Talk:Morgan Freeman
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Metaknowledge in topic RFD discussion: July–October 2020
The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).
It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.
Not an adjective, and all quotes quite obviously refer to Morgan Freeman. Listen to Morgan Freeman's voice and make your own conclusions; there's nothing lexical here. PUC – 15:51, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Or, from another angle: you can't know what is meant if you don't know who Morgan Freeman is and don't listen to his voice. To me that's proof that it hasn't entered the English lexicon. PUC – 15:58, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Delete as it stands. Not adjective, agreed. Could conceivably move it to a noun entry like M~ F~ voice if we really think that's so commonly used that people who never heard of the person would use the phrase. Equinox ◑ 15:53, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- As creator of the entry, I believe it should be kept. See also this discussion on Dan Polansky's talk page. All quotes about Darth Vader refer to Star Wars as well. If you don't know who Darth Vader is you can't understand that either. I came to this entry because I was trying to say something, trying to explain the kind of voice that was needed for a voice-over. I couldn't quite find the words I was looking for, until I thought "Morgan Freeman". Perfectly described the kind of deep voice I meant, it didn't mean "go hire Morgan Freeman", and I figured I wasn't the first to think of that. After some further consideration, I also believe this entry is useful for future generations who may not know Morgan Freeman. Imagine you are reading a text from the 1960s that says "and he said with an Alan Reed voice" (now when you look him up you may or may not find you have actually heard his voice, depending on how old you are) or "and she said with a Penny Singleton voice" (which I think won't mean much to most people nowadays), it would be useful to be able to look it up. (I don't know if these examples are attestable, but Morgan Freeman in this sense is) Morgan Freeman gets used in text that is otherwise completely unrelated to Freeman, it assumes the reader knows what it means, like it assumes the reader knows what "voice" means. Alexis Jazz (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- "I also believe this entry is useful for future generations who may not know Morgan Freeman": we're not supposed to make predictions and to create an entry because of something that might happen in the future. PUC – 16:35, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- I forgot to mention the Germans. I bet a fair number of Germans don't know what Morgan Freeman sounds like. Also, might? Is English Wiktionary different from Dutch Wiktionary and does it not aim to provide historical knowledge, only current terms? Or are you suggesting that Morgan Freeman is immortal? (well.. that's open for debate I guess, I mean, after all, he is God..) Alexis Jazz (talk) 16:51, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Another example: if we leave our America-centric viewpoints behind for a moment, imagine you are reading a German text and encountered something like "eine Friedel Morgenstern Stimme". (again, no idea if this particular example is attestable or not) I would surely like being able to look that up. Alexis Jazz (talk) 17:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- "I also believe this entry is useful for future generations who may not know Morgan Freeman": we're not supposed to make predictions and to create an entry because of something that might happen in the future. PUC – 16:35, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Note: I've changed the entry to attributive noun, as that is the correct PoS if I understood Dan Polansky correctly. Not many names are attestable for this kind of attributive noun, so this doesn't mean tons of names would be added. Alan Reed might be attestable (though I have doubts), Penny Singleton probably isn't. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse should be easy to attest. James Earl Jones may also be attestable. But I can't even say for sure whether or not Elvis Presley would be attestable. So, limited. Alexis Jazz (talk) 16:51, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Delete. Most names of well-known people could be used in this way. Take, for example, an "Albert Einstein intellect" or a "William Shakespeare style of writing." But that doesn't mean we should create those entries. Imetsia (talk) 17:05, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- For every subject/field there is only a very limited number of names that can be used in this manner while also being attestable in sources that are not otherwise related to the subject. Talking about a "Tiger Woods swing" in a golf magazine is more likely to refer more directly to the person, while "she grabbed the broom and knocked him down with a Tiger Woods swing" would be completely unrelated. And in such an instance, Tiger Woods is part of the language. His persona is irrelevant, his name has been reduced to the qualities of his swing. Alexis Jazz (talk) 17:19, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- If we should have this entry, then probably as a proper noun defined as "an American actor and film narrator noted for his clear, calm and deep voice" or the like, but then it fails WT:NSE's "No individual person should be listed as a sense in any entry whose page title includes both a given name or diminutive and a family name or patronymic." Defining it as an adjective seems like a workaround around WT:NSE. Do we have any other such entry for a real person? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:33, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Delete per Dan. Examples are clearly in contravention of NSE. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:35, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Delete. We have Arnold Schwarzenegger. This might appear to have a more clearly detached sense than Morgan Freeman, but I remark that by employing names as a different part of speech we cannot work around the restrictions for names of specific entities and at best it is only semantic genericity that permits us such entries. Conversion is easy. “Then he went fully G.W.F. Hegel.” – “He considered to stage a Timothy McVeigh.” – “When I told him about our using Windows, this freetard went completely Richard Stallman.” – “When will Trump pull a Caesar Augustus? He could at least pull an Oliver Cromwell.” (As you might read in Nrxn publications.) Etc., etc. This semantic genericity needed is hardly measurable however, a fact Dan Polansky does not like. There is no stringency here, Morgan Freeman seems about to be deleted while Arnold Schwarzenegger stays, for very opaque reasoning. Fay Freak (talk) 18:22, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- If it was up to me, I would delete Arnold too; I don't see anything lexical/genericised in there. PUC – 21:08, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- The above examples do not seem to be from actual use, e.g. google:"went completely Richard Stallman" finds nothing, and so does google:"He could at least pull an Oliver Cromwell". Whatever these examples were supposed to demonstrate, they are not actual uses found in the corpora. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:42, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
- Obviously, because I made them up to show a pattern. Similar things have been said. What has been demonstrated is that one can use any name of an individual characterized by having done or having been something to denote what he is characterized for, provided that the audience got the facts about the individual – often only people with a certain education or certain readings understand: as Dan Polansky not everyone understood every allusion I gave, people who do not know what free software is (shockingly many; basic education is rare) would not understand a text about “a Richard Stallman” as in the example, most however understand in context what “an Arnold Schwarzenegger” is because for this one just needs to know that there is a bodybuilder of that name. Whereas in contrast a sentence like “Let us pray that Trump Senior becomes Caesar Augustus, and Trump Junior becomes Emperor Constantine” stays dark to most people (what this real example implies is basically that Augustus and Constantine were persons who threw the holiness spiral particularly far back – yes, now it has become really obscure, but that’s the usual style in the Dark Enlightenment and you might see the point –, but somehow a vocabulary of such names is unsuited for a dictionary audience, regardless of its form of attestation; I mean not only because one should not enable entryism with such entries, but due to the project goal of not letting the dictionary intersect with encyclopediae, and this thought goes with every name of a specific entity). The mere replaceability of Arnold Schwarzenegger with a concept like muscleman, the fact that it is understood by many sharply, fooled people into believing the term passed an (imaginary) threshold by which its inclusion is more than a name of a specific entity that violates WT:NSE. Fay Freak (talk) 00:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- Things made up can hardly demonstrate anything about actual term usage; they may at best remind us of some actual usage. As for the inclusion of Arnold Schwarzenegger, we have to remember that CFI has changed since the entry was created and since it passed its RFD in 2009. The hammer that can now be used to delete the entry was introduced in Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-12/Names of individuals, where voters probably did not realize they will create a discongruence in that Darth Vader can be pulled in via a certain principle (existence of use in "attributive sense") while the same principle would no longer be afforded to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I would argue that the principle should be applied to both Darth Vader and Arnold Schwarzenegger or to none. I would further argue that Arnold Schwarzenegger should not be defined as "muscleman" but rather as "An Austrian-American bodybuilder and actor noted for highly muscular body" or the like, a definition that both identifies the individual and the characteristics that can be picked by metaphorical uses. To my mind, Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-12/Names of individuals did not solve any burning problem and was basically unnecessary. We now have a problem in CFI that we should try to fix somehow. Interestingly, Lexico[1] does feature Arnold Schwarzenegger as an entry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:18, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- Obviously, because I made them up to show a pattern. Similar things have been said. What has been demonstrated is that one can use any name of an individual characterized by having done or having been something to denote what he is characterized for, provided that the audience got the facts about the individual – often only people with a certain education or certain readings understand: as Dan Polansky not everyone understood every allusion I gave, people who do not know what free software is (shockingly many; basic education is rare) would not understand a text about “a Richard Stallman” as in the example, most however understand in context what “an Arnold Schwarzenegger” is because for this one just needs to know that there is a bodybuilder of that name. Whereas in contrast a sentence like “Let us pray that Trump Senior becomes Caesar Augustus, and Trump Junior becomes Emperor Constantine” stays dark to most people (what this real example implies is basically that Augustus and Constantine were persons who threw the holiness spiral particularly far back – yes, now it has become really obscure, but that’s the usual style in the Dark Enlightenment and you might see the point –, but somehow a vocabulary of such names is unsuited for a dictionary audience, regardless of its form of attestation; I mean not only because one should not enable entryism with such entries, but due to the project goal of not letting the dictionary intersect with encyclopediae, and this thought goes with every name of a specific entity). The mere replaceability of Arnold Schwarzenegger with a concept like muscleman, the fact that it is understood by many sharply, fooled people into believing the term passed an (imaginary) threshold by which its inclusion is more than a name of a specific entity that violates WT:NSE. Fay Freak (talk) 00:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- Delete as it stands; it's clearly not an adjective, it fails tests of adjectivalness, and some of the citations even pluralize it. Should there be a noun sense? Eh. CFI suggests not (as noted above) and I'm sceptical that it is, or that people would expect to find it as, dictionary content; probably a
{{no entry}}soft redirect to Wikipedia is sufficient. - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:50, 4 October 2020 (UTC)