Talk:belly button ring

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RfD discussion[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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.


Surely any ring can be known by where it is worn. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. I would have thought that the phrase referred to a ring around the belly button, perhaps a hygienic condition. bd2412 T 15:31, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I doubt that we can satisfy radical lexicalists with any finite set of entries. I also doubt that such radicals are willing to admit to the full implications of their stated position.
    This seems to me to be instance of the syntax of English noun phrases with semantic elements, such as might be illustrated with usage examples. Any ring can be known by various attributive modifiers, usually indicating something atypical (not *ring finger ring) in one dimension or other. In this case it is location. Common, but atypical locations (pinky, nose, labia, lip) are not really any more meritorious of entry than uncommon, atypical entries like thumb ring, toe ring. Other attributives for this sense of ring indicate material (gold), symbolic association (school, wedding), distinguishing decorative or symbolic element (diamond). Body position, when present, seems to want to be closest to ring: a gold belly-button ring rather than *a belly-button gold ring. If we are going to use lexical entries to illustrate so many syntactic-grammatical features and restrictions we would need literally thousands of entries for this sense of ring alone. DCDuring TALK 16:01, 23 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Are there thousands of terms like this that have a CFI-worthy number of citations? bd2412 T 02:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you want to bet on the relative frequency of this particular collocation? We could bet on there being hundreds of collocations using this sense of ring, some of which are idiomatic, at least under COALMINE. The selection of such terms that we now make seems motivated by a combination of frequency and topicality to our contributors, who seem strongly motivated, as in this case, by hormones. DCDuring TALK 03:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Pick a dozen or two dozen and see how many Google Books hits you get. For starters, I tried out "platinum belly button ring" and "belly button platinum ring" and got zero CFI-worthy hits for either. I don't think we would need "a gold belly-button ring" anyway. If the current definition of belly button ring holds, then the pertinent sense of gold, whether preceding or in the middle of the phrase, would be obvious. bd2412 T 04:40, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and see #toe ring. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:02, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know how to think about this, yet. Similar entries seem to be finger ring, nose ring, neck ring, toe ring, tongue ring, and redlinked ankle ring (google books:"ankle ring"), and thumb ring (google books:"thumb ring"). Of course, there is solid-spelled earring, kept per being solid-spelled. Some of these may be protected by WT:COALMINE. What I find at OneLook dictionaries is this: nose ring”, in OneLook Dictionary Search..

    In any case, right now, ring entry does not seem to have a suitable sense with respect to which "belly button ring" is a sum of parts; it could be the most generic sense, but image search shows that a belly button ring does not need to have the shape of a ring. Thus, the sense of "ring" enabling the sum-of-parts claim would probably be one generically referring to jewelry or ornamentation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Toe rings and belly button rings are not as common in the West as earrings but they are words, common jewellery items in many countries where both terms are often expressed in solid words (with no spaces). Keep. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:20, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete SOP. — Ungoliant (Falai) 22:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Kept, no consensus to delete. bd2412 T 04:02, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]