Talk:cod liver oil

RFD 2014

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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cod liver oil

Really? --WikiTiki89 18:45, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, really. Keep. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Keep. Ƿidsiþ 19:36, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

So anything that's put in a pill automatically becomes idiomatic? --WikiTiki89 20:31, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know about anything that's put in a pill, but anything that's idiomatic enough for AHD, Collins, Merriam-Webster, and Oxford is idiomatic enough for Wiktionary. I notice, however, that most dictionaries prefer cod-liver oil with a hyphen. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I just looked it up in the OED and was impressed by how far back the quotes go (1783, 1846, 1870). But still, I think that it is an SOP phrase despite its relevance to medicine and nutrition. It has a Wikipedia article, which would satisfy the needs of anyone who needs information on it, but it's fairly obvious what the words mean, and so I don't think it needs to be in a dictionary. --WikiTiki89 21:14, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Why should that be the test of what goes in a dictionary? We're not writing it for our own benefit, we're writing it as a resource for people who might want to look something up. Maybe they need a translation of the phrase, for which the component parts alone are not helpful. Maybe they want to know the history of the phrase or how long it has been in use. Seriously, why are we writing a dictionary? bd2412 T 22:19, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, primarily to define words. Why should that be a test of what goes in a dictionary? Because WT:CFI#Idiomaticity says so. --WikiTiki89 22:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

"To define words" is just a restatement of what writing a dictionary is. Why do we want to define words? bd2412 T 22:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Do we still consider ourselves less authoritative than other dictionaries that we have to look to them to determine what we should or should not keep, when we're about the fifth website hit that comes up when Googling for a word (e.g. google:granule)? Have any other dictionaries ever invoked the argument "that dictionary has that term, so we should have it too"? This question is not limited to the particular term at hand, however. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

WikiTiki, it's not just the fact that it's in a pill, it's the fact that it means ‘a nutritional supplement’, or if you prefer, ‘the oil from a fish as used as a nutritional supplement’. Yes there may perhaps be fishermen somewhere that have once said ‘cod liver oil’ just because they have cut a fish open and there is some oil, but in normal language we all mean something rather more specific. Ƿidsiþ 07:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

But does it mean "a nutritional supplement" or does it just happen to be used as one? --WikiTiki89 16:11, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Keep. The term is expressed differently in other languages - as "liver oil" or "fish oil". The English term, AFAIK, can't be replaced with other combinations to get the same product. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:10, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

But, for example, does Russian рыбий жир (“fish oil”) really refer exclusively to oil from the liver of a codfish? --WikiTiki89 22:15, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's the normal way to refer to "cod liver oil" in Russian, even if it simply means "fish oilfat" but predicting your possible next question, it can also mean oil/fat from other fishes and not from the liver, so unlike the case with the English term, people in Russia don't automatically know where "рыбий жир" comes from. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, in English you can also say fish oil when referring to cod liver oil (after all, cod is a fish) and according to this Ngram, "fish oil" as a phrase is used more commonly than "cod liver oil". --WikiTiki89 22:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Right now, I don't know about the idiomaticity of the English "fish oil" but Russian "ры́бий жир" is considered idiomatic and included in dictionaries and is translated into English as "cod liver oil", not "fish oil". See cod liver oil and рыбий жир, note that there are three sources of the latter here 1) ABBYY Lingvo dictionary of the common vocabulary, 2) ABBYY Lingvo dictionary of medical terms and 3) ABBYY Lingvo dictionary of scientific/technical terms. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I just checked several online Russian-Russian dictionaries. Firstly, very few of them even have рыбий (rybij), considering it obviously derived from рыба (ryba) + -ий (-ij). Secondly, none of them have "рыбий жир" and the only one that mentions it (here) does so in a usage example of рыбий (rybij, “Добываемый из рыбы (Obtainable from fish).”), implying that "рыбий жир" is nothing more than fat/oil derived from fish. --WikiTiki89 23:17, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, I cited a dictionary where it IS included. The fact that your example has "Добываемый из рыбы" (Obtainable from fish) only explains the sense of "рыбий". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but it's a bilingual dictionary. Monolingual dictionaries are a better test of idiomacity. And yes, "Добываемый из рыбы" only explaines "рыбий", because it was an entry for "рыбий"; "рыбий жир" was one of usage examples. --WikiTiki89 00:08, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Also citable: google books:"oil from livers of cod", google books:"oil of cods' livers", google books:"cods' liver oil", google books:"codfish liver oil", google books:"liver-oil of codfish". — Ungoliant ^(falai) 22:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• Judging by “cod-liver oil”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., excluding this would give use an opportunity to distinguish ourselves from a host of less-discriminating lexicographers. DCDuring TALK 22:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I am not of a mind that we should distinguish ourselves by offering less, when we are able to offer more. We should distinguish ourselves by building a superior level of utility with citations to use, translations, pronunciations, and similar features (as well as breadth of coverage in many languages). bd2412 T 23:07, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
    • I think DC was was employing some appropriate sarcasm. Ƿidsiþ 07:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
• Someone brought up the hyphenated version of this word. That might be considered idiomatic, and if it is also attestable but this version is more common it might pass WT:COALMINE. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 23:04, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

  We haven't been allowing hyphenated forms in English because many non-idiomatic phrases can be linked to make something easier to decide in reading. (For example, I used nominator-challenger below.) I think that is a good stance. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

keep --Hekaheka (talk) 06:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Keep without question. Donnanz (talk) 12:13, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
• Keep - not obvious from its parts that it is a nutritional supplement. SemperBlotto (talk) 12:17, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Kept --Back on the list (talk) 16:16, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

  We usually give something a week on this page, unless the nominator-challenger withdraws the RfD. As a prediction "kept" seems like a very safe bet. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Keep under the lemming principle, especially as the lemmings include even such dictionaries as Merriam Webster, not just medical glossaries and WordNet. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Dan Polansky wrote on my talkpage (permalink) about my changes to this entry (my first edit and second edit which added the 'context' label, his reversion) and left this message:

In diff, you added etymology and pronunciation section. This you should not do, IMHO, since both etymology are pronunciation of "cod liver oil" are sum-of-parts and obvious. And even if the etymology were worth having, then you should be adding it rather than placing rfe around, since the etymology must be clear to you. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:42, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

• My response is, if this entry is found to be sum of parts and deleted, why would it matter whether we have or not have an ety/pron section anyway? And saying that those are sums of parts is akin to saying the whole entry is sum of parts in the context of this RFD. There are quite a comparable number of cites based on the first six or so hits for google books:"cod liver oil" that seem to place it in a medicinal context, see cites 1 2 3 4 Lastly the ety section is what I have normally done when the information is not readily available, even were I to put {{term|en|cod}} + {{term|en|liver}} + {{term|en|oil}} it would largely be toward acknowledging it's sum of parts origins and we would not be able to find out about how it entered medicinal and modern terminologies/vocabularies in its current form. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 08:21, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

  We rarely include sense development in our etymologies, even though that is often of greater interest to normal humans than the PIE speculation that linguists seem to revel in. We can continue to remove ourselves from the world of normal humans by attempting to exclude such things - or we could add such items when warranted. I favor the latter course. DCDuring TALK 14:57, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

  I'm ambivalent on etymology, but the pronunciation of compound nouns is quite important because of unpredictable stress. Ƿidsiþ 15:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Kept. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:06, 8 February 2014 (UTC)