPU is common (with no accompanying expansion or explanation), e.g. on newsgroups discussing religion. Equinox ◑ 15:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I think this should be kept in the absence of a reason to delete it. Anyone who thinks this should be deleted, please say so, and why! Mglovesfun (talk) 18:01, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] little girl

[edit] Restore little girl

Given that little boy was kept as a no consensus, should this be restored? I say no but I'd like us to make our minds up one way or the other. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Why not have any restoration start with the citations. That way we can be discussing something concrete and not too speculative. If we establish that there is usage of one or more non-SoP senses which we can specify, we can determine whether we need to start fresh or can salvage any of the failed entry. I suspect that some of the translations were of the SoP phrase rather than the purported idiom (but then I'm just skeptical generally). IOW, no, IMHO. DCDuring TALK 18:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Why? Little boy didn't (and doesn't) have any citations. Restore, both cases were borderline but they were exactly the same. -- Visviva 00:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Quoting from the top of this page: "Terms that failed a request for verification are presumed invalid. They should not be resubmitted as the same term without adequate verification (see verification archives) and do not need duplicate listings here." We have a procedure. We could validate it by conforming to it or we could make all procedure subject to debate and interpretation. Other decision procedures are also available. DCDuring TALK 00:44, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

This is RFD, not RFV. Neither of these terms was submitted to RFV, and I would imagine that they would both pass with flying colors, since idiomaticity is not an RFV issue. -- Visviva 00:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It indeed was RfD that it had failed. My mistake. DCDuring TALK 01:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

"ndeed it failed RfD not RfV"-so rfd fail.not the end?>can sb explain pl?--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 02:50, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

RFD is decided by consensus, while RFV is decided by whether a word/sense is attested or not. As a rule, an RFV cannot be overturned by consensus, but only by providing three durably-archived citations of use. Likewise an RFD cannot normally be overturned by adding citations; rather, it must be shown that the consensus of the community has changed (usually through a second RFD). -- Visviva 14:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

There were specific assertions about the meaning of the term that were not supported by much attestation. I was hoping that attestation would help make the arguments less ideological and more constructive. DCDuring TALK 16:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, here's an argument that would be kind of specious to cite, but compare the use of google books:"you going|doing little girl" to google books:"you going|doing young girl" (rare, mostly translations), google books:"you going|doing little woman" (only a couple of unique uses), google books:"you going|doing little lady" (mostly a different meaning entirely). It's pretty clear that "little girl" is not pragmatically equivalent to "young girl", or any of the obvious candidates except -- arguably -- for "young lady". This suggests to me that there are useful things we can say about this word, and also that the case for this word is if anything stronger than it was for little boy. -- Visviva 15:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Restored and RFD re-opened. DAVilla 05:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] digitgrade

Too rare for a misspelling entry; cf. google books:"digitigrade" (1,021) with google books:"digitgrade" (39). Delete. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:09, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

What's our cutoff? 3.7% seems like plenty for a misspelling, especially in print works that have (mostly) undergone some degree of editing. I wouldn't have gone out of my way to create it, but I'm inclined to think that anything over 1-2% is keepable. Further, turning to the web -- which is what most previus misspelling discussions have been based on -- I get 7530 for google:+digitgrade vs. 44100 for google:+digitigrade. At 14.6%, that's a higher error rate than accomodation (which is 10.9% by my Google). I'm OK with it if we want to adopt a 5% b.g.c. cutoff or similar, but unless we do adopt a strict numeric cutoff, this looks keepish to me. -- Visviva 00:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I rechecked: the number of hits for *digitgrade became thirty-two by clicking on the last screenful of hits; of those, these: [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32] were invisible and this one is a scanno of the correct digitigrade (see the centre of its “(d)” paragraph). So, only twenty book hits for *digitgrade are confirmed, or <1.96% of the number of hits for digitigrade (before similar adjustments are made to the raw b.g.c. hits for it). Google Fight gives digitigrade (11,800) vs. digitgrade (583), making digitgrade <4.95% as common as digitigrade. Bear in mind as well the fact that we’ve had an entry for digitgrade since 15:40, 10 May 2006, so that’ll inflate the number of hits Google yields for digitgrade. Compare google:+plantgrade (217) with google:+plantigrade (87,100): making plantgrade <0.25% as common as plantigrade. This, I think, is a very good reason not to listen to Google Web Search hits when considering such things in future. I conclude again that this is too rare to be kept as a common misspelling. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point. But if we apply the same correction to the b.g.c. hits for '+digitigrade', the total number of hits becomes 336: [33]. So the actual percentage would seem to be around 8.7% [32/(336+32)], which is again quite high, particularly given that we are dealing (primarily) with edited works. I hadn't heard of any "common misspelling" criterion that would place the cutoff above 5%. -- Visviva 02:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

OK. I really didn’t expect 660 hits to be fake. Yeah, I suppose that’s common enough to be retained. However, I think the point about the especial unreliability of Google Web Search still stands. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Google Web counts are fiendishly unreliable (and often impossible to double-check), yes. Perhaps we could use a cross-section of the smaller Googles instead? -- Visviva 02:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Book Search seems OK with some corrections; Groups Search has inspired suspicion; I haven’t tested the others enough to comment. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sjagerijnig

moved to sacherijnig. See official spelling Jcwf 16:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

What's the reason for this RfD? The project is not limited to words listed in official lists. Lmaltier 16:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

For the nth time, I don't know what you're proposing for deletion, or why. Since I don't know any Dutch, I can't comment, but someone has to clean this mess up. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

After properly moving a page to the proper spelling and cleaning up the mess. I am proposing to delete a page that has a wrong miss-spelled title.... Dutch has a regulated spelling agreed upon by law by three democratically elected governments. It is time for you to start respecting our language and stop screwing around with it by creating misleading wrong spellings in it. That is exceedingly offensive and undemocratic. Jcwf 02:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh FFS you do know this is an online dictionary, not a soapbox? Keep the politics off the page and stick to the dictionary stuff. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with deleting this page. It's nothing more than a misspelling which isn't even very common. If the English Wiktionary would like to include this sort of entrees in Dutch, they could also tag =English= on every Chinese character page or include entrees like "raynbow" for rainbow and "offishel" for official. It makes as much sense as keeping this page.. --Ooswesthoesbes 05:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The project is not limited to regulated spellings, nor to current spellings (old spellings not used any more should be included too). The important thing is current and past use. Please, compare statistics between sjagerijnig and sacherijnig, they seem to suggest that it could be kept. In such cases, you should add an explanatory note explaining that this is not the regulated spelling, or that this spelling was used during a limited period, or whatever appropriate, but not delete. Lmaltier 05:56, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It is a common misspelling (or rather, a non-standard spelling): see, for example, http://www.songteksten.nl/songteksten/37236/Kinderen-Voor-Kinderen/Wakker-met-een-wijsje.htm . Look up "wakker met een wijsje songtekst" on Google, and wherever you find the lyrics, you find the word "sjagerijnig" in it. So the article should be kept at least as a redirect. Besides, the spelling "sjagerijnig" matches the pronunciation /ʃa.ɤə.ˈɾɛɪ.nɪx/ in the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8-Ru1GBbiY (0:29), whereas "sacherijnig" would be pronounced /sa.xə.ˈɾɛi.nɪx/, which doesn't match the song. —AugPi _(t) 06:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

However, KvK 's official website does use the standard spelling "chagrijnig": http://kvk.vara.nl/Song-single.408.0.html?&cHash=cf705f019d&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=466 . On Google, "chagrijnig" gets 43,000 hits, "sjagerijnig" gets 17,200 hits, and "sacherijnig" gets 13,500 hits. "sjacherijnig" gets 13,400 hits. —AugPi _(t) 06:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC) P.S. w/ Safesearch on.

"Chagrijnig" doesn't really quite match the pronunciation in the song either: "chagrijnig" suggests /ʃa.ˈɤɾɛɪ.nɪx/, but in the song there is a schwa between the 'g' and the 'r': /ʃa.ɤə.ˈɾɛɪ.nɪx/ —AugPi _(t) 07:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This last argument is beside the point, since spelling doesn't have to match pronunciation exactly. "sjagerijnig" gets only 5 hits on YouTube, whereas "chagrijnig" gets 70, including from KvK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3wlD-YXjWs . By the way, in this last link the pronunciation for "chagrijnig" matches "sacherijnig" exactly. —AugPi _(t) 07:42, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

(I'm writing this a little bit hasty, so if something could be considered offensive - it is well meant) You are actually saying it should be kept also because it is pronounced so? Then we could at least add a different entree too for sjachereinig, sjaachereinig, schaachereinig, schachereinig, sjachereineg, sjaggereineg, sjaggareinig, sjaggerijnig, sjaggereinich or sjachereinech. Not only because people in Limburg would more likely pronounce it as /ʃ(x)ɑxɐˈrɛɪnɪx/. If "non-regulated spellings" are good to be kept you could also split up every compound word found in Dutch (it's a common spelling mistake), so instead of appelboom appel boom and for schapenvlees we could use schapen vlees, schape vlees (the "n" is not pronounced) or - for the immigrant communities - sjchappefleesj. Another thing to raise the amount of articles would be to include entrees like ap-pelboom or appel-boom (when breaking a word at the end of the line people might make a mistake in the spelling) - just an idea of course ;) --Ooswesthoesbes 13:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Well delete assuming you're all right (which seems very likely) I just wanted to know what we were discussing. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I find different figures for Google hits (www.google.fr site): 23000 for sacherijnig, 27900 for sjagerijnig, and 76800 for chagrijnig. I still don't understand why it would be offensive to keep sjagerijnig (with a comment about its non-standard status): the standard word seems to be the less usual one. Lmaltier 19:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

cos ppl i/&fromlow cuntrys brainwashd bout that stup.list[iwont evn use it as wc-paper--mao-zegreen boekje,so democratic-beurkk] that arbitrarly incl.1variant[i'v neva seen'n'dnt evn gues wotitmeans,unles from context]butnot the other1i prsnly kno as holl-ic[from tv,livin there]~2som purist french w/AF bs praps:(--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 01:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

@Ooswesthoesbes (talk • contribs): Number of Google hits (with Safesearch ON): "chagrijnig" = 44000, "sjagerijnig" = 17200, "sacherijnig" = 13600, "sjaggerijnig" = 10500, "sjachereinig" = 755, "sjaggerijnig" = 577, "sjaachereinig" = 0, "schaachereinig" = 0, "schachereinig" = 0, "sjachereineg" = 0, "sjaggereinich" = 0, "sjachereinech" = 0. Since "sjagerijnig" gets more hits than one of the two standard spellings, one can argue that it is a common misspelling. —AugPi _(t) 02:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I get different results: sacherijnig: 2.750, sjacherijnig: 1.950, chagrijnig: 76.000, sjagerijnig: 28.000, sjaggerijnig: 1.7000. --Ooswesthoesbes 04:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

me w/twG~lmalt.[70vs20+gran]funy..:/--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 07:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• Keep

  It is attestable in Google Books.

  A usage note can make it clear that this spelling is considered non-standard by a particular authority. Whether it is a misspelling or a non-standard spelling can be clarified. The request for deletion has given as a justification for deletion the existence of another, official spelling; this is an invalid justification per Wiktionary's WT:CFI. Wiktionary's inclusion criteria focuses on actual attestability (description of what actually is the case) rather than on external authorities (prescription of what someone, even if a democratically elected body, considers should be the case). Nevertheless, the views of authorities can be mentioned in a usage note.

  Some searches:

  google books:"sjagerijnig" and google:"sjagerijnig"

  google books:"sacherijnig" and google:"sacherijnig".

  --Dan Polansky 09:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sjagerijn

same as sjagerijnig

keep as/ogpi+lmalt just abuv[we rdescritiv;)--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 14:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if yoo wood olsow elou payges written yoozing fonettik (or fonettique, wee need toô bee deskriptiv ofkorz) Inglish. :) --Ooswesthoesbes 15:06, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

This shouldn't have been deleted, but since it was renamed and the redirect deleted, I can't just restore it directly. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:06, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] October 2009

[edit] verbal assault

Idiomatic? DCDuring TALK 23:42, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 00:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems to have a more specific meaning: google:"verbal assault is defined". Are high school codes of conduct considered durably archived? I assume they are still published in printed form in most places. -- Visviva 03:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Not idiomatic or a set phrase (to me) so delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah but those don't all say the same thing; it's defined under the school's own rules. Since they don't support any single definition, I don't think they're usable anyway. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:22, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

There seemed to be a number that supported a definition along the lines of "speech that causes someone to fear physical assault." I have now added three cites that I think substantiate this use; there are a few others that might do if these do not. This is definitely a sense that is scraping by on the edge of the language, outside perhaps of Michigan educational law, where a Supreme Court ruling has constrained most school districts to adopt a similar definition. NB, there are also numerous references on b.g.c. to "verbal assault statutes", and numerous references on GNA to "verbal assault" being a "crime" (e.g. in England). But on closer examination, these all seem to mean that assault is defined to include (all sorts of) verbal abuse, not that there is any specific notion of "verbal assault." -- Visviva 08:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete These regulations are not usage, they're prescriptive definitions. Please write out the text of WT:CFI 100 times! —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 02:11 z

<sigh/> Is it possible for you to disagree with someone without making the implicit assumption that the person with whom you disagree is an idiot? At any rate, CFI is at least clear that the presence of a definition does not preclude a cite from counting as use, especially when the definition follows the use, as it does in the two Michigan cites that I have added to the entry. The reason I linked to the definitions initially is simply to make clear what I was talking about. You know, so that we could have a thoughtful discussion instead of yelling "keep" and "delete" at each other. But since that seems to be all that's happening here, let me be the first to say: KEEP! ::eyeroll::

If you think CFI is wrong, that's fine; please help to build up a constructive BRD cycle at Wiktionary:Editable CFI. -- Visviva 08:45, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

As per the definition "oral or written speech that creates, or is intended to create, a fear of physical harm", that is a specific disambiguation of the generic "verbal assault" in the sense of "verbal threat". Without this definition, I would read "verbal assault" as synonymous to "verbal insult" or name calling. So, at least I am unable to reliably deduce the specific meaning of "verbal assault" from "verbal" and "assault". Keep.

That said, this term is probably a borderline case, judging from its absence in most OneLook dictionaries: verbal assault at OneLook® Dictionary Search. --Dan Polansky 09:33, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as cited in legal and associated context. DCDuring TALK 11:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The article has been rewritten (every word, I think) so keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept, nice work Visviva. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] war of conquest

Idiomatic? DCDuring TALK 23:42, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I would have said so, much like war of choice, war of aggression and just war. I'll grant I'm having a hard time coming up with anything besides "set phrase" as a rationale, however. -- Visviva 03:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Not idiomatic or a set phrase (to me) so delete.. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete as sum-of-parts. —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 02:12 z

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:49, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] local history

History that is local in its subject. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 00:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Local history does not normally include microhistory or Alltagsgeschichte, although these are local in subject. I also find the compound "local historian" to be of interest -- it chunks very differently from "local teacher" or "local dentist". The fact that the boundaries of the field have been the subject of periodic debate for decades is also of interest. Keep, perhaps sharpen definition (though it looks pretty good from here). -- Visviva 03:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Not idiomatic or a set phrase (to me) so delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Not every possible combination of senses of red and senses of car is actually attestable. Should be have an entry for red car that contains only those that are? "Red team" and "red car" use different senses of red. Should be have one or both for that reason?

Also would an official (ie, prescribed) definition of "local history" from, say, a "Universal Society of Local Historians" merit an entry if attestable? How would we warrant that a given citation was of the official definition? DCDuring TALK 16:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

redcar/tm-'dbe alowd,y[c furtherabuv]2,y,tho praps rathe i/wp-extnsn-史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 23:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

1. No, of course not. 2. No, of course it wouldn't. But nobody is suggesting either of these things, so I'm not sure why you bring them up.

"Local" seems to have only one applicable definition: "From or in a nearby location." Obviously we are missing a sense or three. But I don't see how any plausible sense of local would reflect the fact that a) local history is normally considered to exclude microhistorical and ethnographic studies of a locality's history, even though these are both local and historic ([34]), or b) that someone could say in all seriousness that "proper local history is not really local history at all." ([35]) -- Visviva 21:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Well the current definition doesn't refer to the history of a locality, but a sort of study, a body of work. So providing that is correct, I'd say keep. But only if there's some sort of credible source. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

praps dc isbrainwashd i/schools[imjust tryin2understnd why s/he chaoticly nomnts like that,oris itjust bordm+silynes?];but neva stepd outside ntried2thorely understand sth??[uwont getv.far w/ur aproach..--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 23:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I blame not just my schools, but also my ancestors, food, medication, friends, relatives, employers, coworkers, friends, partners, acquaintances, correspondents, government, and society and environment in general for all their shortcomings as manifest in me. In the great Wiki in the Sky you can always put in an RfD on me. Please refrain from out-of-process deletion or even editing.

I nominate what I come across in the course of sowing chaos throughout wiktionary, for example, in Category:English phrases, Category:English interjections, and Category:English proverbs, also uncategorized entries, and items with bad structure, missing inflection lines, bad headers. Also entries that haven't been materially changed since being imported from Webster 1913. Should I presort them before putting them in to RfD or RfV? Is it my job to perfect each entry I find with shortcomings?

If someone would like to make a good entry out of this entry by indicating in what context the specialized meaning applies and attesting the elements of the definition or referencing the definition, preferably from more than one source, I'd be more than happy. Otherwise, .... DCDuring TALK 15:49, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Exactly; I nominate entries based on what they contain. If there's a specialized context or another meaning I don't know about, I can't predict that the entry will be improved in the future. Often, rfding a poor entry either leads to deletion, or a good rewrite. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

“All white horses,” and all that. Sorry that I don't know what microhistory and Alltagsgeschichte are, but even if other histories are local in character, that doesn't mean that local history isn't simply “history that is local.” Also, let's please not mix up prescribed technical definitions—perhaps there is a sense of local history which should be marked with {{history}}—and everyday terms that everyone knows the meaning of, like local history. —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 02:40 z

Feel free to edit the entry, in a way that you feel would resolve these concerns. As you may have noticed, this is an RFD; the only point at issue is whether the term is always and everywhere the sum of its parts. If it is, it doesn't belong in the dictionary, because no one will ever need to look it up. On the other hand, if it is only sometimes the sum of its parts, then it can stay and be improved. But before anyone is going to want to spend time improving the entry, it has to not be deleted.

We haven't satisfactorily dealt with the issue of how to deal with words that are SOP in common use but have an occasional non-compositional meaning. Ruakh proposed a good solution a while back, IIRC... I'll see if I can dig it up. But in any event, I'm not convinced that applies here; I have a hard time imagining that anyone would consider, say, an ethnographic study of a locality over time to qualify as "local history". I wouldn't expect to find, say, Shinohata in the local history section of a library; even a Japanese library. -- Visviva 03:42, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if someone added a specialist definition, then the entry doesn't get deleted (and then perhaps the common sense should be added, no?). I don't know anything about the use of local history by historians, so I could only speculate. —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 04:50 z

We always have the citation space available for someone who wants to provide quotations that would support a non-SoP sense. I sympathize with the need to give a home for work that might lead to a real entry. Is it more reasonable to have an entry like this RfV'd first? The issue seems largely the same in either case. The citation effort may be "wasted". I have always thought that talk was cheaper than citation effort, so that a challenge on idiomaticity grounds would lead to less wasted effort.

It seems to me especially important to have citations to support an entry that the lexicographic authorities at other dictionaries don't find worth having an entry for. We seem to give a great deal of credence to such authority in many other areas. —This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) 7 October 2009.

Delete this and improve the related sense of history, because it can be combined with any plausible adjective. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Daffy Duck

Fictional character with no attested independent use. Korodzik 14:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Cited in attributive use, IMO. DCDuring TALK 15:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep per WT:CFI. Simple as that. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• Keep as cited. bd2412 T 06:02, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete Daffy Duck offense is the proper name of a specific football play named after the character: a variation of the “Donald Duck.”[36] The coots quotation refers to the fact that the species has similar coloration to the character.[37] A “Daffy Duck shuffle” is the walk you see in a Daffy Duck cartoon. The last two quotations are specific references to the character and two of his attributes, and not attributive use as a word. The “Daffy Duck election” may be just a comic play on words following lame-duck. I don't see any evidence that the duck's name is used as a word with fixed meaning in any of these. Clearly, in none of these is it being used “attributively, with a widely understood meaning,” as required by WT:CFI#Names of specific entities. —Michael Z. 2009-10-06 13:17 z

I've added three quotes that either justify this entry or a new one for Daffy Duck voice. --EncycloPetey 13:50, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Are the examples of Daffy Duck the noun or rather of Daffy Duck the adjective? If they are actually of the latter, the definition should read "Having a characteristic associated with Daffy Duck, a comic character." Defining the word like this would render Daffy Duck voice as unnecessary. --Hekaheka 14:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

We need attributive use for attestation. The PoS is Noun. Ergo, the definition is nounal. It wouldn't hurt to have a common noun use of the term, eg, of "a Daffy Duck" or "Daffy Ducks" to make clear that we are defining a noun. The true proper noun sense should be confined to the etymology and Wikipedia. DCDuring TALK 14:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

1. How could "a Daffy Duck offense" be the name of a "play"? Clearly the author is commenting on the goofiness of a style of play that characterizes the offense of a team.
2. I don't see how CFI mandates absence of humor in attributive use.
3. There are a various possibilities for the specific analogy with coots: color, goofy behavior, long neck, sound. Why one would use Daffy Duck to convey blackness or a specific gait is beyond me. These seem like incidentals.

I think most attributive use of Proper nouns is broadly evocative of certain attributes of the referent. Our effort to define such use is necessarily focused on salient, distinguishing characteristics. I think the salient ones are goofiness, wise-guy-itude, and the voice.

Frankly, I don't think that very many of us could meet MZ's apparent standards to attest the specifics of any definition of any term in Wiktionary. It seems to me that we would need more or less three attestations for each noun, verb, adjective, or adverb in a definition. (It is possible that a given quote could attest to more than one defining word, but it is also possible that some function words might need attestation). I don't think that the OED meets that standard. DCDuring TALK 14:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

1 Clearly, you haven't followed the link next to my post above, which is an article about the Daffy Duck offense.

2 I think you miss my point. In the election quotation, the meaning would not change at all if you substitute a made-up name, like “Dopey Duck.” This quotation doesn't assign any meaning to Daffy Duck, except that it sounds like lame-duck but daffier.

3 The others mentioned are not used “attributively, with a widely understood meaning.” The one is virtually synonymous with “coots look like Daffy Duck,” and the other compares the author's walk to the cartoon Duck's walk. There is no widely understood meaning, there's just the duck. The current “definition” doesn't have any meaning, it just names the duck. —Michael Z. 2009-10-06 23:30 z

1. I was not aware that CFI requires that attributive use is limited to common noun phrases. The "Daffy Duck" name for the offense is intended to evoke the idea of trick plays, that the offensive formation and ensuing plays "look funny".
2. The capitalization of Daffy Duck is clearly a reference to the character. That it also may be a pun is irrelevant. That the meaning does not involve many attributes of the character is also irrelevant. The point of the reference is that the speaker wanted to disparage an election (presumed serious in many countries) by invoking a comical character.
3. The point with coots is that they are funny looking, not like an ordinary duck, but like a comical duck, as the definition has specified.

-- DCDuring TALK 00:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm... The definition seems to be morphing. When we discussed it earlier, it was a specific comic duck. Now Daffy Duck means “a comical duck,” which is just wrong (if not, then one could explain Donald Duck by saying he's a Daffy Duck).

The selection of quotations is getting ridiculous. “Daffy Duck voice” actually mean's Daffy Duck's voice, fer cryin' out loud. Just look at this excerpt. —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 01:35 z

1. • 1987, UTAH'S DAFFY OFFENSE HAS QB MENDONCA IN STATE OF CONFUSION[38]

     [...] otherwise known as the Utes' “Donald Duck Offense” for its daffy formations.

   • 1987, U. making quacks in defense with Daffy Duck plays[39]

     [...] their “Daffy Duck” offense. [¶]Of course, it's been seen before. It's a variation of the “Donald Duck” the Utes ran two years ago on rare occasion.

   • 1987, Meet Mr. Inspiration—he's the short guy nobody wanted[40]

     They experimented on some new variations of the “Duck” offense (they are calling them Dewey and Daisy Duck).”

   • 1987 Oct 7, “HERE'S FRESH NEWS: EVERTHING IS JUST DUCKY AT OREGON”, Dallas Morning News:

     At Utah, the Utes are sporting a Daffy Duck offense. The linemen come out of the huddle and go to one side of the field. A wide receiver snaps to the quarterback...

Daffy Duck + voice. Which of the meanings of attributive and use are we supposed to use? This looks absolutely fine to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

You ask an interesting question about attributive use, which could probably stand some discussion, perhaps at Wiktionary Talk:CFI, leading to clarification at BP. DCDuring TALK 19:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

“... attributively, with a widely understood meaning.” I take that to mean that it has its own meaning as a word in English, beyond simply the proper name of the character. For example, meaning that you don't have to know about the Venetian adventurer to call someone a casanova. But the wording is open to different interpretations, and should be clarified. —Michael Z. 2009-10-12 22:10 z

As I've said before, it says a "widely understood meaning" - it doesn't put any limits on what the word means. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:26, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The examples demonstrate clear limits. Denoting a single specific referent like George Walker Bush, Thomas Jefferson, or Daffy Duck is not a widely understood meaning of a word. Otherwise every specific entity would be allowed and the “Names of specific entities” rule would be meaningless, thanks to common specific attributive formations like “the Thomas Jefferson estate,” “the Thomas Jefferson letters,” “the Thomas Jefferson presidency,” or “a Daffy Duck cartoon.” —Michael Z. 2009-10-13 00:05 z

Oh I completely agree. However that's not what CFI says right now. If we're basing this on CFI, this has to be kept. If this part of CFI gets changed (and I really hope it does) this might get renominated for deletion. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

A Daffy Duck voice is definitely not a Donald Duck voice nor a duck voice. At a minimum, if this is deleted, Daffy Duck voice ought to be kept in its stead, as it is more often used in the sense of speaking like Daffy Duck, than of the voice of Daffy Duck himself. To not do so would be dethpicable. Narrowing the sense of this entry also works for me. — Carolina wren discussió 04:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

And a Stalin moustache is not a Don Johnson beard. Pierre Trudeau wit, Michael Jackson glove, and George Bush quote are attested too. Are you serious? —Michael Z. 2009-10-14 03:39 z

Why not. Certainly the collocation Hitler moustache refers to a particular style of moustache, just as Beatle haircut, John Lennon glasses (or spectacles), and Nehru jecket all refer to very specific forms of items. Either we have a compound noun in each of these, or else we have attributive nouns with very peculiar properties. --EncycloPetey 04:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What we have are encyclopedic references to specific people. They are sum-of-parts phrases composed of an inadmissible proper name plus a common word with no special meaning. They aren't found in any dictionary, and we'd stand out as foolish if we started adding these to ours. —Michael Z. 2009-10-14 13:11 z

Your statements are easily proven wrong. In fact, I own several dictionaries that include an entry for Nehru jacket (including Webster's). I even own dictionaries that have entries for specific individuals (AHD notable among them). Your conclusion is thus not supported by the facts. --EncycloPetey 20:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, which statements have you proven wrong, then? —Michael Z. 2009-10-15 00:02 z

"They aren't found in any dictionary", and "we'd stand out as foolish if we started adding these to ours." --EncycloPetey 01:31, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't be telling me that I'm full of shit when you are citing yourself. I didn't mention Nehru jacket, Mr. Daffy Duck voice. —Michael Z. 2009-10-15 01:42 z

Then your comment was either a non sequituur or suffers from a severe lack of clarity in lacking antecedents to the pronouns. If Nehru jacket (from the preceding comment) does not fall within the scope of your description, then could you please clarify exactly what you did and did not mean by "They are sum-of-parts phrases composed of an inadmissible proper name plus a common word with no special meaning"? --EncycloPetey 01:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

The phrases I named, along with Daffy Duck voice and the principle under which you want to include it in the dictionary. —Michael Z. 2009-10-15 02:02 z

So, the phrases that I named are all OK then? What distinguishes my list of phrases from your list? --EncycloPetey 02:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

(from the left) kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] harrowing of hell

SoP, as so many. DCDuring TALK 20:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

What? Even if we suppose that an appropriate sense were added to harrow, I can't imagine how this could ever be decoded from its parts to refer to this specific hagiographical event. Or are you suggesting that the new sense at harrow should be: "(of Jesus) To free the souls from (a place) between one's death and resurrection"? -- Visviva 21:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, I sort of feel that this is a proper noun since it refers to a specific event. If we move to it Harrowing of hell (or Hell?) then it would need attributive cites, which might be a problem. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

this nominatn=haitof stupidity,butrealy.

• stuf urattribtns,opn dabibl[y,wt'd covrthat2,regrdls of1's views onlife!],ridiklesbunch[dc+glvs]--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 23:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It is, in any event, encyclopedic. Simiilar events in Christianity: Resurrection, Assumption, Second Coming, Immaculate Conception, Virgin Birth, Apocalypse, Ascension, Armageddon, Annunciation, End of Days, Last Judgment.

I suppose that they all fit into one of Pawley's "systems" of terms. Any long-standing religion would have such a system. The Roman Catholics have names for every day and some other Christian religions have something similar, for example, on a different calendar. Of course there are at least three liturgical texts using each so they would probably be readily attestable.

Other systems of events might be battles: Thermopylae, Gettysburg, Antietam, First Battle of Bull Run.

Considering this should lead to either a whole nuther class of potential entries or a sharper determination of our role relative to an encyclopedia. DCDuring TALK 11:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not one of those who goes around banning people, as a rule, but IMO this kind of language in a community discussion is really far, far outside what is acceptable. That you choose to cloak your personal attacks in a nearly incomprehensible garble does not make them any more acceptable. Please knock it off, permanently. -- Visviva 15:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

1.IDIDNT'CHOS'2V RSI,NI'L CITE U4THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2.newbis get rv 4'stupidity' aldatime here,get ur doublstndeds sorted,disgustin'comunity'.--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 01:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

• I have cited and revised the entry. After actually taking a look at the data, I would have to revise my judgment above. This is (or can be) a generic term, so attributive use need not enter into it; it can refer to any sort of incursion into the underworld. Which brings us back to the sum of parts issue. I believe there is sufficient reasonable doubt to justify keeping this entry. To wit:
  • The verb harrow is simply never, ever, ever used in this sense in normal modern English (if at all), except in this phrase. Thus any claim of sum-of-partsness would have to be based on historical rather than modern usage.
  • The common noun appears to be a genericization of the proper name Harrowing of Hell (not at issue here). Prior to 20th century, AFAICT, that term referred solely to the Son's little postmortal escapade. Thus the common noun is also not historically derived from its parts. -- Visviva 15:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Move to Harrowing of Hell and keep as it's used attributively in the current article. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] figurative speech

SoP: figurative + speech DCDuring TALK 20:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

The entry says that it's speech which is figurative, so delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, kill it! --Hekaheka 12:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, Mglovesfun (talk) 21:50, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] cadre party

If you know what a cadre is in a political context, you'll know what this is. Ie, non-idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 18:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I can't comment until cadre has the correct definition, which it doesn't AFAICT. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] in the sun

I'm trying to get all the unlisted pages from [[Category:Requests for deletion]] here, so I'm not the one tagging the entries. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• wi dun'we'vthat automated per/ala rfd-rqst>cmnt bot-generatd here+same4rfc/v etc pp?[i alredy wonderd+asumd it'dbe~thatbe4,now cnfrmd=not]--shame ofur time+hnds[c?im realy aniceguy i/disguis;)--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 05:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. MWOnline has a different, purportedly idiomatic sense, with which I am not familiar. The second sense of "sun" is metonymy/synecdoche for "sunlight". delete DCDuring TALK 12:01, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nom. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

A day in the sun (meaning fifteen minutes of fame) is common, but Google seems to pick up very few idiomatic hits for the same phrase with year, month, decade, or week. I'd say in the sun is SoP, but can redirect to the longer phrase, which someone should add: either a day in the sun or day in the sun (and redirect the other).​—msh210℠ 16:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC) 01:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

The possibly idiomatic uses of the form "X in the sun" (X being a subset of imprecise time words) represent a small share of the usage of "in the sun". Of the first 100 collocations of "X in the sun" at COCA representing 1838 instances, only 6 were of time words, representing 219 instances. Many of the time words were not usually used in a remotely idiomatic way. Four hours, years, and days only 3/44 uses were possibly idiomatic. "Day" (72), "moment" (52), and "time" (51) are the main candidates for "X". "Place in the sun" is even more common than "day". What seems clear is that there is a sense of "sun" meaning "glory" or "public acclaim".

MWOnline has "in the sun" meaning "in the public eye". RHU and AHD have "a place in the sun". No dictionary has "day", "moment", or "time" in the sun. DCDuring TALK 17:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your searching nd analysis. Delete this and add the sene to sun unless it's there already.—msh210℠ on a public computer 01:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

as/usual,keep--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 05:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

As usual, no CFI or other logical reason to do so. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] island chain

It's an [[island]] [[chain]]. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

If this is a sum of parts, why is there no emphasis on "chain"? In, say, "long chain" there is. Does n't that make island chain a compound?

Jcwf 04:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

In a word, no Mglovesfun (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It definitely has many markers of set-phrase-ishness. We don't/can't speak of a "tree chain", or a "hill chain", or a "lake chain", although we can obviously speak of a "chain of lakes" et al. The only other landform that collocates with "chain" here seems to be "mountain". Coming at it from the other side, a lei is a chain of flowers, associated with certain islands, but no one would ever call it an "island chain". Nor would one be likely to apply the term to a length of chain from Guernsey. Looks to me like this is compositional but idiomatic, which is to say we can say something useful about it, but not a lot. Weak keep, with a view to the "Rocking chair" and "Easier said"[no, not this one; "Fried egg", I guess] tests in WT:SURVIVOR. -- Visviva 07:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, the MI in COCA is 5.21, which is higher than "kitchen island" and "heat island" but lower than "island nation", "island lore" or "desert island". Hmmm... -- Visviva 07:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is like rocking chair. Any chair can rock, but I think that island chain only refers to a chain of islands, ergo delete as unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, the "rocking chair test" in WT:SURVIVOR is supposed to relate to unusual patterns of stress and intonation (as per Jcwf above). You're right, though, that rocking chair would probably be kept for other reasons, regardless. -- Visviva 02:49, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep for that very reason. DAVilla 05:52, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Weak keep per Visviva. --Dan Polansky 11:08, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Likewise weak keep, although perhaps stronger than some others. A chain in every other usage I can think of has objects that are physically or chemically connected to each other. An island chain is arranged as if they were connected, but without any such physical connection. This seems to make the meaning idiomatic, at least to me. --EncycloPetey 12:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The islands in an island chain are usually connected by an underwater ridge, very much the same way as mountains of a mountain chain. --Hekaheka 14:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

A chain of correct answer[s]? A chain of ideas? Of mountains? Nah, I still think this should be deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I would expect a chain of mountains to be connected at least by a higher elevation region at their bases. I would expect a chain of ideas to have a thematic connection. I can't imagine ever saying "chain of correct answer". --EncycloPetey 20:24, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Typo for answers. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Are islands in a chain also connected by higher elevation between them?​—msh210℠ 16:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Just as one definition of star is "point of light in the night sky", at least one definition of island chain has to relate to surface (above-surface !) appearances. This idea must be after some development of cartography, I would have thought, but before extensive knowledge of underwater topography. FWIW, "chain of islands" (1749) seems to predate "island chain" (c. 1810). "Island chain" is only about twice as frequent at COCA as "chain of islands".

delete. This doesn't seem like much of an idiom to me. DCDuring TALK 17:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete unidiomatic.​—msh210℠ 18:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] laten ontsporen

Sum of parts (says Codecat) laten + ontsporen. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree: there are two separate emphases :láten ontspóren Jcwf 03:43, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think stress is the word. Anyway. As far as I can see it means to "allow to derail". Since I don't speak the language I can't make a good quality comment, but it doesn't seem idiomatic to me. Mglovesfun (talk)

Delete. —AugPi _(t) 02:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. (there is consensus, right?) —AugPi _(t) 02:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Including me and the original tagger, yes. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] achterom kijken

Same as above, achterom + kijken. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually no. It is a seperable verb, but its correct spelling is achteromkijken (and it has one emphasis: on "-om-"). It does need to be moved. Jcwf 03:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay move. Any objections to that? Mglovesfun (talk) 07:42, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly it occurs both as two separate words and as one. Compare:

Heb je al áchterom gekéken? - Did you have a look behind the house yet?

Heb je al achterómgekeken? - Have you looked over you shoulder yet?

Unfortunately for non-native speakers the stress marks -although a legitimate component of the spelling system- are seldom used because for native speakers the context (and the concatenation of the spelling) usually are enough to prevent confusion. Jcwf 12:01, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Renamed by Jcwf, looks okay to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:48, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 很少

Sum of parts, tagged by User:Tooironic. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:27, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

• imo<censrd>nom.[wt so pluralistic,isugest nobelpeacepriz
• idiom.
• we=nopaper orcare bout othadict.[idont,pil'ofrubish they r w/o exc.
• v.gud entry,h-tr,keep'mcomin pl!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 04:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless Tooironic (or indeed, anyone at all) can explain why this should be deleted, I see no reason to leave this debate open indefinitely just "hoping" someone will explain what the problem is. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Since Chinese writing is not space-delimited, the argument would be that this is sum of parts, equivalent to "very few" (很+少). I don't know enough about Mandarin to have an opinion; but it would be nice if someone knowledgeable in the language would weigh in. The note in the template about "few, if any" dictionaries having an entry gives me pause. If there are real dictionaries (not just termdumps) that include it, IMO we should probably do the same. -- Visviva 13:46, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. This can also mean 'too few', i.e. 'not enough', but does not have quite the same connotation as 'not enough'. It's difficult to quantify, but there is no other phrase or combination of characters that conveys exactly this sense. bd2412 T 17:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept, no reason to delete given. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] industry

Rfd-sense:

1. automated production of material goods

which has been added recently[41]. AFAICS the sense is redundant to the first one:

1. Businesses concerned with goods as opposed to services

The reference given to the newly added sense seems irrelevant to the sense. --Dan Polansky 18:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

IMO this has to be treated as an RfV. The definition adds "automated", so it is not, on its face, the same. In the context of European patent law, this might actually be used. If it is used attestably in this sense beyond the document cited, it would be includable. Other approaches, such as putting "especially automated" in the first sense, don't seem likely to succeed. In that particular case, I don't think it would accurate with respect to normal usage, at least not over the whole period of usage. And handicraft production might well be excluded from the European patent law sense. DCDuring TALK 19:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There might be a very particular reason for the narrow definition of industry given in this law. There seems to be a particular effort to differentiate "industry" for purposes of patent law from ordinary definitions. See [42]. We have been taking legal definitions relatively seriously, despite their narrow context (usually not narrower than the context of, say, linguistics). DCDuring TALK 19:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The definition seems to be wrong. The European patent law does not limit the term industry to mean "automated production of material goods".

Under Art. 52 of the Convention, patents are granted to inventions which: are new; involve an inventive step; can be applied in industry.

* Novelty - an invention is new if it does not form part of the existing state of the art in technology. The state of the art is anything that was disclosed to the public prior to the application date in oral or written form, through use or in any other way.

* Inventive step - an invention is said to involve an inventive step if, with respect to the existing state of the art, it is not obvious for a person skilled in the art. The inventive step requirement is designed to prevent the patenting of obvious solutions, which would slow down the development of technology.

* Industrial applicability - this requirement is met if the subject matter of the invention can be manufactured or used in industry of any kind, including agriculture. --Hekaheka 21:29, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems that I was too quick. The software patent directive does contain this strict definition. This is because the European legislators have wanted to limit the patentability of software, and therefore "industry" has been more narrowly defined in this directive than in patent law in general. --Hekaheka 21:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Boy! That is a narrow context. It is now so indicated. Do you think it is attestable? I would expect there to have been some nattering about this over the last ten years. DCDuring TALK 23:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] adiabatic lapse rate

Tagged by DCDuring (talk • contribs). Not idiomatic, apparently. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:21, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I was and remain unsure. It is probably idiomatic, but it seems highly encyclopedic. What I think is almost certainly idiomatic is lapse rate (“‘adiabatic lapse rate’”). DCDuring TALK 20:24, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It does seem SOPish, but I think it meets the standard of reasonable doubt, given that many meteorological texts define it explicitly: google books:"called the adiabatic lapse rate". -- Visviva 02:57, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Yep, adiabatic + lapse rate, that's all that it is. --Hekaheka 14:29, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sortir la poubelle

sortir + la poubelle -Rising Sun 19:38, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Strong delete, or create take out the trash in English. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Just for the non-French speakers, this is sortir (“‘take out, put out’”) + la (“‘the’”) + poubelle (“‘bin’”). Mglovesfun (talk) 12:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete unless it can be shown to be idiomatic in some fashion. —Internoob (Talk•Cont.) 23:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, Mglovesfun (talk) 13:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] eventueele

Template generated typo for eventuele. Jcwf 03:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. —Stephen 07:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] polar question

SoP. google books:"question|questions is|are polar" -"in question is polar".​—msh210℠ 17:42, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd tend to want to keep this per the discussion on #free variable, but the zero dictionaries having the term at polar question at OneLook® Dictionary Search set me in doubt. In any case, the "polar question" has only been make look SoPish by having a dedicated sense at polar: Of a question, having but two possible answers, yes and no. I did not know what "polar question" was before I looked up the definition, unlike with "yes-no question". OTOH, when looking for "polar question", the user can at worst give it a try at "polar" after an unsuccessful search at "polar question", and the term "polar question" can be mentioned in a quotation or an example sentence at the dedicated sense at "polar" to facilitate findability. --Dan Polansky 18:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I'd say that if it is used in linguistics, keep it. Where in polar does it say "that can only take a yes or no answer". To me it's clearly not just a question which is polar. So if attestable with this precise meaning, keep. If not, don't. WT:RFV#polar question anyone? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the sense of "polar" here is a little broader; something like "admitting of no shades of grey". See e.g. the smattering of hits for google books:"polar statement". But I don't think this is sum of parts for all who use it; the community of use for polar question is not a subset of the community of use for this sense of polar. Hence the occasional need to define it explicitly. And defining things explicitly is what we do best; so why not keep. Also, this seems like just a bit of a fried egg. "Are you a Christian or are you some kind of Commie?" would be a question that is polar (admitting only two responses), but nonetheless not a polar question, as I understand it. -- Visviva 14:07, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

If this gets kept I'll rfd the sense that has been added at polar, which looks wrong or even farcical to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, MG, as written, that sense seems silly. Perhaps it can be revised instead of RfDed.

I think this is a keeper in the context indicated, per Visviva. I'm not so sure that it means no gray area. DCDuring TALK 17:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

Is this dictionary stuff? There is lots to explain and translate in the Bible, if we decide to go that way. --Hekaheka 14:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

If it's used as a proverb, keep it. If it's just a passage from the Bible, delete it. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

See [[43]] for > 100 hits at bgc for the full quote in books with Proverbs in the title, not all of them referencing the Old Testament Book of Proverbs.

And what or where are the special, more strict CFI rules for proverbs, anyway? DCDuring TALK 17:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep Per DCDuring. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

All right, all right.. --Hekaheka 19:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk

[edit] lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk

Other than that they were coined by James Joyce instead of George Lucas, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gene Roddenberry, or J.K. Rowling, I don't see how these two words meet the requirements of Criteria for inclusion/Fictional universes. Delete or move to an Appendix for Finnegans Wake. — Carolina wren discussió 18:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Delete Doesn't meet the CFI. Razorflame 18:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I strongly favor amending WT:CFI to eliminate the "well=known work" exception to our normal attestation standard. Shakespeare, Milton, Joyce, Nabakov, Burgess, Tolkein, and Pynchon are among the authors whose bad coinages are given a free pass. In this context "bad" means not taken up by anyone else (mentions in literary criticism doesn't count.). I'm sure that if we looked harder at some of our contractions we'd find some that exist only because they satisfied the need a well-known poet for a word that fit the meter. DCDuring TALK 19:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. I would approve such an amendment to the CFI. Razorflame 19:37, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Mostly useless, but also mostly harmless, and well within current (and long-standing) policy. At least, I have a hard time imagining a definition of "well-known work" that wouldn't include Finnegans Wake. Therefore keep, without prejudice to the general policy question. -- Visviva 05:55, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The rationale for the well-known work exemption, as I understand it, is that a complete version of Wiktionary should leave no word-sense questions unanswered for someone reading Shakespeare, Milton, etc. This seems reasonable enough to me, though the flip side of that is that we are currently missing thousands of words and word forms that appear even in respelled modern editions of Shakespeare. (I have some lists, if anyone is interested.) On the other hand, this particular need could arguably be better addressed in Concordance: or Appendix:-space, though that approach also has problems. That said, if we eliminate the exemption entirely, we need to replace it with a more nuanced approach to languages that are poorly-attested (Homeric Greek, Eteocypriot, Cia-Cia) or unstandardized (Middle English, Middle Korean, actually almost any Middle/Old language). "Well-known work" gives us an loophole for including forms that appear only in the Homeric hymns, or that are found in a particular spelling only in Chaucer. This is unsatisfactory, of course, since it still excludes less-known writings; but I don't think the well-known-work issue can be addressed before the poorly-attested-languages issue. -- Visviva 05:55, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy if we just did it for English. Other high-use modern languages might merit the same treatment. DCDuring TALK 12:26, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek#Attestation, if approved, would require only one attestation for an Ancient Greek word. (See Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2007/April#Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek.) —Ruakh_TALK 13:25, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

As much as I don't like it a lot, keep per WT:CFI. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:05, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

• Delete, as neither of those has any chance for another two citations unrelated to Joyce's work. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:12, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] why the dickens

[edit] what the dickens

[edit] go to the dickens

Move to the dickens, like the fuck, the hell, the devil. DCDuring TALK 19:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Adding two relatives.

Move per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Move. Equinox ◑ 13:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Create [[the dickens]] and redirect thereto.​—msh210℠ 16:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] literary journalism

journalism that is literary in style. SemperBlotto 08:37, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

But not in subject matter. Which is a bit odd, really; literary translation, for instance, involves the translation of literature. No patent translation could ever qualify, however ornate and florid its prose. -- Visviva 14:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this actually in use anywhere? It seems a tiny bit idiomatic, providing it's actually used with the meaning given in the entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

The current definition is not well-worded IMO, but the genre it describes is real enough; you can even get a degree in it. :-) -- Visviva 14:24, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] saccharification of wood

No definition - presumably because it is the sum of parts (saccharification of wood). (Plural seems wrong if the entry is OK) SemperBlotto 13:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy delete, there's no definition anyway, we'd essentially be deleting an empty page. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:24, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted SemperBlotto 14:27, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] them two

This is simply a determiner modifying another determiner. We don't need entries for which two and them twelve, etc.--Brett 13:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete but add the appropriate note at them. Equinox ◑ 13:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, pointless and unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

delete DCDuring TALK 16:37, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted--Brett 12:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] us two

The previous verification notwithstanding, this is simply sum of parts. The previous discussion erred in assuming that us is a pronoun. It is a determiner. Thus, this is no different from those two or every three. It can also be extended to nouns referring to people such as us editors, us teachers, us students, etc. It is the same as determiner you.--Brett 16:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, pointless and unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. DCDuring TALK 16:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted--Brett 12:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] you two

As above.--Brett 16:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, pointless and unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. DCDuring TALK 16:38, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted--Brett 12:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] what the Sam Hill

Like the fuck, the dickens, the Devil, the hell. We've been redirecting to those forms from whatever fuller forms we enter. DCDuring TALK 18:10, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm very dubious of the current meaning given at Sam Hill -- I'd always understood it to be a simple euphemism for "damned hell" -- but otherwise a redirect seems reasonable. -- Visviva 18:34, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

"Where in Sam Hill is he?" So, unlike some of the others the redirect should be to the form without "the". Possibly the same should be true for terms involving dickens if it is ever used without "the", as in "where in dickens is he?" For the others we lose the user in the longer entries, I fear. A user-needs-justified inconsistency? DCDuring TALK 16:55, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] assume the position

2 SoP senses, not US law enforcement sense, which seems idiomatic to me. DCDuring TALK 00:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete these, SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:22, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I've tried the same approach as with #take out the trash below, though I'm not sure it works quite as well here. -- Visviva 11:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

May as well keep it now. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed.​—msh210℠ 19:39, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, sort of. The original definitions aren't there anyway. Fixed seems more accurate. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:23, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm

Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. DCDuring TALK 01:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, no lexical content whatsoever, only encyclopedic. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

• Deleted. Amazing as it is that this has been sitting around for more than 2 years, I cannot envision any case for having this. If anyone would like to make such a case, I would be happy to restore it. :-) -- Visviva 14:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

It may have lasted because it was in no categories and appeared on no lists, except RfC. The RfC may have led folks to believe that there was a pony in there somewhere. DCDuring TALK 16:45, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] take out the trash

Rfd-sense. Remove rubbish. That's just [[take out]] [[the]] [[trash]] isn't it? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at the sort of placeholder definition that has been proposed for these. The problem with deleting these SOP senses entirely is that we are left with an entry that appears to be incomplete -- or even misleading, when the SOP sense is overwhelmingly more common, as it is here. As a consequence, the senses are likely to be added again, then have to be removed again, etc. etc., which gets a bit tedious. So I guess I would put myself down as a very weak keep. -- Visviva 14:40, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm okay with the rewritten version. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:47, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as now written. This is a recurring problem with idioms. It can get really silly when there are numerous distinct non-idiomatic senses. As an alternative, could we put the literal sense in the etymology? Users may ignore the etymology, of course, so the same repeated re-entry may arise. Maybe we could try it for a while on some common terms and see if it works. DCDuring TALK 16:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't like this newfangled business of moving definitions into other parts of the entry just because they're a little awkward. Not only may direct users skip over this information, but indirect users may never see it at all. I would want the output of google:define:take out the trash to (continue to) include the literal meaning as well. -- Visviva 09:53, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep current version.​—msh210℠ 18:02, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] how do I get to Carnegie Hall

A hoary joke, not an idiom, like why did the chicken cross the road? Equinox ◑ 16:51, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I could easily be swayed by argument on this, my NY bias favoring it. The possibility is that the question is an allusion to the jocular/serious answer, thereby making it idiomatic or proverbial. DCDuring TALK 17:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

• Strong delete. We have knock knock, but that's a class of jokes. This is just a set-up line. bd2412 T 18:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't really get the definition. I don't see any reason to keep it, but I don't see how I can comment on something I don't fully understand. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:10, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
    • It's a double entendre - how does one get somewhere? The usual meaning is that the person is asking for directions to a physical location; the joke is that the person answering tells them how to achieve a milestone symbolized by that location. Say the Super Bowl is in New Orleans, and I ask, "how do I get to the Super Bowl in New Orleans"? The answer I'm looking for is probably either how to obtain tickets, or how to physically locate the stadium. If you answer, "Win all your playoff games", this implies that I want to play in the Superbowl, not just be at the location when it occurs. bd2412 T 18:27, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

The rationale for keeping it, with a corrected "definition", is that the joke is so well known (in the US, at least) that the setup is often heard as the answer. There are a large number of Proverb, Phrase, and Idiom entries that have that relationship to something more complete. In some cases we have both the full form of a proverb and a phrase or clause that evokes it. Now, I don't want to say that anyone doesn't have wit enough to see the merit of my arguments, but if the shoe fits.... DCDuring TALK 19:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

If this can be demonstrated, I think it's a definite keeper. But google books:"how do I get to Carnegie Hall" is not very encouraging. -- Visviva 02:20, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm betting on on Google news. DCDuring TALK 02:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete or open a pretty big can of worms. Should we include all well-worn set-ups, come-ons, punch lines, snappy comebacks, ripostes, gags, plays on words, shticks, and thigh-slappers that have gone the rounds, on the grounds that they have all ascended to proverbial status? I certainly have a very hard time seeing this one as an idiom, a proverb, or a part of one. Who's on first here, anyway? -- WikiPedant 00:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The can of worms is already leaking a bit: sticks and stones, when in Rome, bird in the hand, time and tide are examples of lead-ins to proverbs that we have as entries. What is required is that the completion be fairly obvious and proverbial. Not very many joke questions end up with a proverbial as a punch line. We also have evocative fragments like and your little dog too and and the horse you rode in on, which are includable largely because they are euphemisms. We have no reason to exclude any of these if they are attestable and I'm reasonably sure they are. In each case they allude to and evoke a full expression. The sole difference, AFAICT, is that, in the instant case, the speaker of what is evoked is different from the speaker of the question. Also, rhyming slang works analogously, it seems to me.

I wonder how big a can of worms this could be (compared to including, say, gazetteer entries and SoP terms that are translation targets). This seems to meet CFI. It conveys meaning beyond the meaning of actual words. I believe it would prove attestable in a sufficient number of newspaper columns. I'm sure that it would pass a few Pawley idiomaticity tests, too. DCDuring TALK 02:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Judging by how hard it is to attest in the use that I have heard, that I know exists, at least in the NY metro area and among educators, musicians etc, there are very few worms to worry about here. DCDuring TALK 03:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I only understand now because I've read the WP article. Someone needs to say what Carnegie Hall is. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know that the attributive-use standard narrowly construed would allow Carnegie Hall to be an entry. It could be an application of {{only-in}} pointing to WP. DCDuring TALK 12:56, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per others' comments.​—msh210℠ 17:58, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Basically, this is not an idiom or a proverb, it's the first line of a joke. What's next? an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that I could attest the usage that I know exists: It is too regional and dated to be used in print in the allusive way that I had posited above. I don't think that it is deletable for the reasons stated. In the usage I know, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" is the retort to some asking for advise on how to do something easily that, in fact, requires practice: "What do I have to do to get an athletic scholarship to college?" / "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The joke is supposed to be well known enough to trigger the automatic punch line. If it does not and the person says "Hunh?", then one has the opportunity to make one's point directly. It is all in aid of giving advice. My position is that in such a case "How do I get to Carnegie Hall" means "Practice! Practice! Practice!". That is not inferrable from the components. It is not a joke. It is just like proof of the pudding (in OneLook dictionaries) which is an ellipsis for the the proof of the pudding is in the eating. One does not infer that one is referring to a metaphorical eating without knowing the expression as a reference to the proverb.

Accordingly, I would prefer that this be a Keep and Move to RfV to not create a precedent against allusive entries per se. DCDuring TALK 15:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Moving this to RfV would only delay the need to determine whether a well known setup to a punchline should be included. Of course, we could make an entry on something like why did the chicken cross the road (which is clearly verifiable) to test this principle, but this entry already exists. bd2412 T 16:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] snappy comeback

A comeback that is snappy. Uses like "snappiest comeback" [44] seem to counter the claim of idiomaticity; it's a common collocation, but not especially idiomatic, as far as I can see. Equinox ◑ 19:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I think snappy and comeback both have sufficiently large ranges of meaning that this particular usage qualifies as an idiom, and a chiefly US one. The first time I saw it used (in an American comic strip in the 1960s, I believe) I didn't know what it meant. The fact that variant forms exist does not cancel its idiomaticity (lots of idioms have alt forms), although the variants might disqualify it as a set phrase. -- WikiPedant 19:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

PS -- Although attestability was not raised as an issue, I replaced the e.g. sentence with 20th- and 21st-century news quotations. -- WikiPedant 19:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete; snappy can be used with other terms besides comeback. --EncycloPetey 01:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't get your point here, Petey. Nobody is claiming that this is a set phrase. I see it as an idiom, and the terms comprising idioms can virtually always be used with lots of other terms. With regard to its idiomaticity, snappy comeback strikes me as easily passing the "fried egg" test: "terms for which specific restrictions to the meaning of constituents are made that could not be surmised pragmatically". -- WikiPedant 02:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The idiom is at comeback, not in the combination. You can make a snappy reply, a snappy rejoinder, etc. So, would you consider all of these to be idiomatic? In any case, a "snappy comeback" can either be snappy because it is made quickly or because it is made irritably, so it utilizes two of the three definitions of snappy. --EncycloPetey 02:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Petey, I'm not sure what you mean by describing comeback as a one-word idiom, but this does not bear directly on the point I'm struggling to make. No, I wouldn't consider your examples to be idiomatic, since their meanings are SoP depending on context. What I'm getting at is that, although snappy has 3 senses and comeback has 2 senses, the term snappy comeback is used almost exclusively with one sense--a quick retort--and is thus idiomatic. Other uses of this collocation (which occur very rarely, and which I'm inclined to discount as plays on words echoing the idiomatic sense)--such as "a rapid return to glory" or, as you note, "a cranky reply"--strike me as SoP and linguistically non-noteworthy. But the "quick retort" sense fills the bill as an established idiomatic usage. -- WikiPedant 04:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Could we hold off action on this on this item for a bit? I am going to try to calibrate the COCA mutual information scores for adjective-noun combinations that we have accepted as idioms vs. some that we have considered and rejected. Preliminary results seem to suggest that the score in the plural is quite high. (It is lower for the singular. I don't know how to properly combine them.) Among collocations with more than one occurrence with comeback, snappy has the second highest MI, after "fourth-quarter comebacks", a standard in US sports. DCDuring TALK 14:27, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. I always think a good test is if you can guess what it means before reading the article. Snappy and comeback are enough. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:43, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nomination.—msh210℠ on a public computer 17:25, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. I do love the straight-forward ones. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 美国华人

Nominated as speedy, but clearly shouldn't be. Assuming the definition is correct, delete as unidiomatic. A load of entries like Sicilian-American got deleted a few months back, I don't see (yet) how this is different. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

See WT:PDE letter S for the Sicilian-American debate. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

• Strong keep - Very widely used Mandarin term. 24.29.228.33 06:05, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
  • don't be so stupid is widely used in English, so? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
• Strong delete - Obviously Sum of Parts entry. Tooironic 11:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
• Delete - Nothing but a SoP. ―Tohru 00:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 狭叶薰衣草

Nominated as speedy, but clearly shouldn't be. If the definition is correct, keep. It's the Chinese name for a Scientific Latin botanical name isn't it? Don't we allow these as ==Translingual== entries? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep, of course (if the definition is correct). Keep as Chinese: this is not a scientific name, as all scientific names are always written in Latin characters. And there is no reason not to create Lavandula angustifolia and common lavender too. Lmaltier 16:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We have been avoiding making two- or more-part taxonomic names. We welcome genus names like Lavandula, lavandula its Latin source, and angustifolia. Vernacular names, like common lavender are also welcome. DCDuring TALK 18:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this a rule? I was not aware of it (and I don't see the reason to refuse scientific species names). Lmaltier 19:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We have so little policy. Not having species (and subspecies and variety) taxonomic names or cultivar names is our way of letting wikispecies take the burden of keeping track of this and of off-loading encyclopedic material with little of purely lexicigraphic interest to WP et al. I have been following EP in this regard. We obviously have a long way to go before we have the components, let alone the combinatorial explosion of species- and lower-level names. DCDuring TALK 19:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that there is no reason to refuse binomial (or even trinomial) names. But at the same time, we have little of value to say about them. Any links should probably go either to the generic/specific epithets or to Wikispecies (since all the user is going to find is a soft-redirect to WP or Wisp in any case). NB, the community has voted to delete cases like B. splendens, for reasons I'm not sure I understand. -- Visviva 02:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep, based on w:zh:狭叶薰衣草. -- Visviva 02:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm the one who nominated the above two Chinese entries for deletion. Can someone explain why they shouldn't be nominated as "speedy" deletions, and how to avoid doing this inappropriately? Obviously I'm biased, but I would delete both these entries as, in my opinion, they do not have any meaning beyond the sum of their parts. Tooironic 09:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I would imagine that there are many species of lavender that have narrow leaves, just as there are many species that may be common in some part of the world. But there is only one species called "common lavender", and likewise it would appear that there is likewise only one species called 狭叶薰衣草. If that's not the case, and this is actually a generic term for any lavender with narrow leaves, then I would support deletion. -- Visviva 10:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is reserved for anything that's undeniably unusable here. Empty pages, insults, patent vandalism (with no 'good' version in the history). This was neither, still keep from me. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:39, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

• Keep this Mandarin term. 24.29.228.33 06:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep for sure if it means common lavender (as a species name). In case you dont understand, then this is the principle Tooironic: if we have a term like common lavender which at first glances looks SOP but but is used as a common name for a specific species then it is included as a common name and translations into other languages are also welcome. It's just like how we have sea ivory and hammerhead shark.

We have been avoiding making two- or more-part taxonomic names. We welcome genus names like Lavandula, lavandula its Latin source, and angustifolia. Vernacular names, like common lavender are also welcome.

Just for the record I disagree with this. It is obvious though that to create entries for all species is a gargantuan task, especially when you also think about deprecated names. However, I have previously done a small amount of taxonomic work here on Wiktionary before and I always try to do enough research so that I can create an entry for a species and then work my way up (as opposed to down) through the taxa and create entries, e.g. species-->genus-->family-->suborder-->...50 Xylophone Players talk 16:34, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

• Kept as simplified Chinese entry.--Jusjih 21:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] right back

Sole adverb sense. This seems to me to be [[right#Adverb]] + [[back#Adverb]]. Surprisingly, we don't have right back at you. DCDuring TALK 18:53, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

By the above logic, we shouldn't have right back at you, as we have [[right]] and [[back at you]]. D'oh. DCDuring TALK 19:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete this SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:14, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Other opinions? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:34, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete--Brett 00:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bryce Canyon

A national park. So? --Hekaheka 21:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It's also an amphitheatre though. Tooironic 09:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Attributive use? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] nows

Plural of now#Noun. It's given as uncountable, but if anything it's a singulare tantum, I think. I just have a bit of a doubt if now is always uncountable or always a singulare tantum. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The entry was created by an IP, I didn't know if it was ok or not. L☺g☺maniac chat? 16:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep: no reason given for deletion, SFAICT. (Did you maybe mean this for RFV? If so, I can say that I'm quite confident it would pass. See e.g. google books:"those nows".) —Ruakh_TALK 16:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It was created by an IP. When I saw that now was uncountable in the article, I nearly speedy deleted it. It should be an RFV but whatever. We'll need a new sense at now in order to make this findable. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It needs a philosophy sense. We need someone versed in Hegel, Heidegger, and/or Husserl (and Aristotle and Derrida, if possible). Maybe we can recruit someone from WP for this and similar terms. Beyond my pay grade. DCDuring TALK 00:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy keep, bad nomination (by me). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] postal history

History that's postal in its subject. Either encyclopedic, or unidiomatic. Seems to bolster the argument for deleting #local history, as that uses the same sense of history#Noun. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I suspect agricultural history, ecclesiastical history and similar stuff would use the same sense of history too. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

delete --Hekaheka 13:34, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I think in the case of #local history it is a question of the (unique?) sense of "local" rather than of "history", which just means "history" in both cases. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual about the meaning of either "postal", "history", or "postal history" here, so I can't immediately see any grounds for not delete-ing this one as nonidiomatic. -- Visviva 13:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Although if the 'pedia is accurate in describing this as a specific form of collecting, it might be keepable. Needs further research, as the pedia artice is somewhat incoherent. -- Visviva 13:38, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The Postal History Society doesn't mention anything so specific, so I'm sticking with deletion. -- Visviva 13:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Definite keep for the second definition. It is widely used in philatelic circles to indicate postal items that can be studied and collected. There is no meaning of history that would indicate tangible items such as these, therefore it can not be some of parts. In reply to the previous comment about agricultural history, this would never mean tractors or other machinary. Postal history has this distinct meaning.--Dmol 00:40, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

So I've just deleted the first meaning for now. I don't think #2 is idiomatic either, it's more of a (by extension) thing. Anyone other than Dmol want to keep it? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Um, yeah: me. How do you get "postal paraphernalia" from "postal" + "history"? I would never have guessed that meaning. (Note that the definition is written as if the deleted first definition still exists: it refers back to it.)​—msh210℠ 19:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Have fixed the def to allow for the deletion of the first entry.--Dmol 07:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

2 cites added, (1 book, 1 web). My computer is going down so can't tidy it up yet. Will come back.--Dmol 06:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, noting that only the first definition was tagged. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:16, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] cooperation

Moved from RFV. DCDuring says "Five senses that seem to me included in two real senses." DAVilla 05:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that only the two uncontested senses are worth keeping, but would this mess up the translations? Perhaps the sociological and ecological ones are different words in some languages. Equinox ◑ 15:23, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I would not worry about translations. The tagged senses have currently only two translations. If other languages need several words to cover a sense, they should simply be all listed, and explanations given in appropriate foreign-language entries. --Hekaheka 23:50, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you're quite right. Delete. Equinox ◑ 22:10, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm okay with deleting these without prejudice. I don't doubt the definition could be more finely splintered, but I would want to see examples to make sure that the way it was divided was appropriate. 63.95.64.254 02:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

These haven't been deleted. I'm taking the rather unusual step of moving this to the bottom of the page to get a debate going, as I don't feel right deleting or keep these based on a discussion that took place 7 months ago. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

---

We need some serious debate here, given the number of senses up for deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Fine to express openness to good definitions, but we will need citations to add senses unlike those that appear in other dictionaries. If we could get contributors to contribute even one real citation that doesn't seem well covered by our existing definitions, we would have something to work with. DCDuring TALK 00:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe just use {{rfc}} instead. I don't really think merging similar definitions into one is an RFD issue. Deleting one outright when no similar definition exists (like the juggling meaning for cascade) ok yes, but not this. Any objections to an rfc? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] silver jubilee

silver (“‘associated with a twenty-fifth anniversary’”) + jubilee. We should have the table of these things according to the customs in various cultures. DCDuring TALK 17:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

See Appendix:Anniversary associations, ripped from WP. DCDuring TALK 17:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

We lack the sense of silver, though I agree we shouldn't. If the definitions we have are right — which I doubt — that jubilee is a generic anniversary whereas silver jubilee is especially a monarch's, then keep. Otherwise, delete as SOP.​—msh210℠ 18:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

An appendix sounds like a great idea to me, although this isn't exactly bowling me over as unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep: it is only by providing the meaning of "silver jubilee" at "silver" that this becomes a sum of parts. Or does "silver" in this sense combine with anything else but "jubilee"? Also for those who care: silver jubilee at OneLook® Dictionary Search. --Dan Polansky 17:34, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Silver combines with anniversary.​—msh210℠ 04:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] periodic structure

Saved from speedy (not speedily deletable IMO), but IMO deletable: SoP: google books:"periodic sentence".​—msh210℠ 18:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

We have periodic sentence. Should a definition of periodic structure reference that? I find this sense of "periodic" obscure, as apparently do the OneLook dictionaries that have a separate sense of "periodic" that references "periodic sentence". These same dictionaries do not have "periodic structure". DCDuring TALK 19:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It needs a serious cleanup because the definition seems vague and difficult to me. I can't really comment before that happens. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Here are some building blocks for the definition [45]:

4. PERIODIC structure: When ideas are unequal because one is logically or emotionally more important than others, and when the writer wants to create a climactic feeling of tension followed by resolution, the periodic sentence can be a good choice. Its structure is the opposite of cumulative structure -- phr or SC + MC. Subordinate clauses and/or phrases precede the main clause, which is located at the end, near the period. (In modern American English, periodic sentences are used more sparingly than the three structures above.)

a. "If it had not been a fairly ordinary thing, in one part of the world, to teach young children to pay the pianoforte, it is doubtful that Mozart's music would exist." (Hearne)

b. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in." (Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address")

c. "In the case of the omniscient point of view, the narrator sees all and knows all." (Boynton, 250)

It seems, as DCD suggests, that periodic structure is more or less synonymous to periodic sentence. If one wants to see a difference one might conclude that a periodic sentence has a periodic structure. Note that we also have a grammar sense to periodic, which says "having a structure characterized by periodic sentences". To sum up, I would say delete to periodic sructure. --Hekaheka 15:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] carpetbagger

rfd-sense: (British, pejorative) One who attempts to force a mutual organisation, such as a building society, to demutualise — to list on a stock exchange, solely for personal pecuniary advantage. This particularistic sense is a use of the general term in a particular instance. I could not find evidence of use where the term conveys this meaning. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Moved to RfV DCDuring TALK 16:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] posthumous work

WOTD for Halloween or SoP? DCDuring TALK 18:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I would say SoP and consequently, delete. The entry posthumous has this sense: "published after the author's death". --Hekaheka 19:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete this. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:09, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] and so on and so forth

[[and so on]] + [[and so forth]], two members of Category:English coordinates. DCDuring TALK 19:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete this. There's no doubt that you can chain together quite a lot of these, like with adverbs. SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I wanted to say keep, but neither CFI nor OneLook supports me; the term can be understood from its parts.

Some Google searches for the interested:

• google:"and so on and so forth" - 17,600,000 hits
• google:"and so on and so on" - 89,200,000 hits
• google:"and so forth and so forth" - 7,710,000 hits

--Dan Polansky 17:54, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

"and so on and so forth" is more euphonious to my ears than other combinations of coordinates, but it is not set and its meanings is deducible from its parts. It surprised me how many of these coordinating-conjunction + phrase expressions seem to be idiomatic. DCDuring TALK 18:46, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

There are now 32 members of Category:English coordinates. DCDuring TALK 19:48, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] façon de parler

French only. Ignoring that both the English and the French are wrong in this section, this isn't an idiom anymore than way of speaking is in English. No reason why the English etymology can't link to the individual words. SoP, delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, yes, it's an idiom! Lmaltier 20:54, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

What should the article say then? Because right now it's totally unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The same definition as in English. This definition shows that it's idiomatic. When you say il parle lentement, c'est sa façon de parler, it's not idiomatic at all, but the sense defined here is idiomatic. Lmaltier 17:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] rester là

Definition seems wrong. [[rester]] (stay) + [[là]] (there). If it does have an idiomatic meaning, what is it? No other Wiktionaries have this. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

There is an actual expression: en rester là, which means "keep it to this", "not escalate further", though. Circeus 21:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] faire savoir

I think any verb (other than really defective ones) can go with faire to mean make [someone] [do]. So this is to make someone know. Common use of both faire and savoir. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep, it's not al all the same case as usual faire + verb phrases. The most obvious SoP sense would be to teach, and it's not the sense of this phrase. Lmaltier 20:57, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. The meaning is really "to let know", and it is very much a set phrase. The literal interpretation would be "teach". Circeus 21:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

But unidiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

However, if it also means to teach, that's (to me) clearly not SoP, so I'd then say keep. But that's not what the article says. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:45, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

It does not mean to teach. Someone speaking English may guess what it means, but it's only because the same kind of phrase also exists in English. Lmaltier 17:03, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

To put it in DCDuring terms "explain how this meets CFI". Mglovesfun (talk) 17:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

It meets CFI because it's an idiom, just like tehdä tiettäväksi, of equivalent meaning and construction, and because faire savoir is not at all the same structure as faire démolir (which is "to have smthing destroyed/demolished"). Circeus 20:03, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Nobody's denying that faire has more than one meaning. But faire fuir and faire comprendre (and 10 000 others) use the same sense of faire. If anything, let someone know needs an entry in English because it doesn't use any of the usual sense of let. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:01, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's the same meaning as let someone know. I can assure you that, unlike in faire fuir, people using faire savoir do not build the phrase by thinking to faire and to savoir, they use it more or less to mean tell, inform, and this is not obvious at all. Lmaltier 21:51, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think faire fuir is as justifiable (that is, not at all) because we don't say "to make someone flee" in English, we say "to chase someone away". Mglovesfun (talk) 13:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] faire la grève

[[faire]] (to do, to make) [[la]] (the) [[grève]] (strike). Faire can combine with almost any noun, faire des pâtes (cook some pasta). Unidiomatic use of both faire and grève. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:12, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep, as a set phrase. There would be no reason to keep faire des pâtes (where faire means the same as préparer), but it's not the same case at all. Lmaltier 21:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

faire grève should be created, too (same sense). Note that both phrases are mentioned by the dictionnaire de l'Académie française. Lmaltier 21:16, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Corrected the definition, though. Go on strike is se mettre en grève. Circeus 21:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Final thoughts? Looks like a keeper to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:17, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] accompagner de remarques

Sorry for the mass nomination. This is just to accompany with remarks. If it has an idiomatic meaning, what is it? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:36, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason to keep it. Lmaltier 21:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] avoir du biceps

Seems like a grammatical error (to have some biceps (singular, biceps)). But anyway, seems really really SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Even the dictionnaire de l'Académie française finds that it's necessary to provide a definition for this phrase. (but it's not very common). Lmaltier 21:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. It's weird, but attestable and used in French. The "biceps" in the expression is metonymic for "muscles". --EncycloPetey 03:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Now cited. --EncycloPetey 23:16, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:54, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] enlever la poussière

To remove the dust. Not idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Not idiomatic, not even a set phrase. Lmaltier 21:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The normal term is dépoussiérer, or faire la poussière (phrase deserving a page). Lmaltier 21:41, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah faire la poussière seems okay to me, because you're not making dust, you're getting rid of it. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] faire une remarque

To make a remark. Doesn't have to be negative, it just can be depending on the context. Anyway I might stop there and continue tomorrow to let people read this. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyone want to keep this? Lmaltier, Widsith, Internoob, Circeus? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, unopposed. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:16, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] as long as

If this is a preposition (as it claims to be), then most adjectives need to show such a preposition as a derived term: as preposterous as, as misguided as, as deletable as, etc. DCDuring TALK 23:52, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, silly entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:41, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete this Preposition section. But it might be useful to keep this sense nonetheless (for beginners). —This comment was unsigned.

I don't get the theory of why it would be an advantage for beginners to have this and only this entry have a definition for a "preposition" which grammar books and other dictionaries don't say is a preposition. If we had some systematic "do not confuse" type usage notes, perhaps that would be advantageous. But I would like to see some evidence that it would be desirable from some other language references, preferably dictionary-like. DCDuring TALK 01:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

How is it a preposition? I don't think "as long as" is any part of speech is it? At best, a sentence. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

It has a superficial resemblance to a preposition in that is followed by a noun complement to form a phrase that can serve as a predicate and as an adverb as many prepositional phrases do. In the sense under challenge it does not seem to me to be a constituent of any kind, but I'm not a pro at this. CGEL actually labels the senses we have under as long as#Conjunction as prepositional, though AHD and MWOnline agree with us. DCDuring TALK 16:11, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete for preposition. --Hekaheka 18:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete as long as meaning 'the same length'. But the "conjunction", meaning 'if' is a prepositional phrase.--Brett 00:41, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] signalling event

An event that acts as a signal? SemperBlotto 07:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

The definition is really bad. Hard to comment unless I can understand it. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:42, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

At least the current definition seems to be wrong. AFAIK, in telecommunication a signalling (or signaling) event is defined as the change of the state of the communication channel, each state representing a symbol that is to be transmitted. To give an everyday example, the change of a traffic light from green to yellow is a signaling event. The number of signalling events per unit of time was earlier used as a measure for the speed of the channel. More specifically, the unit baud is defined as 1 signaling event per second. Later, when it was discovered that one signaling event can convey several bits (like several traffic lights flashing at a time), a new measure "bits per second" or bps was introduced.

The term is also used at least in linguistics (of which I understood too little to even try to explain the term in my own words) and molecular biology. I cannot claim that I'd have understood everything that I read, but it looks to me that a signaling event in biology is an instance of one organ sending a "signal" (which appears to be a chemical one in many instances) to another organ, which triggers some sort of activity in the receiving organ. Typical for a biological signaling event is that the response of the receiving organ turns off the primary signal. I wasn't able to locate a definition, though, but the meaning seems to be very clear for the biologists, who write scientific articles about signaling events without bothering with defining the term. There's even a "Handbook of cell signaling" for those who got interested.

I don't know whether this helps to solve the RFD issue, but at least I found some interesting reading for a while. --Hekaheka 19:50, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] plue

[edit] plues

[edit] plus

Since plaire is always used as plaire à, these can't exist. It's a common error, il m'a plue, (woman/girl speaking) but since it's il a plu à la femme, plu should never take -e, -es or -s. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep. A quote from Le participe passé dans la langue française et son histoire‎ (Jean Bastin, 1880) : ... qu'au XVIIe siècle les grammairiens et les écrivains suivaient encore assez souvent cette ancienne règle) : Ils se sont nuis. Ils se sont plus. This may be considered as an error today, but it was still commonly used by writers during the XVIIth century (and it's still common, as Mglovesfun mentions it), and it was the general rule before Montaigne proposed to change it. Lmaltier 17:13, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I was actually going to say […] the only reason to keep would be if they were obsolete verb forms, like pre-1900. Funny coincidence eh? Keep and rewrite per Lmaltier. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

• Interesting. Some sort of Usage note seems called for. Ƿidsiþ 06:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Rfd-sense (2) of plus, masculine past participle of pleuvoir. That actually sounds more plausible to me than the plaire ones, as to rain can be transitive in English. I suppose this might be an rfv issue? Comment? —This unsigned comment was added by Mglovesfun (talk • contribs) 25 October 2009.

[edit] adventure game

This isn't idiomatic, is it? Despite the definition which seems dubious (POV?) I think it is just a game involving adventure. We don't have action game or fighting game. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

If "adventure game" refers to computer games exemplified by The Secret of Monkey Island, then I don't see how I can possibly derive the meaning from "adventure" and "game". Per WP, the term originates from the 1970s computer game "Adventure". --Dan Polansky 19:52, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Keep. Games like Quake and Tomb Raider involve adventure, as you make your way through an action-packed 3D world, but they are not "adventure games": it is a genre of puzzle-solving that would include series like LucasArts' SCUMM games, Codemasters' old Dizzy series, and the text adventure. Perhaps RFV if you don't want to take my word. Equinox ◑ 18:12, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

In fairness, I wasn't 100% sure. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Kept. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] accutje

The correct spelling is accuutje. As written it evokes a strong association with kutje (little cunt) and would lead to the wrong pronunciation. I think this entry is probably a result of the fact that if "accuutje" is broken off at the end of a line it is written as accu- tje. Jcwf 15:17, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered {{misspelling of}} (cf. rijstaffel)? Circeus 18:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] accutjes

See above. —This unsigned comment was added by Jcwf (talk • contribs) 25 October 2009.

[edit] user-generated

Moved to WT:RFV#user-generated. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] have a blast

Debatable. have a scream got deleted because scream can mean (dated) a good time. So can blast. It's a bit better than be a blast (it was a blast) but only a bit, IMO. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete please. Same as "have a scream" or "have a wonderful time" or "have a laugh". DCDuring TALK 01:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Internet-based

Equinox ◑ 01:52, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete SoP. Including a hyphen doesn't save it. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. DAVilla 05:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk)

[edit] witness panel

Any idiomatic meaning that anyone can think of? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes in fact but I couldn't track it down. I was watching a Discovery Channel show on demolitions where they set up a detonation wrapped in a material designed to contain the exploding fragments. To show how well it worked they set up nearby a large panel of flimsy material, perhaps polystyrene foam. The idea is that if anything escaped the containment it would easily damage this panel. This was described as a "witness panel".

Searching the Internet I could find hits but not enough to come up with a definition. And of course there were lots more hits that illustrated a courtroom sense also exists, which is probably more sum-of-parts than the demolition sense. — hippietrail 11:11, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Now that ht mentions it I have heard this sense of "witness" in some technical contexts, I think. A physical thing, like a board, that is used to record a chalk-line impact, a high-water level, a pencil or scribe mark, etc. It corresponds to sense 4 of witness#Noun. That sense would benefit from some usage examples or citations.

But a "witness panel" as defined in the entry is just a panel consisting of witnesses, entirely analogous to a truck convoy. delete. DCDuring TALK 17:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

A third opinion would be nice. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] wax lyrical

SoP: from wax#Etymology 2. Wiktionary:Feedback#wax lyrical shows that user was not served well by this entry. User would have found what was needed at wax, especially since "wax lyrical" was in usage example. wax lyrical is the 6th most common adjective collocating after forms of "wax" per COCA (17), but wax poetic (77), wax nostalgic (35), wax eloquent (30), wax philosophical (28), wax rhapsodic (18) weren't deemed worth including in an entry that has waxed whimsical in its choice of points to cover. I note that "poetic", "rhapsodic" and "eloquent" are near enough in sense to "lyrical" to make a "set phrase" defense untenable. DCDuring TALK 15:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

We don't have this sense at wax unless I'm missing it. I'd have thought this was both common and idiomatic - having the relevant sense at wax doesn't automatically make it unidiomatic. I'd have said this is. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well we need to cover this somehow, surely "to become expressive of emotion" and "To talk about something with much interest or excitement" are not exactly the same. FWIW I've only just learned about that sense of to wax today. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nomination.​—msh210℠ 19:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

wax#Etymology 2 to "become" (which has "to wax lyrical" as its usage example), to "grow". Whether of not we have the sense, it is not idiomatic. It is still used productively in some speech and more writing, finding new adjectives to partner with. If the sense seems to be missing, then we have another illustration of what it is that we need to include more of: finely wrought senses of words. The same definition of wax that would serve to help define "wax lyrical" would help with "wax chagrined", "wax orotund" as well as the others above and whatever will find use in the next decade. I don't think our definitions should be tuned too specifically to narrow semantic groups of complements. DCDuring TALK 19:53, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete, DCDuring has made a solid argument. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:43, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] pyow

rfd-sense: interjection: the call of a monkey. Move to wikiMonkey; keep citations (which look like they support the noun); keep noun. DCDuring TALK 18:02, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't this require citations of a monkey actually saying the word 'pyow'. The current citations just refer to the noun a 'pyow'. I'd love to rfv this. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we should keep it for a while and put in a {{rfap}}. DCDuring TALK 22:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion now at WT:TR#Animal noises as interjections. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

They wouldn't have to be citations of a monkey. We certainly wouldn't cite the interjection moo from a book written by a cow. Equinox ◑ 16:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I think "moo" would make it under the widespread-use exception. DCDuring TALK 17:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually all animal-sound "replications" seem to differ according to the native language of the speaker, as much as that of the animal. DCDuring TALK 17:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sav Kasabası

I replaced {{delete}} with {{rfd}}. I tend to think that if this is the official name of the town, it should be kept. Otherwise delete as SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian language

• delete. Wikts inserted at WP. DCDuring TALK 23:57, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French language

• delete wikts inserted at w:French language#Examples. DCDuring TALK 23:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Italian language

• delete wikt cat it inserted at w:Italian language#Examples, wikt italian already there. DCDuring TALK 23:20, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish language

• delete. Wikt inserted at WP. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic language

• delete Wikt inserted at WP DCDuring TALK 23:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Russian language

• delete. Wikt inserted at WP. DCDuring TALK 23:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Danish language

• delete. Wikts inserted at WP. DCDuring TALK 23:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch language

• delete. Wikts inserted in WP article. DCDuring TALK 23:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hebrew language

• delete. Wikt inserted at WP. DCDuring TALK 23:51, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
• Keep as redirect. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish language

• Delete wikt|Swedish inserted at w:Swedish language DCDuring TALK 23:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

And all others I may have missed. All of these are redirects which seem to have no real point. --Yair rand 05:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

My gut feeling is to create these as full entries as they're all idiomatic. Is the French language just a language that's French? I don't think so. The fact that this would allow a large number of entries to created doesn't bother me. I mean WT:CFE doesn't exist yet (criteria for exclusion). I suspect not many will agree with me, but these seem to me to meet CFI and since we don't have any criteria for exclusion, why oppose them? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:21, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

French language is just the language that's French, yes, for the obvious sense of French. Delete these all.​—msh210℠ 17:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as redirect. People search for this, and they mean by it the language spoken in Paris or Quebec. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

More: Latin language, Slovenian language, Mongolic language, Arabic language, Scots language, Hungarian language, Hawaiian language, Urdu language, Greek language, Romance language, Chinese language, Persian language, Ancient Greek language, Maroon Spirit Language, Japanese language, Bicolano language, Sioux language, French Sign Language, American Sign Language, Low Saxon language, German language, Telugu language, Polish language, Turkish language, Armenian language, Frankish language, Portuguese language, Leonese language, Old English language.

American Sign Language, unlike Latin language, is the name of the language. Same for French Sign Language. Not sure whether it merits inclusion on those grounds, but certainly there's a strongler argument therefor. Delete the rest, though.​—msh210℠ 17:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Yup, and "Sioux language" is an informal term for Lakota. These need to be checked one by one. --Hekaheka 19:12, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Same seems to be true for Maroon Spirit Language.​—msh210℠ 16:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've now added {{rfd}} to all the above listed (i.e., Romanian language through Swedish language and Latin language through Old English language), so that anyone watching them will know they're nominated.​—msh210℠ 16:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

And what about these: dead language, reconstructed language, artificial language, foreign language, living language, child language and many, many more. --Hekaheka 14:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Let's discuss them individually, yes?​—msh210℠ 17:19, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Noted that I made a point of not saying 'keep' I just said that I can't see how they don't meet CFI. A bit like Siberian cat. Surely that's not just a cat that's Siberian? Similar, to add some more, Old English, Old French, Old Dutch. Is Old Dutch just a Dutch that's old? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:26, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

No, but "Old Dutch language" is "Old Dutch" + "language", a bit like a "Ford motorcar" is "Ford" + "motorcar". --Hekaheka 19:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as redirects if not full entries. People search for these terms. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete Yair and msh210's examples. They are here only because of Wikipedia's influence. "The language-name language" is a common formula for referring to language-name. If we include it, we might as well include "color-name in color" (a common formula for describing a color-name object), "number years of age", and so on. (I would also be inclined to delete Hekaheka's examples, but I agree with msh210 that they should be discussed separately.) —Ruakh_TALK 19:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume that by msh210's examples you mean Hekaheka's examples, which msh210 commented in the middle of. --Yair rand 22:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, oops, thanks. I meant the first half of Hekaheka's examples. —Ruakh_TALK 23:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Even American Sign language and the others I mention as being less deletable that Latin language, Ruakh? (Just trying to clarify your stance.)​—msh210℠ 16:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Bah, you know what I mean. My vote applies only to [[Swedish language]] and the ones just like it. —Ruakh_TALK 18:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

One reason to not delete them quite yet is that they would help a user at a sister project entitled their standard way to get to our entry if no parameter was specified. I have inserted a {{wikt}} in the Swedish entry. Due process would say that we should make sure that each one has a heading on this page. Give it a week to see if anyone has some arguments we haven't heard. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I think we may as well keep the redirects per DCDuring as even if we remove all the Wiktionary links to them, they may be linked from other projects like Commons and Wikipedia. About a third of the ones above are not redirects. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:19, 28 October 2009 (UTC). Or {{only in}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:23, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Huh? I'm really not following this logic. We should keep only in or redirect entries for everything in Wikipedia, in case they wish to link to us? So we should have [[Nelson DeMille]] — perhaps as a redirect to [[Nelson]] or to [[DeMille]] (or as a disambiguation page for both!) or as an only-in page — just because WP has an article by that title? Oh — wait — perhaps you mean merely that existent entries of that nature should not be deleted (but we shouldn't create them either). Well, half of the speedily deleted entries (the ones that don't even make it to RFD) are of that nature. Remember that (as someone — Connel? — was fond of saying) everything we don't actively delete we are tacitly encouraging the creation of.​—msh210℠ 16:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I certainly didn't mean to encourage the retention of these entries. I think that due RfD process is an opportunity for us to check the WP language articles to make sure that they have links to en.wikt. I found that some of them have "example" sections that have phrasebook-type entries. That kind of a section would well stand to have links to wikt ("wikt|Category:XXX language"). Those articles seem like good places for us to attract users who might become contributors. As such, they should be thoroughly salted with in-line links to en.wikt and project boxes, as should the English language articles in every wikipedia and wiktionary. Any WP language and linguistic articles should get that kind of attention. Possibly also articles where we have an apparent deficit of expertise among our contributors. DCDuring TALK 17:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete (most). Most of these entries only came into existence because the imported User boxes from Wikipedia were designed to link to"X language", since that is how Wikipedia names their language articles. We don't do that here, and so do not need the entries, even as redirects. --EncycloPetey 03:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non-redirects

Of the above, some are not redirects at all. They are: Mongolic language, Greek language, Romance language, Chinese language, Persian language, Maroon Spirit Language, Japanese language, Bicolano language, Sioux language, French Sign Language, American Sign Language. The last two are exceptions (French Sign and American Sign are not names of languages!) Mglovesfun (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Can anyone explain what the negative points of keeping the redirects are? How is this different to be at one's beck and call and at one's beck and call redirecting to beck and call? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:00, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I should say I'd like these deleted. It's other people that seem to prefer redirects in these sort of cases. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

A difference is that someone who thinks of be at one's beck and call as a verb may look it up that way in a dictionary, and such people may well exist, whereas the vast majority of people know not to look up French language in a dictionary. I support redirecting from the foo to foo where the noun foo is only used with the (e.g., [[the 68–95–99.7 rule]]), since people may look it up that way, but not from the cat to cat, as no one should look up the cat in a dictionary.​—msh210℠ 20:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as redirects. People search for these terms. Deleting them sames no disk space, deletions with all revisions are saved permanently exactly the same as nondeletes. —Stephen 05:34, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep as redirects, which is our norm in these cases. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:56, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete Chinese language, Greek language, Persian language, Japanese language, Bicolano language and all redirects. Keep all other non-redirects. --Yair rand 04:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I've moved Bicolano language to Bicolano and the same for Maroon Spirit. The others that refer to specific languages are not also redirects. So now we're only discussing the redirects, not the entries themselves. See below at #Romance language as well. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] all to pieces

[[all]] + [[to pieces]]. We'd been missing "to pieces". "All" is merely an intensifying adverb. Not a set phrase. DCDuring TALK 09:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree with DCDuring.--Brett 11:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with DCDuring, too. I usually suggest redirecting these as likely search terms, but this one isn't a common collocation in my dialect. If it is elsewhere, I suggest redirecting; otherwise, delete.​—msh210℠ 16:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard of it. So I can't comment any further. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I've never heard of it either, but surely that presents a stronger case to keep it, as many other people will no doubt be looking it up in desperate confusion. Tooironic 22:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

That any number of people haven't heard of a grouping of words is not determinative for multi-element headwords. The main issue, for a disputed multi-word headword such as this, is whether, with appropriate definitions of the component words (not artificial definitions, but not necessarily limited to the ones currently in our entries), a user can make a good inference about the meaning of the grouping. I hope that my strong words will not get anyone all hot and bothered or have them go to pieces. BTW, see [[meeces]]. DCDuring TALK 23:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The example sentence given - "I knew him all to pieces" - sounds extremely vague to me, and I for one would not be able to make any inferences about its meaning in full confidence. Tooironic 11:03, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

If you would like to be able to make inferences, check out OneLook.com for other dictionaries and COCA or BNC or Google to get some usage information. You could treat this as an RfV and provide cites. I don't feel like improving what looks to me to be a highly deletable entry. You do have to trust folks a bit not to be deleting truly important entries. all#Adverb is an intensifier much like very#Adverb that adds about as much to "to pieces" as "very" adds to "good".

You may think I a some kind of deletionist, but I did the research and added the missing to pieces entry, found take to pieces and added the related/derived terms go to pieces and fall to pieces. I just happen to spend some time in some of the crevices where some poor multi-word entries have survived because they have not been examined (or used?) much. DCDuring TALK 11:58, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it was my impression that "all to pieces" was a fixed expression, but if it can indeed be said as "to pieces" as well then I understand why it should be deleted. Tooironic 04:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] paternal half brother

And several ones of the same theme, such as paternal cousin, paternal uncle, paternal aunt, paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather and. Sure paternal is enough?
And for maternal: maternal cousin, maternal uncle, maternal aunt, maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather and maternal half sister. Really strong delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Adding maternal half brother. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:10, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It kinda seems a shame to delete them after seeing how much work the translators have gone through to tackle these terms. (The Chinese family tree in particular is a nightmare.) However I fail to see how any of them can be justified when they are so obviously SoP. Tooironic 22:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

So, reluctant delete. Tooironic 22:39, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Useful and interesting. Keep. You cannot show how deleting these would improve the project. Deleting does not save storage space and serves no useful purpose. —Stephen 05:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Surely you can't be suggesting that we keep everything, including SoP's? I don't think anyone thought that deletions were to save a few bytes of the virtually unlimited storage space. --Yair rand 05:59, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

No one has offered any rationale for deleting useful, thoughtful, and well written and formatted entries such as these. We know why we delete garbage, copyvios, threats, and so on, but no good reason for files such as this. As for SoP, it should not be the justification for deleting anything. If an entry is SoP and has nothing else to recommend it, then it should go; but just because it’s SoP, that should not count against it if it has some saving grace, such as being a set term or if it has educational or informational value, or, as in this case, it is contains linguistic that probably cannot reasonably be preserved and made useful and usable in some other way. SoP is only bad when that is all there is. —Stephen 06:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I could not agree with Stephen more. Ƿidsiþ 06:40, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I understand perfectly, but I kind of think you could justify keeping almost any article that way. I dislike keeping stuff that doesn't meet CFI (and these are a mile short) just to add translations. This is a dictionary, not a translation project. But point duly noted. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

All set phrases should be kept, because there is at least one interesting thing that should be mentioned: the fact that it's a set phrase. This fact cannot be guessed, and it's important to know it when you use the language. A dictionary is also useful when you try to build sentences, not only when you try to understand sentences. And remember that set phrases are not considered as words by typographers, but that, very often, they are considered as words by linguists. Lmaltier 07:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Previous discussions: Talk:maternal_uncle, Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2007/November#maternal_and_paternal_family_entries. -- Visviva 12:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

• Delete — hippietrail 04:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I shall point out that I wasn't actually aware of these discussions... and indeed there are some fraternal […] and sororal […] entries too. At some point, the reader has to be able to add two words together and understand what they mean. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] אל שדי

SoP.​—msh210℠ 15:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I dunno, can you explain why? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It's the same as God Almighty (which we have because it's an interjection, but the Hebrew equivalent is merely a pair of names). It's referring to God by two names. Arguably it's comparable to Thomas Jefferson, but if so then it needs verification per personal-names criteria (and should be at RFV, not here).​—msh210℠ 18:14, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] all over

[edit] all over#Adjective

rfd-sense: adjective "done, complete". usage example: "It's all over now".

This seems misleading to language learners. It implies idiomaticity and the need to memorize when other forms of "all over" are idiomatic and this is not. The situation is confusing enough without introducing this canard. "All over" is idiomatic at least as an adverb and probably as a preposition and all-over is an attributive adjective derived from the adverb.

"It's all over" can be read at least two ways:

1. As the entry shows. But this is unsupported by any of the OneLook dictionaries that have an entry for "all over". Furthermore, "all over" does not meet the usual tests for being an adjective:
   1. It does not work as an attributive adjective,
   2. It does not form a comparative.
   3. It is not gradable.
2. As "It is completely over" (all as intensifying adverb}. "All" can be omitted, just as completely can, with the expected reduction of intensity. "Over" behaves more like an adjective, accepting many adverbs that make it gradable (though not for many speakers "very" or "so"), like "almost", "completely", "about". This is in line with what other dictionaries show for the constituent words. DCDuring TALK 16:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per DCDuring. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 19:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] all over#Adverb

Rfd-sense: "again". Usage example: "He had to write the assignment all over." IMHO, "over" in the sense of "again", as used in: "There are so many mistakes in the entry, we may as well delete it and start over.", is being modified by the intensifier "all", as above. No OneLook dictionary has this sense of "all over".

If my analysis is correct, the entry illustrates a problem with too-easily accepted purportedly idiomatic entries: the entries fill slots, no redlinks exist, and missing senses don't get entered. The challenged sense was previously the sole sense of the adverb all over. MWOnline had three missing senses for this adverb. DCDuring TALK 17:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per DCDuring. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Equinox ◑ 19:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:42, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] work around the clock

The idiomatic portion of this is [[around the clock]]. This should be a redirect to that entry. DCDuring TALK 10:05, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Lots of verbs can replace work, although I bet work is the most common by far. Delete/redirect. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought rock is the most common. Delete (or redirect, I suppose, but I see no reason to).​—msh210℠ 16:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The redirect does no harm and certainly no irreversible harm. I wouldn't care if were omitted or if it were kept and other redirects like rock around the clock added. DCDuring TALK 20:20, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No harm, true, but same argument would apply to every SoP > delete. --Hekaheka 05:00, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Agree. Delete. One of my very first entries, before I understood clearly what PoS really meant. -- ALGRIF talk 13:25, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ace of clubs

[edit] ace of hearts

[edit] ace of diamonds

No attributive use indicated. Ace of spades is an obsolete term for widow, at least according to the entry. --Hekaheka 04:56, 31 October 2009 (UTC) Add all court cards except the queen of hearts: king of hearts, king of diamonds, king of spades, king of clubs, queen of diamonds, queen of spades, queen of clubs, jack of hearts, jack of diamonds, jack of spades, jack of clubs, knave of hearts, knave of diamonds, knave of spades, knave of clubs. --Hekaheka 06:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well they're not specific entries because you can have more than one of each. So the question is are these idiomatic or indeed dictionary material. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Strong KEEP As I read CFI, if you can find three quotes where "cards" or "pack of cards" etc is not specifically mentioned, then these entries stand. Now, we can either spend a bit of time finding the necessary 3 quotes for each playing card; or take it as read that these quotes will not be very difficult to find, simply time consuming. -- ALGRIF talk 11:22, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

One quote added which serves both a of diamonds and a of clubs -- ALGRIF talk 12:02, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure there is a quote, but it refers just to ace+of+diamonds and ace+of+clubs. --Hekaheka 16:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Unsure, but for now, nobody's suggested a plausible reason to delete these. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Isn't being a SoP a plausible reason for deletion - ace + of + diamonds, what else is in it? I can find thousands of quotes for a slice of sausage where charcuterie is not mentioned. --Hekaheka 16:23, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

SoP is not a reason to delete, nor is it a reason to keep. If a term is SoP, it needs something more to make it worthwhile. In this case, ace of diamonds is a set term and it’s idiomatic. Every language has a specific term for this, and you cannot simply translate the three parts ace + of + diamonds to find out how to write it in any other language. Russian, for example, is бубновый туз ... nothing to do with diamonds. —Stephen 13:19, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not the same example. My wife has a bracelet with an ace of diamonds on it. Does this information tell us if she is wearing any valuable gemstones or not? -- ALGRIF talk 16:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't get your point. I have seen an earring with a slice of orange. --Hekaheka 16:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless you know that an ace of diamonds is a type of playing card in the first place, you would have not the slightest idea of what she was wearing. Perhaps the biggest diamond you have ever seen. An ace of diamonds. The entry is a type of playing card, just as a Ford Model T is a type of car. Just as the queen of hearts is not M.Monroe. Just as the knave of clubs is not some scoundrel who likes to do the club circuit. -- ALGRIF talk 17:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, actually Marilyn might be called a queen of hearts. That's why I thought this entry should be kept. But I don't think we will solve this - let's get a few second opinions. --Hekaheka 18:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Keep all. Since for each of these "a of b" terms, both "a" and "b" have multiple meanings, but "a of b" refers to only one of them. SemperBlotto 18:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

In which case, we should create two of hearts/2 of hearts, right? No reason to include only the picture cards. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes. You are right. The only reason I didn't create them was that I felt I had better things to do, but it is on my "to do when you are bored" list. But the picture cards were important, as the margin for error is greater. The words ace, king, queen, jack and knave have more degrees of freedom -- ALGRIF talk 12:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Then, on the other hand, ace, king etc. have been defined as having the playing card sense, and heart, spade etc. as one of the suits in a deck of playing cards. It would take some imagination to come to the misconception that "king of spades" would equal to "king of flat-bladed digging tools". If nothing else, the context should easily reveal the correct interpretation - unless someone is actually digging with a king of spades, of course. --Hekaheka 12:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that you are confusing the issue because the term is very common and well-known. SB is quite right to state a principle of CFI that in "a of b" terms, where both "a" and "b" have multiple meanings, but "a of b" refers to only one of them, then the entry passes CFI. For this reason we have entries such as window frame, goal post, and a very large etc of well-known terms that could be RfD for SoP, but aren't because of the a + b rule. -- ALGRIF talk 13:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention [[heart two]]. google:"diamond jack" "spade eight".​—msh210℠ 15:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

My gut feeling is that they only exist for translation purposes and should probably go. If a new fifth suit were added to card games — let's call it "trowels" — then constructions like "queen of trowels", "ace of trowels" would be immediately apparent. Equinox ◑ 16:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Three points; 1. I am tempted to include queen of coins simply because it exists and I suspect that you have no idea what it is, and so it would serve to knock down your strawman argument.
2. Why, oh why, do some contributors put the translation issue onto such a low level of importance. It should be right up there in the top five reasons why entries should NOT be deleted! Isn't this the English dictionary in all languages? Have you read Stephen's comments about бубновый туз above?
3. I have yet to hear anyone explain why Wikt would be better off without these entries. What are the benefits of deletion, please? -- ALGRIF talk 12:53, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Wow, blame me for a straw man and then decide I don't know what tarot cards are? Equinox ◑ 16:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

True (Equinox 16:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)). Delete.​—msh210℠ 16:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not satisfied that these meet our CFI, but I'm not satisfied that they don't, either. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:59, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, Equinox, I didn't realise that you were unaware of the meaning of strawman argument. I was in no way intending to cast aspersions. I was merely trying to point out that "queen of trowels" is a tactic to win an argument based on an example of something that does not exist. I reply with the "queen of coins" which does exist, and you kindly give me the reason why this ought to be included in Wikt. (There are many types of cards, and the queen of hearts/coins etc is not in all of them). Hence all such entries should really be included.
  To be honest, I am very disillusioned with the project as regards multiple word entries. We seem to swallow the most blatant garbage in one-word entries, and yet gag at the gnats of valuable multi-word entries which other dictionary publishers include without problem, but have to relegate them to extra volumes, because of the "paper problem". There are very respectable dictionaries out there that include multi-word entries which have been questioned or rejected by Wikt often with the comment "not in OED" or similar. (So what? It IS in Longmans and Collins and Cambridge, and etc subsidiary dictionaries). The entries are not in their main product, rather they are in such items as "Dictionary of common idioms", "Dictionary of phrasal verbs", "Language builder dictionary for learners", etc etc etc. If Wikt really sees itself as being at the cutting edge then there would be a proper addressing of this issue, instead of the pointless merry-go-round of RfD and RfV forums, which produce no consensus and no change to CFI. What we need is another forum dedicated to marking the limiting lines on the basis of decisions reached in RfD and RfV, a kind of "case law" place which could perhaps reduce the huge amount of time wasted in going over and over the same old ground to no real end in the other forums. IMHO. ALGRIF talk 12:44, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

• I do know what "straw man" means. My reply meant that your theoretical "Equinox who doesn't know what a tarot card is" is something that does not exist, so you were committing the exact same fallacy yourself. Equinox ◑ 00:16, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Very weak keep per SemperBlotto, yes, WT:CFI does say that. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] work against the clock

• As per work around the clock POS work + against the clock One of my very first entries, before I understood clearly what PoS really meant. -- ALGRIF talk 13:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nom. BTW, is against the clock really idiomatic? Only Wordnet and its licensees have it among OneLook references. It just seems like a figurative use of "clock". Or does the diminishing presence of analog clocks mean that fossilization is becoming apparent? DCDuring TALK 14:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless to "run against the clock" means you have a watch with legs as your closest rival .... I think the idiomatic sense is "in the fastest time possible". -- ALGRIF talk 14:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nomination - but against the clock seems idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

clock seems to me to mean time on the scale of minutes or hours, just as calendar means "time" on a scale of days, weeks, and months. The "compete/race against" sense of "against" completes the metaphor. I think "clock" is used this way in a few collocations. DCDuring TALK 15:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Using a metaphorical sense as the main sense makes the phrase idiomatic, I believe. ICBW. -- ALGRIF talk 16:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

But let's not discuss that if/until it gets nominated, this discussion is for work around the clock. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Peripheral discussions are how we take advantage of the bits of attention that people can devote. This is a close connection and Algrif hasn't been around so much. DCDuring TALK 17:41, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] November 2009

[edit] wouldn’t’ve

Are we now making new redirect entries just because we don't like the apostrophe ??? -- ALGRIF talk 14:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Just checking other edits from the same contrib. There are a large number of items with (Unicode standard apostrophe) as the given reason. -- ALGRIF talk 15:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. According to the Unicode character charts, "this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe".^‎ I don't care all that much which one we use for our pagenames — I have a slight preference for the plain ASCII apostrophe — but there's really no call to be deleting redirects from the other one. —Ruakh_TALK 21:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

1. Can't the software accommodate the two different characters by substitution?
2. Except for the entries for the characters themselves and things that directly link to them, why should we care?

If we are going to do redirects for everything that has one or the other type of apostrophe/quote mark, shouldn't there've been a BP discussion with the consensus to be carried out by bot in due course? DCDuring TALK 22:26, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Very strong keep. These are created to allow for interwikis, because some Wiktionaries (or at least one) uses only the 'typographical' apostrophe (fr:wouldn’t’ve). So even though they might be unlinked on here, other Wiktionaries are linking to them. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:40, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Shall we move this to the Beer Parlour, if it's a policy issue rather than just the deletion of one redirect. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This must have been considered before, but it might be worth revisiting at BP. DCDuring TALK 11:56, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It's certainly been discussed before. My own opinion is strong: keep as a redirect per Mg, Ruakh.​—msh210℠ 17:23, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, keep. If this were to go to the BP, I’d favour lemmatising the typographic apostrophë, FWIW. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:24, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept. —Ruakh_TALK 13:38, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] phosporous

If not delete, then mis-spelling. But is it common enough? -- ALGRIF talk 16:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Speedy delete, phosphorous is the word used in the article and we can't rename it as the correct title already exist. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

• Agreed. Deleted SemperBlotto 08:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 世界上最古老的职业

Basically just a literal translation of the world's oldest profession. As Chinese has no direct equivalent idiom, this is arguably just a SoP entry. Tooironic 08:31, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems like an RFV issue to me. If it does exist, it seems (to me) to be idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

But it doesn't - or, at least, not beyond a literal translation of the original English. In Chinese it is just a sentence. We don't have entries for a mouth as sharp as a knife and heart as soft as tofu (刀子嘴豆腐心) or dogs can't help from eating their own shit (狗改不了吃屎). Tooironic 09:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not that I don't believe you, it's that no administrator wants to delete something on the basis of one person's input. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. It has 800 thousand google hits, so obviously someone out there uses it. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:12, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Well, here is my input. I agree with Tooironic's observation. I've also had a cursory look at the first 2 pages of google hits, none of which used this term to idiomatically / euphemistically refer to prostitution. Most of them are associated with the question 'WHAT is the oldest profession in the world', answers of which vary from doctors/policemen to, of course, prostitutes. There are also several 'humorous' references to the Bible - engineers being the oldest profession as creating the universe must've been a huge construction project.

This does not, however, prevent this term to be seen as a protologism. The fact that it now exists in wiki could lead to its idiomatic use in the future. Jamesjiao 20:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

To respond to Opiaterein's point that it has "800 thousand google hits", there are also 46,500 hits for "Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all time" (27 mil without quotations) and 27,000 hits for "Chinese is the most spoken language in the world" (887,000 without quotations). This does not good criteria for a wiktionary entry make. Of course you might argue that 800,000 is a significant number - but as Jamesjiao points out none of them seem to be using it idiomatically/euphemistically the way we do in English. Tooironic 00:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Also the 的 should be a dead giveaway. Anyone who speaks Chinese knows that 的, when used in its possessive/attributive form, is almost never used in dictionary words (read: very, very rarely). Tooironic 01:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

• Delete — hippietrail 04:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
• When I went through creating these entries, I made sure to get at least one native speaker to verify the entry, that it was used in that language. The person I talked to said it was. If it isn't, delete it. I coupled the native speaker's input with the google result to mean it was valid. I didn't know I was being lied to. Mike Halterman 09:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a perfectly natural phrase in Mandarin. There is no doubt about it. I can't speak for your friend, but not everyone has the same capacity for linguistics as the people who contribute to this website. He or she might not have been able to analyse a phrase for its properties in the same fashion as some of us, native speaker or not. I mean no offence, it's all by experience. Jamesjiao 12:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] nickel and dime

Noun: 15 years. nickel = 5 years (prison term); dime = 10 years. Please tell me how this is idiomatic and not straightforwardly compositional. One commonly advanced justification is that users can't know which sense of "nickel" or "dime" (or for that matter "and") might be involved. If that is so, this doesn't have to go. All we have to do is count the number of senses for each term. If at least one term has more than one sense, there is a prima facie case for inclusion. I don't know for sure what happens after that. DCDuring TALK 01:26, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like an inverse RfV issue to me. Can it be demonstrated that someone wouldn't say "three nickels"? If no alternative combination of words is used to effect this sentiment, then I would think that makes it idiomatic. bd2412 T 04:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The issue is not what the preferred term for a prison term of fifteen years is, but whether someone knowing that a "nickel" is a five-year term and a "dime" is a ten-year term wouldn't be able to infer that "nickel and dime" is a fifteen-year term. The line of reasoning offered implies that we should have as adjective "black and white" because statistically it is much more common than "white and black". That would seem to out-Pawley Pawley. Thanks for the novel argument. DCDuring TALK 11:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Do nickel and dime mean five and ten years, resp., when used alone? We lack those senses.​—msh210℠ 18:34, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they do. "He did a dime for felony murder." In this sense, they don't collocate with too many terms. None of the OneLook references have the sense of "nickel". DCDuring TALK 18:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Even knowing this, it's too easily confused with 15 cents. They're both coins. DAVilla 04:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] baapaashkizige-giizhigad

An IP poster marked this for speedy deletion. Clearly didn't meet the requirements for a speedy delete, but assuming the nomination was in good faith, brought it here for discussion. No opinion as I have zero knowledge of Ojibwe. — Carolina wren discussió 20:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It is an Ojibwe verb, as valid as English "to succeed". Needs some cleanup, but I won’t touch it unless I know for certain my efforts won’t wind up being deleted. —Stephen 04:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] vibraphone player

Non-idiomatic sum of parts. I think some weird argument was dreamed up to keep tennis player etc. but it was to do with the nature of sport and amateur vs. professional play. Equinox ◑ 21:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:15, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

A third opinion? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:40, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

There are professional vibraphone players also. I'm not that happy about this, but keep per precedent.​—msh210℠ 17:47, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] traditional Chinese medicine

If this isn't an SoP, there's none. --Hekaheka 08:39, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Not as obviously SoP as first thought. Nothing in the name indicates what it is, just that it is traditional and Chinese and medicine. Unless you knew, it could mean anything medical from ancient China. Weak keep.--Dmol 09:21, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete as SoP and/or encyclopedia material. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:12, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Odd that we don't have Chinese medicine. (This is Equinox not signed in.) 86.160.226.161 16:43, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. This is a discrete and specialised topic, for which a specific entry is needed for clarification purposes. Tooironic 19:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is not SoP. It does not mean "traditional" "Chinese" "medicine" as the parts suggest, but a major kind of medicine. If we have homeopathic and allopathic, we should also have traditional Chinese medicine. —Stephen 04:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Also, BTW Chinese medicine would be a colloquial synonym. In East Asian countries where the Chinese medicine is practiced, only the first part of "Chinese" (中) is retained (common but always done this way). The "traditional Chinese medicine" is also used in the sense of science, not just practice. The translations would have -学 in them. In Vietnamese: "Đông y" (中醫) was borrowed as one word (a concept), not as an adjective + a noun. Adjectives follow nouns in Vietnamese, not precede them. --Anatoli 05:57, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] கிழக்கு மேற்கு எம்ஆர்டி வழி

Seems likely to be simply a sum of parts entry, but I don't know enough about Tamil to be certain. If I were certain I'd have speedy deleted it for failing CFI. If it's not SoP it still might not meet CFI, but it wouldn't be a slam dunk speedy delete. — Carolina wren discussió 16:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to discuss this with User:Triwikanto, but (s)he's never replied. I already (successfully) nominated some of his creations for speedy deletion, in those cases it was the name of an actor in each case. This also seems like a proper noun, a specific railway. So yes, delete or RFV and look for attributive use. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The East West MRT Line is a mass rapid-transit line across the island of Singapore. It is a specific proper name just like the name of a country. Needs a little cleaning up, but definitely worth keeping. Ordinarily I clean these up myself, but since similar pages have suffered from deletion here lately, I no longer do that work, since it is likely to be a waste my time. —Stephen 03:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

But do we keep all proper nouns just because they are proper nouns (and not names of people)? I'm really not sure about the criteria used... Tooironic 01:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] versnellingspooken

template generated misspelling for versnellingspoken. Jcwf 06:47, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] geluistapes

typo for geluidstapes —This unsigned comment was added by Jcwf (talk • contribs) 8 November 2009.

No matter how many times we tell you what the template {{delete}} is, you just don't get it. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] address formally

[edit] address informally

While I find some phrasebook stuff at least tolerable like I love you, this is just getting silly. Wikipedia has an article of a similar nature (T-V distinction), and I think an appendix with links to it (inserted by hand, the old fashioned way) is a much better solution than this. Not dictionary material, ergo delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

delete. I agree, WT is not the place for this. It might be a shame to have the information deleted, maybe we can make and appendix for this, like Appendix:Languages which address formally and informally. Or alternatively, Appendix:Languages which don't address formally and informally --Volants 15:09, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete entry. This is worthwhile aspect of language grammar. It certainly belongs in each language's grammar appendix. A sortable table of some of the simpler attributes of language would be nice to have to facilitate cross-language comparisons. A finer grained appendix discussing subtleties and the possibilities beyond you-thou might also be nice. DCDuring TALK 17:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. But translations should be kept, they should be moved to address (with glosses). Lmaltier 21:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Phrasebook stuff needs to be separated from dictionary terms. Equinox ◑ 00:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

delete. SoP & as per above. Tooironic 00:47, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. These are translationese for certain words which other languages have and English lacks such as tutear and tutoyer. It is not a lexical item/set phrase/idiom in English but one way of rendering the foreign terms when creating a translation into English. — hippietrail 04:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually going to move these and delete the redirect in the hope of creating an appendix. Deleted from the main space. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] PSDP

Moved to WT:RFV#PSPD. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Pokémon

[edit] Pokemon

[edit] Digimon

Wiktionary is not a database of fictional species. --Yair rand 18:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't feel all that strongly. I supposed we should move to WT:RFV to look for attributive use. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Would you delete unicorn or mermaid? The only question is: are they words? I think so. Lmaltier 21:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it is the only question; while that is your personal policy, it is not our overall policy (not even on fr.wikt I might add). Mglovesfun (talk) 17:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

1st sentence of CFI: As an international dictionary, Wiktionary is intended to include “all words in all languages”.. This principle is also applied on fr.wikt. Lmaltier 21:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Including all trademarks, like these? Someone want to find attributive/generic use? Equinox ◑ 16:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] button mashing

Both appear to be SoP. --Yair rand 18:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

No, it's random buttons that are being mashed. Seeing this pagetitle, I assumed it meant something like mashing F2 on booting. Keep if correct.​—msh210℠ 18:20, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, keep. The Wikipedia definition is more idiomatic than this one. It's actually a technique used in video games, there are even special "grips" for it. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a technique. Probably keep. Citing would be good (send to RFV?); the verb form is also missing an infinitive (and, as I always complain, probably a hyphen). Equinox ◑ 00:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] final boss

Both appear to be SoP. --Yair rand 18:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Dunno, they're (maybe) only unidiomatic if you know that it refers to video games. Very weak keep as not obvious to the reader without a definition. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:20, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. CyberSkull often adds things like video game controller that are just any kind of non-idiomatic SOP relating to gamer stuff, and many have already been deleted. This one deserves no better. Equinox ◑ 00:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I don't think the video game sense of "boss" is all that well-known to non-gamers. Tooironic 19:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

No delete, otherwise that would be a green light to create every conceivable combination of "x boss" or "boss x" because people might not know this meaning of boss. FWIW I created extra life. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right, although I do enjoy playing the devil's advocate :) Tooironic 00:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, Mglovesfun (talk) 12:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] boss fight

[edit] boss battle

A fight with a boss. These seem less idiomatic than the two above, but I'm not sure why. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per final boss above. Equinox ◑ 00:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete --Diuturno 19:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete both. --Yair rand 23:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, Mglovesfun (talk) 12:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Siralun

Nickname of a specific person. At the very least, it needs an RFV to show durable citations and attributive use. Where do we stand on these? Sarko (in French) is the popular form of Nicolas Sarkozy, for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:20, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW this is findable on Google, but Google Books gets zero relevant hits. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Session Bean

Has been at WT:RFC since 2006. Isn't this for Wikipedia? The discussion at WT:RFC is: --Volants 13:33, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't seem to be able to decide whether this is capitalised or not (see the section "Stateful Session Beans", for example). Could someone who is familiar with the terminology check and modify the Wiktionary entry as need be, please. — Paul G 09:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I can't even work out what it means. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:04, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

A bean (w:JavaBean) is a sort of OOP object in Java. w:Enterprise JavaBeans ("EJB") is a standard set of these things for building "enterprise" (i.e. large, important) software applications. These EJB beans are split into three categories: Session Bean, Entity Bean (apparently no longer current), and Message-driven Bean. I see no reason why any of these highly specific "branded" items belongs in a dictionary. Equinox ◑ 00:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] carnival

rfd senses, they don't make sense

1. Comic good times marked by special events.
2. A parade group masquerading, especially when overstepping the bounds of decorum; a time of riotous excess.

--Volants 13:50, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete as nonsense, redundant, wrong etc.

I'm adding (3) The season just before the beginning of the Roman Catholic season of Lent, when New Orleans has its Mardi Gras carnival. Shouldn't that be Carnival as a proper noun? Or is it just a special case of 1. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:02, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a proper deletion rationale, is it? Send to RFV. Equinox ◑ 00:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I think #1 and #2 are poorly worded and redundant, and #3 should be moved to Carnival and then RFV'd as a proper noun. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

#3 has been moved to Carnival, per Lent, Christmas, Easter et al. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] no biggie

Is there any reason to have this when there is biggie/biggy? --Hekaheka 06:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

No, redirect at best. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Having said that, no problem, no worries and no sweat all have entries. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

And no probs. I think all of these are idiomatic. At the very least, they would belong in a comprehensive colloquial phrasebook. They are elliptical and one cannot readily substitute synonyms without labeling oneself non-native. keep. DCDuring TALK 13:23, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, keep per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ptolemaida

Does this meet our "criteria" for WikiGazetteer entries? DCDuring TALK 23:55, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

• Keep - all words in all languages. SemperBlotto 08:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• Keep and review CFI on this issue, if necessary. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I thought that we only kept countries, primary regions, and capitals thereof. We have CFI, which this does not meet. We supposedly had a consensus to ignore CFI for certain places. Under AGF, I must assume that a new consensus has emerged or that SB and MG have had a lapse of memory. It can't be that both CFI and the consensus are being ignored, can it? DCDuring TALK 13:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd quite like to see evidence of this consensus. Anyway, unfortunately this is one of the areas of the CFI that's never been implemented, and as I say, I'm against proposing stuff like this on WT:RFV as our rules are totally unusable, so it will just come down to a vote anyway. Would you want Leeds and Bradford to get deleted as well? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd love them to be, but I'm not on a search-and-destroy mission. I just tag the ones I see on clean up lists and sometimes put them here, partially to see whether thinking has changed at all. DCDuring TALK 16:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

My memory (such as remains at my age) is that several votes have been started on this subject, and all have deteriorated into slanging matches about what should be voted on. I'm pretty sure that no consensus has ever been reached. SemperBlotto 10:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe (memory-gap-concealing weasel word) that EP (and Ruakh ?, Visviva ?, DAVilla ? [more weaseling]) had asserted that there had been a consensus on this when I had challenged some city entry (perhaps Rostov-na-Donu?). Even a merely temporary consensus on a contentious topic should be documented. If it cannot survive the effort to do so, then there must not be a real consensus. The difficulty is that in the absence of a consensus for something other than CFI, CFI seems applicable. It is difficult to wantonly ignore CFI without undermining its legitimacy for justifying some patrolling decisions.

I'd be willing to sweep this under the rug for another few months. But I would like to know whether this even meets the asserted consensus criteria. DCDuring TALK 16:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep in the absence of anything better to do with legitimate place names. I hope one day they'll go to a separate gazetteer project. Equinox ◑ 16:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep, per SemperBlotto (1st CFI sentence, before the table of contents). And I don't think we should be a gazeeter, we should not include population or the like, only linguistic info about the word, such as etymology, pronunciation, translations, anagrams, demonyms, derived terms, etc. and definition (most difficult part, the best definition may be a map showing the location). Lmaltier 20:26, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, majority. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] look back

Tagged but not listed. A candidate for "used literally" AFAICT. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "a candidate for 'used literally'"? DCDuring TALK 16:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Look back for "look behind oneself" wouldn't be seen as deserving an entry on its own, but because of the figurative sense someone added the literal one. Compare, say, second hand, which could be used in a sentence like "My first hand fell off due to leprosy but I still have a second hand to eat with". Equinox ◑ 16:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I had favored the literal sense and might still favor under exigent circumstances, but not when the literal meaning is incredibly obvious (this case) nor when the literal meanings are numerous. Delete. DCDuring TALK 16:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The sense not tagged ("To reminisce about a past time") seems unidiomatic to me as well: it's "think" + "to the past", like "looking forward to his meeting" and "thinking back to his days as a camper". Not sure, though.​—msh210℠ 17:34, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Now tagged.​—msh210℠ 17:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

1. We don't have senses of "look" or "back" that are clearly applicable. Until we have them it seems OTT to delete this.
2. RHU, AHD, and Wordnet; Cambridge, McGraw-Hill, and AH idiom dictionaries all have this.
3. Should we have don't look back or a sense at look back for that idiom? DCDuring TALK 22:53, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

To me, the 'obvious' meaning of look back is to look in the opposite direction to that in which one is travelling, i.e., back towards where one has just been, as in "As I walked away, I looked back to see that she had turned around and was talking to someone else." To look back in time is an extension of this sense. Pingku 18:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] on one's soapbox

Tagged but not listed. Blatant SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:32, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

A slightly strangely defined high horse and a separate on one's high horse (really the only phrase it appears in) make me vacillate. Hmm, delete: of course, one can get off one's high horse as well. Equinox ◑ 16:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Of 151 "soapbox" hits at COCA, more than a majority are for the figurative sense. Only 34 are of the form "on * soapbox" and not all "*"s are possessive personal pronouns. It doesn't seem quite as strong a case as the "high horse" (30/71). (I am surprised it's not higher, but there is usage like "why don't you get off your high horse and ...".) DCDuring TALK 17:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete or redirect to soapbox. DCDuring TALK 16:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted. No redirect because it's not linked to from the main space, apart from soapbox which I removed. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:38, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] domesticated animal

It's an animal that's domesticated. See the Tea room, where in fairness the discussion hasn't really got started. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• Delete as sum of parts. Razorflame 20:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

In principle it's a SoP, but all translations are not SoP's. Deleting would put some pressure to the translations section of domesticated, which is pretty scant at the moment. Besides, "domesticated animal" is probably one of the basic concepts of all languages, as domesticating animals is one of the very reasons we have been able to create civilization. Third, we have a zillion of more useless SoP's, like soccer ball discussed a few lines below and no biggie above. --Hekaheka 10:08, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] why dontcha

SOP why + dontcha.​—msh210℠ 17:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] why don'tcha

SOP why + don'tcha.​—msh210℠ 17:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete both: it's just usage of a contraction in a larger clause. Note the complete set: whydontcha, whydon'tcha, why dontcha, why dont cha, why don't cha, why don't-cha; and the existence (in Google Books etc.) of two single-word forms which I'd argue are worth having: whydoncha and whydontcha. Equinox ◑ 17:35, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, SoP cannot apply to single words, although I sometimes think it should. Nor do we have why don't you, so delete unless someone can explain to me why not to. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Good morning in Urdu

Vandalism/nonsense... Pharamp 20:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• Quick delete as nonsense vandalism. Razorflame 20:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] gagner du poids

gagner (gain) + du (some, often not translated into English) + poids (weight) --Rising Sun 21:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete and add the sense to gagner if it's not already there. You can also say gagner du temps (save [some] time) but it's the same meaning of gagner. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete SoP. —Internoob (Disc.•Cont.) 00:50, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted per above. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Romance language

Tagged but not listed. Keep, idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:27, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Ridiculously strong keep — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, no deletion rationale given. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French Sign Language

Tagged but not listed. Strong keep. Explain how this is not idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:29, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep. —AugPi _(t) 17:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Per comment in American Sign Language below. —AugPi _(t) 18:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, no deletion rationale given. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] American Sign Language

Tagged but not listed. Strong keep. Explain how this is not idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I think these three were listed as part of the other "x language" rfd's. Why are these rfd's under seperate headers? --Yair rand 17:55, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep. —AugPi _(t) 17:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

"American Sign" does not mean anything: the entire term "American Sign Language" is necessary in order to refer to that language, which is abbreviated ASL. —AugPi _(t) 18:01, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Or you could say it's a sign language that's American, but come on, it's a bit like saying Great Britain is a Britain that's Great. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Kept, no deletion rationale given. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] halt

Interjection sense. Isn't it just the verb, imperative?​—msh210℠ 17:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, delete unless someone can find a reason not to. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Any other comments? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:30, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] hockey puck

SoP hockey + puck.​—msh210℠ 17:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep seems idiomatic to some extent, like baseball bat and tennis racket. --Yair rand 17:51, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Hesitant. A soccer ball is a ball used for soccer, but you can use any ball for soccer without it being a soccer ball. However this seems a lot more deletable to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

If that's a sufficient reason for keeping soccer ball, I can tell you that I have played icehockey with a disc sawn out of wood. Despite of that, delete, and delete for the soccer ball as well. --Hekaheka 09:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

This seems more like pleonasm to me, as puck#Noun refers to the disk used in hockey, where as ball#Noun can refer to many other things. Go ahead and nominate soccer ball if you like. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Delete...doesn't seem to be a set term to me. Ƿidsiþ 12:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I think I like where we're going with this. To clarify the precedential value of the emerging decision:

1. that "hockey" is a necessary qualifier in almost all non-ice- and non-street-hockey contexts is not relevant for CFI consideration.
2. What is relevant is that in context "puck" could stand on its own to convey the meaning.
3. It doesn't matter that an English speaker growing up in, say, Singapore might not have the knowledge to guess at the meaning without (or even with) the context-providing "hockey".

• delete DCDuring TALK 15:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Correct (point 3) Puck = Hockey puck. So "hockey" is superfluous. Delete HOWEVER, this does not mean the idea can be extrapolated to each of the various types of ball. Specifically Ball ≠ Soccer ball, whereas Football = Soccer ball. So "soccer" is needed. -- ALGRIF talk 15:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect. They are not equivalent as a hockey puck is just one kind of puck. Keep; as this names a particular form of puck, and not merely a puck that happens to be used in ice hockey. Note that our definitions for puck are woefully incomplete, as the shuffleboard and air hockey senses are missing, among others. --EncycloPetey 17:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] faster-than-light

Um... faster, than, light?​—msh210℠ 19:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Words exist for many non-existing and unproven things and concepts - why not for this? --Hekaheka 09:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete as SoP unless anyone can prove otherwise. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I meant that it's SoP. Sorry for not being clear.​—msh210℠ 19:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Keep established set term in physics and beyond....consider the non-existence of faster-than-sound. Ƿidsiþ 12:44, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Keep because it actually means faster than light in a vacuum. Particles can in fact move faster than light in water. But nothing can move faster than light. -- ALGRIF talk 14:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
• Delete What difference does physics make for a decision about keeping this? From the arguments made, it's as if we think we're an encyclopedia. Almost every phrase ever used in English has a specific meaning-in-context that is not exactly in the dictionary definition of the components.

  At some point, perhaps when we have completed the job of defining all (lemma) words at least as well as an "abridged" dictionary like Longman's DCE with etymologies, pronunciations, and complete translation sections and have all lemmas of a 2nd-rank "unabidridged" dictionary like RHU or AHD, we could take on the job of defining every adjective or adverb phrase that has ever been hyphenated and then everything that met any one of the Pawley criteria. We should be at that point by the New Year if the 100 most active English-language editors put the finishing touches on just 50 lemmas a day. DCDuring TALK 14:51, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

  This comment completely misses the point. People work according to their own priorities; there is not some "master list" of vital information which we need to add before turning our attention to "lesser" considerations. faster-than-light is a specific, set concept and is therefore idiomatic in the true sense: this is the one and only way we express this concept in English (and it is often rendered as a single word in other languages, eg Spanish superlumínico). It does no damage and provides much useful information. Ƿidsiþ 14:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for getting away from arguments based on physics.

1. The translation-target argument has not achieved consensus acceptance.
2. I would enjoy seeing objective evidence about what makes this a set phrase. I don't think that we can rely on personal opinion alone.
3. The damage done is misleading users into believing that the English language is chock-full of "idioms" which are in fact readily inferrable from the components. Further, the whimsy that characterizes our choice of included multi-word terms makes the project seem amateurish and arbitrary. Amateur lexicographers is what we may be; amateurishness is what we seek to avoid. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing to say an idiom's meaning cannot be inferred from its component parts, or indeed that it cannot be downright obvious from its component parts: that is just a misconception among some people who dislike sum-of-parts entries and have not bothered to look up idiom. But leaving translation aside, consider that this is a single word (because of the hyphens). Saying that X is "faster than light" may not be idiomatic, but talking about a "faster-than-light" X surely is. That's why I think the comparison with faster than sound is revealing. As for the amateurishness, the entry doesn't seem amateurish at all to me, but I suppose that's subjective. Ƿidsiþ 16:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The physics argument has value too y'know. I use it to demonstrate that this is not even SoP. -- ALGRIF talk 17:12, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

FTL ?? -- ALGRIF talk 17:16, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Makes me think of rain stopped play, a cricket term referring to an instance where [[rain]] [[stopped]] [[play]]. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I disagree with Widsith that "this is the one and only way we express this concept in English" (superluminal is well attested in this sense, though it also has a different one) and with Algrif that it's not SOP because "in a vacuum" is implied (that's often true when speaking of the speed of light, so is not a specific property of this collocation); but if a speaker treats something as an idiom, then arguably it is an idiom for that speaker, and if it's an idiom for enough speakers, then arguably it's worth including, even if there are many speakers who use the same expression without treating it as an idiom. Admittedly, "treat as an idiom" can be hard to quantify, but hyphenating-and-prepending is suggestive; as Widsith says, "the faster-than-sound plane" is pretty awkward, even though "the plane is faster than sound" is pretty O.K. Also, Visviva has suggested that we err on the side of keeping things that might be SOP, and I have a general policy of never disagreeing with him, so … —Ruakh_TALK 19:06, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

We're gradually devolving to mere voting on these matters. This wouldn't be so bad if the voters were representative of the users. We don't seem even to place any value in what professional lexicographers say, some of whom have had some budget to find out things about users.

As to the definition of idiom the definition element on which lexicographers agree is non-SoPitude. The Pawley list seems to be a laundry list of every rationale for idiomaticity known to man, short of the idiom-by-vote approach.

I doubt that there will ever be a user who wants to know what faster-than-light means. They might want some high-sounding synonyms or some encyclopedic information. Including "faster-than-light" in the definition of superluminal or making it a redirect to superluminal would serve those users quite well and also the translators who can't be happy without a blue link. DCDuring TALK 22:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I neglected to mention the set-phrase and ungrammaticality criteria which are more frequently mentioned by definers of idiom than the other items on the Pawley laundry list. This expression is certainly not ungrammatical. "Faster than light" affords numerous substitutes in the "fast" and "light" slots. It is simply a question of being more explicit than we have ever been willing to be about quantifying the level of relative frequency (and on what corpora) that merits "set"ness. DCDuring TALK 22:35, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment. If faster-than-light means faster than the speed of light, that might be idiomatic, because it's ellipsis. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Strong keep — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] expedición de pescando

This must be wrong. "Expedición de pescando" gets only two hits in Google, both for Wiktionary. Grammatically correct wording would be expedición de pescado, but I could not find evidence of it being used in the sense defined in the entry (non-specific search for information). In one Spanish article it meant "shipping of fish". I would recommend delete for this, move the content to expedición de pescado (or possibly expedición de pesca) and put that to rfv. --Hekaheka 09:40, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

pescar also means, as in English, to fish, or search, for information. I will add the definition. -- ALGRIF talk 12:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC) But the entry itself should be deleted in my opinion as being completely incorrect. -- ALGRIF talk 12:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I guess since two people say it is incorrect, that it should be deleted. You can delete it now as an author request deletion if you'd like as I am fine with it being deleted. Sorry for making an incorrect entry! Razorflame 20:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] capital city

Tooironic marked this back on 28 October for deletion with the comment Sum of Parts surely? Especially considering the translation table is merely a redirect to capital.

As for myself, capital city is more common by several orders of magnitude than equivalents using various synonyms of city such as capital town or capital municipality, so I could see the case for deletion either way. — Carolina wren discussió 21:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's sum of parts, but I don't think it's idiomatic either. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

keep — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

keep, CFI says expressions have to be idiomatic. This is just a noun composed of two words, doesn't have to be idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] call on

Rfd-sense:

1. (idiomatic) In a classroom, to select a student.

Is redundant to

1. (idiomatic) To request or ask of somebody; to select for a task.

They don't look the same, but I think they are. If you 'call on' a student, it's always going to be for them to do something isn't it? Plus surely it doesn't have to be a student. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. In sense 1, a teacher can "call on" a student who has his/her hand up, thereby giving said student permission to ask a question; but I don't think that fits at all with sense 2. (I'm not sure how well-defined the distinction is between the two senses — there definitely seems to be overlap — but I really don't think a single def could cover both.) —Ruakh_TALK 22:49, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd be really suprised if the sense is as narrow as "In a classroom, to select a student". So it has to be a student, not only that, but in a classroom. Can I not call at someone at work, or call on someone in a classroom that's not a student? Or call on a student but outside the classroom. Granted, classroom is a meronym for "educational setting", but there is that ambiguity. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

You're right that there are some other situations where this sense of "call on" is applicable — for example, a person holding a press conference chooses which reporter to "call on", allowing said reporter to ask his or her question (see e.g. this b.g.c. hit, found via a search for "called on the reporter") — but I think you're wrong that this sense is redundant with the "request" sense, given that it's just as often a matter of giving permission as of making a request. (I wonder if there's a U.S./U.K. difference here?) —Ruakh_TALK 19:12, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, Ruakh. Keep.​—msh210℠ 19:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• Delete I agree with nom's assessment. Ƿidsiþ 12:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The newly added sense doesn't seem to be a phrasal verb. I think there are many adverbials that can fill the "on it" slot, even when clauses, but most especially prepositional phrases headed by "on", "about", "concerning", "re", "over".

There seem to be distinguishable senses:

1. calling on someone to do something (which seems to be what we have) and
2. calling on something (in the sense of drawing down a resource, possibly a personal resource)

The challenged sense does not seem to require an infinitive, in contrast to 1 and 3 which do seem to. It seems a stretch to deem sense 2 an elliptical version of one of the others. I don't think too much can be made of a student or audience member having raised their hand or not. In classrooms and certain types someone at the front of the room may have the power to ask a question of an individual. The common element seems to be the ability of someone in the front to invite an individual in the audience to speak. DCDuring TALK 00:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

And isn't there a sense of "call on" that means initiate (?) courting. I think it might lead to "keeping company with", which in turn might lead to dancing. DCDuring TALK 00:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think any of the senses requires an infinitive. Sense #3 ("to request […] ") seems to require, or almost require, an additional complement besides the person called on; that complement is usually either an infinitive or a for-phrase indicating what is being requested, but sometimes it's some other random adverbial. (I've added a citation of each type — infinitive, for, and other; please take a look.) —Ruakh_TALK 01:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] lelietje van dalen

This is a vrongly Zpelt wort zat nieds to be diletet

I tried a delete before and was denied that so don't tell me I did is wrong again.

I am GETTING SO TIRED OF THIS.

PLEASE RESPECT OUR SPELLING.

Jcwf 05:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said on my user page:

We're a descriptive not a prescriptive dictionary. If it's not an approved spelling, there are several ways to indicate that such as using {{misspelling of|lang=nl}}, {{nonstandard|lang=nl}}, or {{proscribed|lang=nl}} depending on how strong the official disapproval is.

I declined to speedy because a quick google showed some usage on Dutch pages. I only went as far as using {{alternative form of|lang=nl}} because I was uncertain of how strong to word the disapproval of this spelling. — Carolina wren discussió 06:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

If this is a misspelling than it needs to be completely stubbed to a soft redirect to the proper spelling (which means no etymology, no synonyms section, and not categorised inside Category:Dutch nouns). --Ivan Štambuk 06:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a misspelling: http://woordenlijst.org/zoek/?q=lelietje+van+dalen&w=w , so I stubbified the article. —AugPi _(t) 04:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

As pointed out, the Wiktionary is not limited to official spellings or official word lists. Keep or much better move to the Beer Parlour and look for a consensus. I was just thinking last night about the French spelling reform - I wonder how many, if any of the reformed spellings have never actually been used, therefore would not meet CFI. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. I wonder whether this is really a misspelling, and per what definition of misspelling. Consider google books:"lelietje van dalen", which, apart from finding many instances with hyphens, also finds many instances without a hyphen. This looks much more like a variant spelling to me or an archaic spelling. The high rate of instances without hyphens makes it unlikely that this was a misspelling at the point at which it was written. The instances without hyphens found at Google Books seem to be of older date, such as of nineteenth century and the beginning of twenteeth century. Could it be that meanwhile the official prescriptive Dutch orthography has changed?

A usage note can be added that says that the particular spelling is procribed (discouraged) by a national orthographic body. But Wiktionary's inclusion criteria are not concerned with prescriptive orthographic bodies, as they should not.

Jcwf, please avoid using all-caps; it gives the impression of shouting. Also, while editing Wiktionary, you have to abide by agreed inclusion criteria, even if you disagree with them. If you keep adding requests for deletions to terms that clearly meet inclusion criteria by being plentifully attestable at Google books, you will only create unnecessary additional work. --Dan Polansky 09:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] acceleration due to gravity

Seems SoP to me. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:05, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Me, too.​—msh210℠ 18:15, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that this is a set phrase in physics that means more than just that. SemperBlotto 19:56, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems initially sum of parts, it is acceleration that's due to gravity, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:00, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so, quite. It's the local gravitational constant; even if nothing on Earth is falling anymore, the acceleration due to gravity is still defined. —Ruakh_TALK 20:03, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

So it's a value rather than the actual acceleration. Yes, people do say that "acceleration due to gravity at sea leve is 9.8 m/s/s". Mglovesfun (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

That's not how it's now defined (or at least not clearly so).​—msh210℠ 20:10, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

We have that (constant) sense of acceleration, too, though.​—msh210℠ 20:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

After thinking about it, delete as SoP and totally obvious from the individual words. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] rod-shaped

I once got a "computer-shaped" cake, but I'd say that was SoP too. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 20:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Not so fast. If I remember my high-school biology correctly, one of the ways to classify bacteria is whether they are spherical or rod-shaped. Obviously the current definition needs improvement, but I wouldn't be so quick to relegate it to a SoP deletion. — Carolina wren discussió 21:10, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Good point. But what are rod-shaped bacteria, if not bacteria that are simultaneously rod-shaped? That's not a rhetorical question, go ahead and answer. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:14, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Looking at WT:CFI "An expression is “idiomatic” if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components." Is this an expression? Or is it just a word. If rodshaped where attestable it can't be deleted. For rod shaped it can, by precedent although I can't find anything about this in our criteria for inclusion. "Expression" doesn't mean "with a space or spaces in it". That's how CFI is always interpreted, but it's not there! And rod-shaped is between the two, is it an expression or a word? I'd tend to say a word so which would mean an automatic keep. It does make you think. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:27, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

At least sometimes we treat hyphens like spaces (in separating "words"). Otherwise we would have lots of entries for attributive phrases like "her holier-than-thou attitude". I'm not sure if this is universal, though, or whether it's been discussed before. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 03:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

keep — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

delete --Hekaheka 21:14, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This feels like a delete, although I usually prefer to keep hyphenated words. I think we need to start compiling a list of situations where hyphenation does not save an entry from being mere sum of parts. I'd count "X-shaped" and "X-colo(u)red" among the candidates for deletion. --EncycloPetey 04:03, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• Keep any hypenated term (which, technically, is a single word) if we have three citations for it. And gathering citations may point to specific contexts for these terms, such as that suggested by Carolina above. Ƿidsiþ 12:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

  Here are some b.g.c. quotes to illustrate why I consider "X-shaped" less worthy than other hyphenated terms:

  • Cutaway to a Junior High School Classroom, where a Teacher stands next to a skeleton that looks vaguely Peter-shaped.
  • This paper describes the analysis of deformation mechanisms of hat-shaped composite stiffeners on a plate...
  • Press the candy-shaped stamps into the different colored sponges and stamp a pattern of candy shapes around the edges of the paper and envelope.

  In each case, a descriptive definition could not be written, since Peters, hats, and candies come in many shapes and so cannot be adequately described. A second kinf of problem concerns adjectives derived from proper nouns, such as:

  • Armand picks up a Statue of Liberty lamp and shakes his head at Hawk's Daffy Duck-shaped phone that quacks instead of ringing.
  • one of the roads in the Studio, at Burbank, is called Mickey Avenue and the Studio's post office has a Mickey Mouse-shaped mail-box.
  • Cleaning a central air's outdoor unit — that large R2D2-shaped thing in your yard — should be done once a year at the beginning of the season.

  My opinion on the issue is tempered by the fact that some "X-shaped" descriptions are meaningful, such as pear-shaped, banana-shaped, barrel-shaped, hourglass-shaped, or teardrop-shaped, where the description refers to a specific and consistent three-dimensional shape for which there is no other commonly used term (outside of advanced mathematics). --EncycloPetey 16:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I also consider them less worthy, but I don't think they should therefore be deleted. They're words after all. I'm not sure if all the ones you came up with meet CFI, or if anyone would bother to enter them, but if they are and do respectively then I can't see any justification for deleting them. Consider that they may be attestable without the hyphens – hatshaped certainly gets 55 Google Books hits (and rodshaped over 600), so it's hard to see how you could delete that. (But maybe existence of a non-hyphenated form would be one criterion for keeping the suckers.) Ƿidsiþ 16:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

But I would not consider candy-shaped to be a word. It's two words that happen to be yoked into service together. We define a word as a "distinct unit of language ... with a particular meaning", and candy-shaped does not have a particular meaning. --EncycloPetey 16:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I would consider it to be a word, but it probably doesn't meet CFI. I don't really understand your "vagueness of meaning" argument....I think "candy-shaped" does have a particular meaning. The fact that candy comes in lots of different shapes doesn't seem relevant to me...you might as well say that "coloured" doesn't have a particular meaning because there are many different types of colour. Ƿidsiþ 17:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

My "vagueness of meaning" argument comes from the fact that the object used as reference for the shape in candy-shaped has do set form. As a result, there is not another possible term (except perhaps swett-shaped) to use as a synonym. In contrast, hourglass-shaped and banana-shaped do have well-defined shapes for the reference objects, so those terms do not suffer from being vague and undefinable. Terms candy-shaped, carpet-colored, etc. do not have a set reference to give the term any meaning beyond the transparent sense of the individual components. --EncycloPetey 18:26, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete as completely determined by its parts, unless it's the case (as I suspect) that some class of bacteria sometimes assume, or some of them have, other shapes, and are nonetheless called "rod-shaped".​—msh210℠ 17:42, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• So what would you do with rodshaped? Ƿidsiþ 10:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep, per the existence of its hyphen-free variant "rodshaped" (google books:"rodshaped"); this inclusion rule is not yet in CFI.

Digression: The rule "any hyphenated space-free term should be included" seems unworkable to me, leading to an inclusion of a vast array of terms, but what do I know. The rule "any space-free and hyphen-free term should be included" leads to the inclusion of many more German terms than the number of English terms that would be included if all English hyphen-joined space-free terms were allowed for inclusion. But this seems to be more of a problem of what to do with CFI as applied to German and Finnish, a problem that does not currently need to bother the inclusion of English terms. End of digression. --Dan Polansky 09:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] kang-mi

Been on Requests for Cleanup since 2007. The discussion is copied below. --Volants 14:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

This does appear to be a valid Sherpa word... It appears, however, that the Sherpa language can be written either in Tibetan or Devanagari script, not in Roman. Can someone more clueful than I please move this entry to its proper spelling in one of those scripts? -- Visviva 15:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I don’t have a source for Sherpa. Apparently "kangmi" means snowman. Typing it phonetically, it would be ཀང་མི་ (kang-mi) or possibly ཁང་མི་ (khang-mi). —Stephen 17:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Very strong delete. Wrong script. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:56, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] admiral of the blue

This has survived the RFV process, although it had not been verified. --Volants 14:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, it got a speedy keep from User:Connel MacKenzie, and I have no idea why. Should probably get RFV'd again but for a whole month, without a speedy keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:59, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ever so

This is like many of the frequent and valid combinations of adverbs with certain Category:English degree adverbs. The other most common collocations on COCA of "ever" followed by a degree adverb and an adjective are ever more, ever too, and ever as. DCDuring TALK 15:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Consider this example.

• He was so camp.

  He was ever so camp.

If this is what it means, then yes delete as nothing more than ever + so. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The entry claims that there is both an idiomatic and a non-idiomatic meaning. Longmans DCE, RHU, and Wordnet agree that there is idiomaticity. MW3 gives special treatment to "so" at "ever".

This has made ever such a confusion. I am ever so sorry (=Am I ever sorry (US)) for wasting folks time on this. It is close enough to being an idiom for me. When "ever" collocates with "too", "as", or "more" it has a more specific temporal sense, often following a form of "become". It is decidedly odd that "ever" must precede "so" or "such", but that degree adverbs must follow "so" to give about the same meaning. Also one could say "ever so X nice" where X is one of a large subset of adverbs, possibly themselves intensified": "She was ever so damned cloyingly nice." DCDuring TALK 19:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Aha! Noting that everso is listed as a blue linked alternative spelling, I'd like this to be kept under the coal mine precedent when the spelling with a space is more common that the single word term. So keep or rfd everso as well. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

"Everso" is a slender reed to lean on. It is not found in COCA (vs. 1100 raw hits for ever so). At best "everso" is dated or even a misspelling currently. The overwhelming majority of the raw b.g.c. hits are not English, word-fragment scannos, mentions, and proper nouns. We could either keep "ever so" as an idiom/near-idiom. I am inclined to favor breaking out items that would be buried in long entries that merit some special discussion as the grammar of this does. In the case of "coal mine", coalmine appears 6 times in COCA and coalmine 290 times. I disliked that argument, but it is more plausible in that case. "Everso" stretches the precedent beyond the breaking point, IMO.

Re: precedent generally. As we have such dreadful indexing of our "precedents", we would be likely to replicate some injustices of the pre-Victorian English common law system. Only those who plausibly claim to remember (accurately, sincerely, or not) can successfully win arguments in such a system. Newbies have a double disadvantage and will feel even more discouraged from participating (whether of inclusionist or exclusionist tendency). We really need to index RfDs to the sections and versions of CFI to which they relate. Attempting to do so would probably unearth many cases that were closed improperly, archived without being closed, or were decided on grounds that we no longer accept. DCDuring TALK 19:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] exceedingly

Sense: In an exceeding manner. I don't know what this means. DCDuring TALK 22:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Err, since we don't have exceeding as an adjective, I say delete. Exceeding isn't an adjective, is it? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Would that it were as simple as that! Any English participle form presumptively can be used as an adjective. DCDuring TALK 13:30, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, exceeding is certainly an adjective - and I've just added such a meaning. SemperBlotto 08:18, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete this sense. It serves no purpose as the other two definitions describe the word perfectly well. I think it's an 'either or' case. Either keep the first definition and delete 2,3 (which I object to) or keep 2 and 3 and delete 1. On a side note, I have seen 'exceeding' used frequently in literary works. For example, a day of exceeding heat. My two cents. Jamesjiao 09:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with Jamesjiao. The other two definitions are worded well and they both cover this one correctly, so delete it and let's be over with it. Razorflame 09:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete 1. It was the original entry for the page, and seems to have served merely as a place holder. -- ALGRIF talk 14:46, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] melange

"(fiction) A fictional drug in Frank Herbert's science-fiction Dune series, used to lengthen life, flavor food, heighten awareness, probe the memories of one's ancestors, and induce prescience." --Yair rand 06:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

WT:CFI#Fictional universes. It needs citing outside of Herbet's works. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Moved to WT:RFV#melange --Yair rand 00:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] anatomical atlas

An atlas of anatomy. --EncycloPetey 17:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete Jamesjiao 09:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. Knowing the user in question, he's probably created this just for the unusual plural. But hard to judge if it's SoP without a definition. But usually definitionless words get a speedy delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I created this (and others) to demonstrate the need for {{q}} / {{citedterm}}, not for the plural (however, I don’t entirely criticise as unrealistic your inference, Mglovesfun). At the time, I didn’t have the time to give these terms proper entries, hence the {{rfe}}, {{rfp}}, {{rfdef}}, &c. I don’t agree with speedy-deleting definitionless words (that would turn Category:Definitionless words into a {{delete}} category); often the entries in question are for valid terms and contain other useful content (such as, as the category states, “other dictionary-related content, such as translations, synonyms, or attributions”, as well as citations, etymologies, pronunciatory transcriptions, lists of related terms, &c.).
As for anatomical atlas, it is now defined (&c.). It is idiomatic because it shows “a thing’s inner workings” and because “its elements [are intentionally] splayed”, neither of which are facets of meaning that inhere to anatomical or atlas.
† ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

All your quotes pertain to human anatomy, not "a thing's inner workings". I still don't see how an anatomical atlas is any different from an atlas of anatomy. I've seen many example of both and consider the difference merely a matter of wording. --EncycloPetey 15:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I’ve added a 1904 citation of use pertaining to vegetable powders. An anatomical atlas showing only the human epidermis would be a bit limited in its utility. Again, anatomical atlas is idiomatic because it refers to a conspectus that shows “a thing’s inner workings […whose] elements [are intentionally] splayed”, which is not the case for a normal (i.e., geographical) atlas. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you've fully addressed EP's points; if it's true that "atlas of anatomy" has, or can have, the same sense, then it seems that "anatomical atlas" is SOP, and we need an appropriate def at [[atlas]]. (Our current sense #2, "A bound collection of tables, illustrations etc. on any given subject", may be what we need; or, we may want a specific def for this type of atlas.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

But what if that sense only occurs in conjunction with anatomical, anatomy, or similar? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:08, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

How similar? And in how close conjunction with? For example, if I'm talking about references I used in an anatomy class, could I refer to one as an "atlas" with no "anatomy"-like word in the same sentence? If such usage is really quite rare, then it might make sense to keep this entry, but have one sense of [[atlas]] be something like "Specifically, an anatomical atlas." —Ruakh_TALK 21:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

@ User:Doremítzwr: The "inner" part is the result of treating anatomy. That's what anatomy is all about. As Ruakh points out, there are plenty of other kinds of atlases. I can find multiple examples of "skeletal atlas", "cerebral atlas", "economic atlas", "social atlas", "historical atlas", "linguistic atlas", "military technical atlas", etc. --EncycloPetey 21:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Both deus and ex machina are used independently, but this doesn’t mean that deus ex machina ought to be deleted. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:22, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Correct, but not for the reasons you've implied. The term deus ex machina is a set phrase borrowed wholesale from Latin theatrical texts, and so isn't really an analogous case to this one. --EncycloPetey 20:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. If this entry is to be deleted, how will the content currently presented at anatomical atlas be accommodated at atlas? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 21:10, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

In at least two ways: (1) ensure there is a definition of atlas suitably written to encompass this idea, (2) include example sentences and/or quotations in which the combination anatomical atlas appears. --EncycloPetey 21:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. If that’s OK with you, feel free to delete the entry for anatomical atlas. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 22:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] you suck

• I don't follow the argument about this phrase being part of the phrase book. This phrase to me is not idiomatic at all. You can simply replace the pronoun with a name or another pronoun and the meaning stays the same except now it applies to a different entity. It's just the sum of parts to me. Jamesjiao 09:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Print phrasebooks are not dictionaries either. They have hundreds of common phrases or constructions that occur in the everyday life of a foreigner visiting a country where a given language is spoken.

Here, the phrasebook is sometimes used as a means of keeping phrases that are SoP and would not meet any reasonable interpretation of CFI. This is such a phrase. The phrasebook notion does not seem to have interested anyone enough to make it into a well-defined project. Thus we have many entries that do not meet CFI that might merit inclusion in a phrasebook. They await someone with the vision to make a proper phrasebook component at WMF probably within en.wikt (like Wikisaurus) but perhaps not. DCDuring TALK 11:42, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that Wiktionary:Phrasebook is a redirect, so we have virtually no written policy on the phrasebook. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Mongolic language

Another one that, IMO, needs to be listed separately. It's not a specific language but the name of a group of languages. Hence keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:29, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] three hundred

I’m nominating this for deletion because it is not idiomatic and its presence herein offers no guiding principle for excluding herefrom the rest of the infinite set of cardinal numbers expressed in the English language. The phrase’s meaning is entirely predictable as, it seems, are its translations (which often isn’t the case for numbers like twenty and twelve):

• Catalan: tres-cents (“‘three hundred’”) = tres (“‘three’”) + cents (“‘hundreds’”)
• Crimean Tatar: üç yüz (“‘three hundred’”) = üç (“‘three’”) + yüz (“‘hundred’”)
• Finnish: kolmesataa (“‘three hundred’”) = kolme (“‘three’”) + sata (“‘hundred’”)
• Icelandic: þrjú hundruð (“‘three hundred’”) = þrjú (“‘three’”) + hundruð (“‘hundreds’”)
• Latin: trecentī (“‘three hundred’”) = trēs (“‘three’”) + centum (“‘hundred’”)
• Portuguese: trezentos (“‘three hundred’”) = três (“‘three’”) + centos (“‘hundreds’”)
• Russian: триста (trísta), “‘three hundred’”) = три (tri), “‘three’”) + сто (sto), “‘hundred’”)
• Taos: póyuosǐeną (“‘three hundred’”) = póyuo- (“‘three’”) + -si̋eną (“‘hundred’”)
• And so on…

This entry was drawn to my attention by DAVilla’s post (timestamped: 05:32, 6 November 2009) in WT:RFD#two-wheeled which used the existence of three hundred as an argument in favour of the retention of the equally unidiomatic and problematic two-wheeled. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. This is a noun doesn't have to be idiomatic. "Expressions" have to be idiomatic, this is just a noun made up of two words. Someone explain to me how this doesn't meet CFI. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:40, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep, otherwise we have to delete all the cardinal numbers which do not have a secondary reason for keeping. seventeen anyone? The limit is only set by any one editor's patience and reason. -- ALGRIF talk 14:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

That is not so. We’d keep seventeen because it’s a single word (it’s also one of a set of only seven or so entries of that class), and we keep all single words, however semantically transparent. We ought to delete three hundred, just like we’d delete seventeen hundred. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If we keep this, why not [[seventeen thousand]] and [[forty billion]]?​—msh210℠ 17:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see this deleted but I know it won't be. In its favour, though, I would add that keeping it doesn't imply we must add an infinite set of other numbers: only those that are attestable. (That's still a little absurd.) Equinox ◑ 17:41, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Precisely, msh210. Equinox, they are both easily attested. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep if only for the translations (please add German). But this does not mean that I am advocating that we add all the rest - we have better things to do with our time. SemperBlotto 09:18, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I hope you wouldn’t advocate having an entry for nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine just so we can have a Translations section containing its German equivalent, neuntausendneunhundertneunundneunzig (google books:neuntausendneunhundertneunundneunzig)… † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Only if you could be bothered - I couldn't, especially without the German first. SemperBlotto 18:11, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, now we have both; do you really think there’s any use in having them, especially the English one? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:25, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

delete this and its buddies one hundred, two hundred, four hundred, five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred and nine hundred. Include the rule for creating them in the entry for "hundred". --Hekaheka 11:16, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per Hekaheka.​—msh210℠ 18:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep as one of the more basic numeric units. The numerals are a small set of words, so there's little harm in having the 9 entries Hekaheka would see deleted. We're not opening the doors for a flood of entries with these nine. --EncycloPetey 18:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Are we worried that we will have too many number-based entries? What harm will they do? Explain to use the positive side of deleting this. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

People shouldn't think this is somehow some kind of weird idiomatic construction in English: it's simply three + hundred, and people should realize that. If I look up þrjú hundruð in a dictionary and see it means "300", I will then wonder whether there's something special about that number: whether the word for 200 is not similarly constructed. If there's no entry for þrjú hundruð, I'll just look up the parts, and know (especially if there's a usage note at hundruð) what the whole means.​—msh210℠ 18:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

What's the difference, EP, between three hundred on the one hand and three thousand, one million, one billion, one milliard, one trillion, one quadrillion, . . . one vigintillion, . . . on the other?​—msh210℠ 18:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You can see the grammatical difference between terms like hundred and one hundred in the usage notes for those terms. We had a prior discussion in which it was well-established that these words exhibit different grammatical behavior when combined with one. Alone, hundred is a noun, but when preceded by another cardinal the combination functions grammatically as a numeral. Thus, the combination has a different part of speech from the principal element. --EncycloPetey 20:38, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per msh210. This is exactly the same as three thousand, three million, and so on. It's all well and good to point out that "vigintillion" is a noun whereas "several vigintillion" is a numeral ("several vigintillion reasons", but not *"vigintillion reasons" alone), but why would we address that with an entry at [[several vigintillion]], rather than with useful information at [[vigintillion]]? —Ruakh_TALK 21:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

How do you feel about attributive uses, such as in the "Three Hundred Years War"? It's not a sequence of three descriptives modifying "war", since three hundred acts as a single unit word. That would not be true of "several vigintillion reasons", in which several is a determiner rather than part of a numeral. Likewise, there is no conflict known as the Several Hundred Years War, because "several hundred" does not have the same grammatical attributes as "[numeral] hundred". Change of part of speech, remember? --EncycloPetey 21:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Couldn’t the same be said of a conflict called the “Six Thousand Four Hundred and Twenty-Nine Years War”? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 21:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

If such a name were attestable, yes, but it isn't. The "Three Hundred Years War" is attestable in published literature. --EncycloPetey 21:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete per CFI. If CFI doesn't support it, let's find a general principle for excluding these compound and phrasal numbers not otherwise meaningful, eg, 69, 666, 2012 (?), etc. (And please don't make the encyclopedic entry for "Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War".) DCDuring TALK 22:06, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: " […] 'several hundred' does not have the same grammatical attributes as '[numeral] hundred'. Change of part of speech, remember?": I remember that you said it, but I don't remember agreeing. What is your basis for this statement? —Ruakh_TALK 22:40, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Botht he examples I've presented as well as all the evidence accumulated in the aforementioned previous discussion from a year ago. --EncycloPetey 22:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I see nothing in that discussion to support a distinction between three hundred and any other <determiner> hundred. I agree with your statement there that "we could call these words [hundred, thousand, etc.] both numerals and nouns, with Usage notes included to explain their limited functioning as numerals." —Ruakh_TALK 23:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I've now added a second definition of three hundred that is idiomatic. --EncycloPetey 22:17, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. —Ruakh_TALK 22:40, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

On what basis? The quote (and title) state "three hundred" but the figure is not exactly 300. --EncycloPetey 22:50, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The same sense exists for any X hundred, so it's a property of hundred, not of three hundred. —Ruakh_TALK 23:08, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

But it's not a property of hundred; it's only a property of X hundred where X is a cardinal numeral. It's also not a property of three hundred two. It's a property of only certain constructions including hundred, and not others. --EncycloPetey 23:13, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. It's a property of the word hundred that the phrase X hundred, where X is a numeral or other determiner, can be used approximately. Unless you mean to tell me that "several hundred" means an exact integer multiple of 100? (Actually, I'm not even sure that it's a linguistic property of the word hundred per se, as opposed to a general property of our culture's use of numbers. We also use "3.1416" when we really mean some value between exactly 3.14155 and exactly 3.14165, and "a dozen" when we mean anywhere from ten to fifteen. But I'd be quite fine with mentioning it at [[hundred]].) —Ruakh_TALK 23:24, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It is a more general property, but in a much more complicated way than you've indicated. For continuous decimal values, yes, we mean a margin of error plus or minus half the value of the final place value. But, for rounded values 100 or greater, that is no longer true. As an approximation, 300 could mean "between 250 and 349" or "between 295 and 304" or "between 299.5 and 300.4". There are several possible ranges of estimation at this scale, which is not true of the decimal values you mention. --EncycloPetey 23:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

But I don't think that that variability makes three hundred, specifically, idiomatic. —Ruakh_TALK 23:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

(unindenting) Then let me ask a general question: If you don't think this is a case of being idiomatic, then when or how can a numeral be idiomatic? I maintain that numerals cannot be idiomatic in precisely the same way as nouns or verbs by virute of belonging to a different part of speech that exhibits different grammar. They are idiomatic in somewhat different ways. --EncycloPetey 23:56, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Aside from the one-word numerals, I think a numeral is only idiomatic if (1) its construction can't be inferred just from an understanding of the rest of the numeral system (for example, French "quatre-vingts" is idiomatic, because even though it really does mean 4×20, you'd never guess that it's the term for "eighty" in much of francophonia, as is "quatre-vingt" for much the same reason; but "quatre-vingt trois" is not), or (2) it has a meaning that can't be inferred just from an understanding of the numeral system and the way numerals are used (for example, "sixty-nine" is idiomatic). More generally, I don't think a word-sequence is "idiomatic" if it belongs to a huge set of parallelly-constructed word-sequences with parallel semantics. —Ruakh_TALK 03:40, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: "huge set of parallelly-constructed word-sequences with parallel semantics". You mean like the scientific names of plant families, which are all regularly constructed by exactly the same predictable rules. I'd disagree about three hundred belonging to a "huge" set though, since the way it which the range at which the second definition works is limited to a very few cardinal numerals. And most compounded cardinal numerals have no secondary range meaning beyond to normal truncation or rounding of decimal components.

The construction of a composite numeral also does not follow the normal rules of English grammar for the use of multipliers. Compare "three rabbits", "three children", "three lemmata" with "three hundred". When three precedes hundred the grammar is different.

You do agree, though, that the second definition I've added is distinct from the first one, yes? --EncycloPetey 05:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the scientific names of plant families, so can't comment on that. (I had actually assumed that they had one-word names, even.) But personally, I do consider {X hundred}, where X is any integer in [1, 99], or any of various other determiners ("a", "a few", "several", etc.), to be a large set, even taken alone; but to it, we also need to add {X thousand}, where X is any integer in [1, 999], or any of the aforementioned determiners, and {X million}, and so on.
The construction of a composite numeral does follow the normal rules of English grammar for the use of multipliers in forming composite numerals. Compare "forty million", "sixteen hundred", "twenty bajillion".
I'm not sure whether the second definition is really distinct — as I said, I'm not sure this is strictly linguistic — but I'm quite fine with treating it as distinct.
—Ruakh_TALK 14:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Butting in: what seems worth considering is that the term "three hundred" has a one-word translation in languages that do not usually form long multisyllabic words such as Russian, unlike German and Finnish. By considering only these languages, we avoid including long sum-of-parts numerals that would follow from the existence of their translations in German and Finnish. Yes, this is an extra-CFI consideration, going in the direction of "translation targets" proposal, the proposal that has gone nowhere so far. It seems to me that the inclusion of German and Finnish within "translation targets" proposal makes it unworkable, for then the proposal would lead to the inclusion of a large number of sum-of-parts terms. I wonder how German dictionaries proceed anyway, as German-one-wordness is in practice quite a different concept from English-one-wordness, so long as one-wordness is defined as freedom-from-spaces.

What we could do is at least postpone or suspend the deletion, acknowledging that, while the not-yet-deleted terms fail to meet CFI, they seem to promise to meet CFI in future. --Dan Polansky 08:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Strong delete. Don't see how this could ever be non-SoP or idiomatic. Almost any number can be used to imply approxmiation ("She deducted me three thousand points for running over that pedestrian."; "For the six hundredth time, turn off that damn computer!"; "I must have dropped my shopping ten times on the way home", etc.) Thus numbers that are not singular words in English should only have entries if they really can be used to create entirely new meanings (e.g. sixty-nine, ninety-nine, etc). Tooironic 12:26, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Despite the confusion, that isn't in CFI. It just says expressions have to be idiomatic. Surely three hundred is just a noun. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:28, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The term "three hundred" is not a noun but a numeral referring to a number. --Dan Polansky 08:21, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] beureaus de change, beureau de changes

Or bureaus? --Hekaheka 11:09, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted misspelt entries. For the actual plurals in English, I really don't know. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:46, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It would be bureaux de change, surely? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. In English, not common enough on the Web to a common misspelling. en.wikt shows at the top of a Goggle web search, not a good sign. Not attestable in usually attestation sources. DCDuring TALK 18:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Kamboja

a total of 13 definitions in this page. Some of them are encyclopediaic, many look suspect. It will take lots of effort for researching all of these--Volants 13:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

1. Name of an ancient Indo-Iranian warrior clan of Indo-European family.
2. Name of ancient nation founded and ruled by Kambojas.
3. Prince of the Kambojas.
4. A descendent of the Kamboja Kshatriyas.
5. A horse raised and bred in Kamboja (also Kambojaka).
6. An elephant native to Kamboja (also Kambu).
7. Silver or gold native to Kamboja (also Kambu).
8. Name of conch or shell native to Kamboja (also Kambu).
9. Supari or Punnag (Rottleria tinctoria) native to Kamboja.
10. Somavalak or Karanj native to or coming from Kamboja.
11. Gold or silver bracelet, or bracelet in general (also Kambu).
12. Name of a mountain located in ancient Kamboja (Afghanistan) famous for its Kambu, Kambuka or Kambujika silver (or gold).
13. Name of an ancient Raaga/Raagini (musical mode) originated in ancient Kamboja (also called Kamboji, Kambhoji & Kambodi).

Keep. No reason given supports deletion. Move to cleanup. DCDuring TALK 10:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] give back

[edit] buy back

"give" / "buy" + "back". --Hekaheka 19:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Delete. I can't see any redeeming features. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Both seem idiomatic to be. --Dan Polansky 08:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain why? For me these seem to be no different to give again and buy again. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure why they seem idiomatic to me, and hope someone else will take an articulated position on the issue.

Turning the question around, however, can you explain why they are merely sum of parts?

As a check, see also give back at OneLook® Dictionary Search and buy back at OneLook® Dictionary Search. --Dan Polansky 08:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I have added the somewhat cliched karmic feel-good sense to give back. My McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, edited by Richard Spears, 2004 contains both, as do some other OneLook sources. Mostly the includers rely on Wordnet, generally the most inclusive of references there. They both seem like phrasal verbs to me, but I have previously relied on Algrif's informed and experienced judgment for hard cases. DCDuring TALK 11:05, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

• Not sure about buy back, but definitely keep give back, which is a set phrase. Ƿidsiþ 11:12, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

As to buy back, if there were context tags, finance for the especially clause of the first sense, in line with the 4 OneLook business glossaries that have it, and bartending for the other (unattested) sense, would we challenge it? DCDuring TALK 11:15, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

• In my opinion, which seems to be supported by most dictionaries, the "back" phrasal verbs need to be treated with caution. If you cannot find another meaning other than "return", then it should not be treated as a phrasal verb, which is the case we have here with buy back. I cannot find any dictionary that includes this entry, but let's see if anyone cares to differ. -- ALGRIF talk 13:53, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] quarantines

Seems to be a misspelling of quarantaines. I was gonna speedy delete it myself, but I thought I'd ask for a second opinion. Any reason to keep this, given that quarantine doesn't have a French section? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:40, 26 November 2009 (UTC)