Talk:Christmas card

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Latest comment: 12 years ago by TAKASUGI Shinji in topic Christmas card
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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.


Christmas card

[edit]

A card for Christmas? Really? The definition isn't even exactly right about the "decorated" part - I've seen undecorated Christmas cards. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Well, we also have birthday card. -- Liliana 04:41, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
I have RFD'd that as well. Thanks. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Delete, any card can be known by what it's intended to commemorate or refer to. Get well soon card for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:29, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
How do we know from the 'parts' that these are greeting cards and not calling cards or playing cards? Keep, I think.​—msh210 (talk) 15:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
By the usual principles of constructing meaning-in-context, the details of which elude me, as the process is unconscious. There are a lot of theories about it though. DCDuring TALK 18:00, 24 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Keep. There wasn't a sense listed at card matching the one used in these terms ("a greeting card") until I just added it just now. However, as Msh210 pointed out, there's still ambiguity over which sense of "card" it is that that these terms are employing. If someone says, "I'm not taking the trash out today because it's my birthday," I suppose they could be described as playing the "birthday card," but that's not what most people mean whey they use the term "birthday card." Astral (talk) 17:44, 20 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Apart from the fact that WT:NOTPAPER doesn't even exist, NOTPAPER (on Wikipedia) does not mean that anything may be included, Equinox and I have both said that we have lots of room for pictures of kittens because we're not paper, but that doesn't mean we should include lots of pictures of kittens. It seems to me, hilariously, that you don't have a counterargument to that, if you did you'd've replied by now. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:17, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Not it’s not. It says “There is less need to exclude arguable entries”, it doesn’t say There is a need to keep arguable entries.— Ungoliant (Falai) 00:32, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
No need to list all possible combination of cards, other entries should be considered case by case as always. Christmas card and birthday card should be kept as they are words and are often included in foreign language dictionaries, are as common items as postcards or envelopes and are also borrowed into other languages as single words. --Anatoli (обсудить) 03:11, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
The first requirement is that we have a good English dictionary that responds to the needs of English users without wasting their time. If you made arguments about the presence or absence of the terms in monolingual dictionaries, it would be easier to agree. The sole monolingual consideration that you raise is also unhelpful: a collocation like "broken chair" would also meet your common-item criterion. DCDuring TALK 10:35, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Are we wasting the time of English users? We would be if we had a policy that required all users to read every single definition in the dictionary. However, we have no such policy, so English users will likely never see definitions for terms that they are not looking up. Presumably, those who do look up birthday card or Christmas card are doing so because they are fuzzy on the meaning and would like to see a definition. Usage statistics might be helpful to see whether these definitions are actually being sought out. bd2412 T 14:31, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
  • Two arguments that could bring these discussions to a close are:
    1. The attestability of Christmascard and birthdaycard.
    2. The inclusion of Christmas card and birthday card in other monolingual dictionaries.
Such arguments may not be intellectually satisfying or involve sophisticated analysis of what constitutes an idiom, but they are definitive or close to it. DCDuring TALK 10:43, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, I have found a definition for one in Cambridge dictionary. Will come back when/if I find for the other. "Broken chair" is a free collocation, I understand your exaggeration but it's not valid. --Anatoli (обсудить) 23:41, 25 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
Here are some definitions of Christmas card in English monolingual dictionaries:
  1. Cambridge dictionary: a decorated card that you send to someone at Christmas.
  2. Merriam-Webster dictionary: a greeting card sent at Christmas. (a "greeting card" definition: a piece of paper or thin cardboard having any of a variety of shapes and formats and bearing a greeting or message of sentiment
My search for the definition of birthday card hasn't produced anything yet (I didn't search thoroughly, though) but I found a few instances of birthdaycard (solid) in Google book searches. --Anatoli (обсудить) 05:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)Reply
We can define it if we know we want it. It is just a question of whether other dictionaries have it (and also which ones). I use OneLook (eg, birthday card”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.) for that kind of lemming check. It's easy enough to do. WordNet tends to be the most inclusive of multi-word terms. DCDuring TALK 06:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Actually, we need to update these definitions. I've received plenty of birthday cards and holiday cards in my email, and obviously those were not folded pieces of paper, but only electronic versions of the decorations and messages. If someone sends you an email that says "Get well soon", you wouldn't say they sent you a card, but if they sent the same email with the text in the middle of a big, brightly colored rectangle festooned with pictures of balloons and puppies, then you very well might say they sent you a "card". As it happens, I also have a "credit card" that is not an actual card, but is a fob on my keychain. If I sent you one of those for Christmas, you wouldn't think of it as a Christmas card. Therefore I would suggest that there are a lot of things out there which can be called a "card" these days which are not the traditional pieces of stiff paper, and we must reflect which of those collocations support these broader definitions. bd2412 T 14:46, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

If it comes to that, if your birthday present or Christmas present to me were a credit card (or a hand-held tool for preparing materials for spinning), I wouldn't think of that as a birthday card or Christmas card either. Still, we want to avoid arguments like "red house isn't SOP because it doesn't mean 'communist dynasty'" too; just because a collocation of "X Y" can only refer to a subset of the definitions of X and a subset of the definitions of Y doesn't necessarily mean that that collocation is idiomatic. —Angr 15:50, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Red has a sense for communism and house has a sense for dynasty. Do we need to add a sense at card indicating an electronic salutation with some elements of the presentation of a traditional paper card? Actually, it's beyond that now, as there are e-cards that contain sound and animation. bd2412 T 16:37, 4 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Keep. They are transparent but fixed enough in the modern Western culture. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 03:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Keep birthday card. It's not a card stating your date of birth, is it? Worth defining. This, that and the other (talk) 02:28, 19 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Keep - since I have commented here, but not actually voted, here is my vote. bd2412 T 19:08, 8 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

Kept. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 08:24, 14 September 2012 (UTC)Reply