Talk:come in

Is there a reason there are no translations here? You can go look up "enter" but that also means "go in". Siuenti (talk) 17:50, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

RFD discussion: October 2014

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come in

Tagged but not listed. 'To enter'. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:07, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd say keep, in this sense it's not merely come followed immediately by in. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:03, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

How's that? DCDuring TALK 18:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I have nothing against the inclusion of come in personally, but if we go by the rules here, I'd have to ask:

What makes "come in" any different than "go in", "get in", "sit in (as in, of a chair)" or the like? What makes it worthy of an entry separate from its parts? Tharthan (talk) 18:34, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Strong keep. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:44, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

@Tharthan WT:CFI#Idiomaticity may cover this: "An expression is idiomatic if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components." However if come in isn't an expression then it still has to be idiomatic, just we have no guidelines for what this actually means. Basically it's just your opinion. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:11, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

• Keep Purplebackpack89 17:23, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

@Renard Migrant That's fair enough. I wasn't asking for deletion anyways, either. Tharthan (talk) 17:38, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Why are English compound verbs targeted again? They don't have to be idiomatic. "come in" or "go in" are common English verbs, included in most dictionaries, just like German "hereinkommen", Dutch "binnengaan", etc. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:09, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• For all the whining and whingeing about phrasal verbs, they are notably devoid of translation tables. There is exactly one sense that is in question, the one that is the simple combination of come#Verb and in#Adverb. You can go to town providing translations for all the other senses, although I predict that at least 8 of the next ten RfDs for phrasal verb senses the translation tables, if any, will be empty or close to it, for any sense in the entry. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

What is this outburst for? I voted keep because it's an English verb, which doesn't require any proof of idiomaticity, not because of translations, which sit at "enter". Defined at Cambridge, Macmillan, Merriam-Webster and numerous other dictionaries. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:06, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Re: edit summary: "start providing translations for phrasal verbs". I do but this kind of RFD's are discouraging. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Atitarev "What is this outburst for?" For: "Why are English compound verbs targeted again?" = whingeing and whining IMO.

@Atitarev "an English verb, which doesn't require any proof of idiomaticity". The issue, if you had chosen to notice, is whether one specific sense is come#Verb + in#Adverb.

@Atitarev "Defined at ... Merriam-Webster": MW doesn't have an "enter" sense. We have decided not to follow the lemming rule (which I had proposed) for automatic inclusion based on lemmings alone.

"Enter" cannot be assumed to be a satisfactory translation or definition as it omits the critical deictic function of expressions using go and come. The very same action can be both a "coming in" and a "going in", but the meaning is different as the first puts the audience and/or speaker in the position toward which the action is directed and the second, more weakly, puts them in the position away from which the action is directed. In contrast, for the idiomatic senses of come in the deixis inherited from come is essentially lost. I think that any entry that advances non-idiomatic expressions as idiomatic condemns learner and translator to unwittingly demonstrating their non-native status as speakers. DCDuring TALK 18:06, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Anatoli T., native English speakers notoriously have only a weak sense of their own language. Unless they are linguists or have a lot of practical experience with dictionaries, they usually do not know that come in is a basic English verb. They think it is just come + in. Because this is such a pervasive trait among this group, any time we get a new editor you should expect this kind of challenge to pop up over and over concerning words that they fail to recognize as words. If you do a lot of work on words such as come in, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of stress and grief. At any moment, some green editor may come along and delete all your hard work. My advice is to avoid doing any work on these more complex terms. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:29, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephen. I think it's not a complex but quite a basic verb, used in any foreign language - English dictionary. The danger of RFD is actually for any compound word, so any work can be lost as a result of an RFD. I wonder where this "...We have decided not to follow the lemming rule..." is. Where's the link? P.S. I find DCDuring's post whingeing, not mine, I am just trying to protect an English term, which should be English speakers' responsibility first of all. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:49, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I am a bit more optimistic, Stephen. We have managed to keep a lot of entries that multiple editors would prefer deleted. Your boldfaced keeps, as far as available, help us doing that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:34, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Clearly keep. Ƿidsiþ 12:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

The "danger" is in failing to differentiate the idiomatic from the non-idiomatic. Just because you've got the votes and can reassure each other doesn't mean you are right.

But, more constructively, do we need entries for other comparable "phrasal verb" senses such as drive in ("enter by car"), amble in ("enter with a casual gait"), climb in ("enter into a place requiring one or more steps up")? If we do not, could someone help this poor benighted monoglot by explaining why? DCDuring TALK 12:43, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I personally don't have a definite answer to this at the moment but I consider "to come in" in its primary meaning "to enter" a word, additional meanings are all derived from the primary sense. That's why it's better to use the Lemming approach. Some compound verbs with "in" should be kept/created as well, even if no additional meaning is introduced. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:11, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

After your opening clause, you are just begging the question and making an unreasoned advocacy. DCDuring TALK 15:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Keep "come in" seems like a special case, since it behaves a bit differently from the standard verb "come" + "in". "As soon as I came in, I smelled smoke" is idiomatic and means "As soon as I entered, I smelled smoke" even if the speaker is not currently in the place where they smelled the smoke, while "As soon as I came, I smelled smoke" does not (to my ears) mean "As soon as I arrived, I smelled smoke" unless perhaps the speaker is in the place where they can smell smoke right now (or perhaps is talking about a fire in the bedroom...) since "come" normally has various weird restrictions pertaining to the locations of the speaker and the listener. Most other verbs of motion don't have these kinds of restrictions, and so we probably don't need to define them all separately. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

  So, this inclusion rationale depends on the peculiarities of the deixis involved with come, but we punt on actually presenting them. We just pass the user on to enter, which has no such restrictions. We are saying in our entries that go in and come in are synonymous in the literal motion senses

BTW, out entry for go ignores the difference in deixis as well. At least the first sense of come somewhat addresses it. DCDuring TALK 12:36, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

You're right - our article for come is currently in bad shape. I've had a go at fixing it up a bit, although there's only so much detail one can go into about the nuances of English deixis before it gets overwhelming. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:08, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

(Although my point was more that come in is more synonymous with enter than "come + in" would be, because it seems to be less affected by deixis - at the very least, it seems to mean "to enter one's home" regardless of where one is in relation to the home. But maybe come has additional deitic nuances when talking about homes - "I hope the vandals don't come while we're abroad"?) Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:26, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

All the subtle/complex deixitic properties of go and come are inherited by the basic, spatial, literal senses of all the combinations of those verbs and adverb-particles that our entries present as phrasal verbs. I hope we will be cleaning all of them up so that, when translations are finally provided, they will not neglect deixis and need to be tediously and slowly corrected.

Are there languages that do not have this kind of go/come distinction? DCDuring TALK 14:50, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Oh, one other reason to keep: in colloquial/dialectal English you can say, for example, google books:"He came in the house" to mean "He entered the house". Literally, sum-of-parts, it's grammatically incorrect - it should be "He came into the house" - but it seems pretty common in a lot of (especially American?) speech. At least two presidents have done it (although I'll agree that Carter and Bush are not perhaps the most famously articulate of presidents). Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:34, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

That is a property of in#Preposition. For example, One can say He went in the room, He walked in the room, etc. Such expressions can be ambiguous depending on what other meanings might be plausible in a usage context, eg, He came in the bedroom. DCDuring TALK 15:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

• Keep the sense "to enter". Present in Collins[1], Macmillan[2], dictionary.cambridge.org[3]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:34, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Kept. There is no reasonable possibility of a consensus to delete arising at this point. bd2412 T 18:10, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

come in handy

Is any meaning identifiable in come in handy? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)