Talk:armchair

RFD discussion: March–April 2019

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armchair

A modifier, not an adjective. Should be moved to the noun. DonnanZ (talk) 12:11, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree this is not an adjective but a figurative sense of the noun. But the listed senses are adjectival, so they cannot be simply moved without adjustment. It seems a bit of a puzzle how to phrase a nominal figurative sense.  --Lambiam 18:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Lambiam: See another case at Talk:blanket (and yet another at Talk:cookie-cutter, although there it's further down the road of adjectivization).

@Donnanz, I think you're being inconsistent: why would you want to keep the figurative use of blanket in an adjective section, and not do the same for armchair? Chignon – Пучок 19:41, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately some dictionaries do treat it as an adjective, e.g. Merriam-Webster, Collins, so I am withdrawing the RFD, even though I don't necessarily agree. This is still a horribly grey area though. DonnanZ (talk) 20:53, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I can find a few (five, so far) very adjectival uses: Citations:armchair#adjectival. - -sche (discuss) 10:32, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@-sche: Nice! I couldn't find any when I looked. As I have said before, I really think these should be a prerequisite for (to?) having adjective sections. Chignon – Пучок 12:02, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately we can also fairly readily find examples such as:

"Taking on Reagan in the most Reagan of ways."
"That was shaping up to be a very England kind of loss."
"He's definitely a lot more city than I am."

Does this mean that "Reagan", "England" and "city" are also adjectives? Despite the examples, I am still unconvinced that "armchair" is a true adjective. Mihia (talk) 19:01, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. I sympathize, but I think it this case we have three veins of evidence for adjectivity coming together: it's attested in adjectival ways, it's accepted by other authorities as an adjective (Cambridge, Collins, Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Longman), and the definitions are adjectival ― how would you reword them to be noun definitions, "(when modifying or describing another word) A notional chair in which one sits when one is being [insert the definition that would be used without that preface if it were an adjective]"? To me it seems more in accordance with Occam's razor to take it as an adjective. Perhaps "Reagan" is sometimes an adjective, too, I don't know; people do play around with parts of speech, e.g. "Jesus" is a verb (as may be "armchair", judging by google books:"(armchairing|armchaired)"). (Actually, perhaps our second definition of Jesus#Verb should be deleted, but sense 1 seems valid.) - -sche (discuss) 20:59, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I would label the noun sense "attributive" and define it indirectly as e.g. "Denotes someone who ... etc.", and also probably add a note "as if relaxing in an armchair while doing so", or something like that, to explain where the figurative meaning comes from. Mihia (talk) 20:18, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

• RFD retracted and therefore RFD kept, for a boldface record. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:55, 14 April 2019 (UTC)