Talk:all pervading

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all pervading

Adjective: "Pervasive. Everywhere at once." Besides the definition being worded both as adjective and adverb or noun phrase, the headword seems SoP to me. There are a fairly large number of verbs whose -ing forms are used with all in this way. A perfectly good, more accurate, and transparently SoP definition is "pervading everything". And, of course, as is usually the case in uses of all and everything, they do not actually mean literally "every thing": they need to be interpreted contextually. DCDuring TALK 18:43, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

At the very least, this should be moved to all-pervading, since it seems to be afflicted with the all-too-common condition I like to call hyphen-deficit disorder. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:43, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Okay, we're trying to be descriptive, but I want to see strong evidence (many citations) before creating such an entry that defies traditional (and coherent) grammar. Equinox ◑ 01:46, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

The entry all lists it as an adverb. Although hyphenating an adverb that modifies an adjective that modifies a noun is common as in "well-known fact," I don't see any reason why it has to be that way. You can make the argument that the adverb and adjective are a single unit modifying the subsequent noun and therefore the hyphen is required, but I prefer not using the hyphen. It seems like doing so results in things like "The quickly-running girl" and "a very-young boy." --BB12 (talk) 02:51, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

"The quickly-running girl" looks right to me, but "a very-young boy" doesn't. I would guess that's because running- although it may function as an adjective- is a verb form. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:04, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I think both look wrong. Trying "quickly-running X" using boy, girl, car and horse on GB, one had the hyphen and the others did not. The total number of hits was small, though, about 10, so further investigation might be useful. Other combinations that look bad to me: "a horribly-running car," "an oddly-talking man" and "a loudly-barking dog." --BB12 (talk) 03:40, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

@BB12: There does exist an adverb all, but that's not what this is. This is the determiner (pronoun) all in its sense of “everything”, and it's functioning here as the direct object of pervading: all-pervading means “pervading everything”, just as tree-hugging means “hugging trees”. —Ruakh_TALK 03:09, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it can be a determiner as those modify nouns. I looked at the OED, which says under the adverb meanings: "Whence, as true adverb modifying adjectives or adverbs: Wholly, completely, altogether, quite" with one of the examples: "All-agog to have me trespass." The entry is obviously quite old and needs updating, but I find it really difficult to believe this is a determiner or adjective sense. Also, the AHD has "Wholly; completely: a room painted all white; directions that were all wrong." --BB12 (talk) 03:34, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

As I understand CGEL, determiners alone are considered to constitute fused-head noun phrases. This gives us meanings like "everything" or "all (of the items or stuff under discussion)". This kind of usage pervades all of English. DCDuring TALK 04:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Deleted. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:15, 16 August 2012 (UTC)