Talk:Aboriginal American

RFV discussion: September–November 2012

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Aboriginal American

Tagged by the late (hopefully not deceased, but merely absent) Logomaniac but never listed. - -sche (discuss) 06:11, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

We're talking about the adjective sense, right? Because the noun sense gets over ten thousands hits for the plural alone, and although the vast majority have lower-case for aboriginal, there are more than enough for CFI.

The adjective sense, though, looks pretty shaky. There are plenty of hits, but I have yet to find any that couldn't be interpreted as attributive use of the noun- and that's without taking away any with the wrong capitalization. I checked for comparative and superlative forms, but found none in either Google Books or Usenet.

The version with lower-case "aboriginal" is obviously SOP, But I guess the upper-case one is about as valid as "Native American". I'm not sure our definition for "aboriginal" adequately handles the lower-case examples- it's vague to the point of near-invisibility. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:00, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

It's possibly Logomaniac didn't doubt the term at all but merely though it was SOP (I've noticed a few other places she used RFV with a RFD rationale).

Yes, [[Aboriginal]] is badly defined... the noun is defined by referring to the adjective, which is defined by reference to the noun, all without leaving the page. - -sche (discuss) 07:37, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Strongly agree, Aborigine and Aboriginal are so poorly defined I'm gonna have to look them up in another dictionary to find out what they mean. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:10, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

As for SOP, I didn't deduce the meaning correctly from the meanings of the individual words. Until I looked it up, I assumed this meant "a United States citizen of Australian Aboriginal ancestry". —Angr 15:07, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The adjectival sense seems to be citable with l/c "a",[1][2][3][4][5][6] but not in the capitalization of this entry. SpinningSpark 16:40, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Three of those cites, however, say "aboriginal American Indian", which is much more clearly [[aboriginal]] + [[American Indian]]. —Angr 17:37, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Which still leaves a usable three, yes? SpinningSpark 18:55, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I take the lower-case for "aboriginal" as an indication that the term is acting as an ordinary adjective modifying "American" rather than as the first part of an idiomatic compound term. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:58, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Meh, kept. Re-RFV if you actually doubt the term. - -sche (discuss) 03:59, 29 November 2012 (UTC)