Talk:dandelion clock

RFD discussion: October–November 2016

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

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.

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dandelion clock

This may not seem SOP- until you look at clock and see definition #4: "The seed head of a dandelion". I'm not sure about the second sense, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:50, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Sense 2 confirmed here [1]. DonnanZ (talk) 08:42, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep. And the second sense is a well-known tradition here in England. I would say that the entry at "clock" is the more dubious one. Is the word "clock" ever used in isolation to mean this? Mihia (talk) 20:38, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Maybe in the first place. The term originated from the game. Keep all anyway. DonnanZ (talk) 21:03, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Provisional keep per Mihia. That sense of clock needs verifying before we go and delete this (the second definition will obviously survive no matter what). Renard Migrant (talk) 14:04, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Like Mihia, I have only ever heard "dandelion clock" and not "clock" alone. Equinox ◑ 15:01, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

google books:"clock of a dandelion" does barely have enough hits to cite it, but like Mihia says, is it ever used in isolation to mean dandelion clock? That is, not followed by 'of a dandelion' or preceded by 'dandelion'? Renard Migrant (talk) 22:48, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hmmm. I'm going to say delete dandelion clock because it does seem to be sum-of-parts. I was able to locate the following quotations which seem to use clock in the sense of a seed head. Two of the quotations to mention the word in relation to the dandelion, but not in the exact form dandelion clock.
  • [2]: "Its magic is as delicate as a dandelion's ‘clock’ or seed-bearing head – one touch and it will fly into a thousand fragments."
  • [3]: "Without you, would I bother to see / The dandelion's clock of perfect stars?"
  • [4]: "The old flower head forms a blowball or ‘clock’ of fuzz-topped seeds, larger and more like a ball than the blowball of a dandelion and having the appearance of a geodesic dome."
• — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:08, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

On the blog Separated by a Common Language of Lynne Murphy (aka Lynneguist) there has been thread on the word (Lynne is quite insistent that it's one word, and lexical semantics is her business) dandelion clock. For the majority of British speakers — quite likely all of us — clock is no longer used for what the OED defines as a trivial name for the pappus of the dandelion or similar composite flower. The only term we use is dandelion clock. Semantically, there's no question in my mind that it warrants an entry. On more practical grounds, what would be the point of tucking dandelion clock away in a place where people are most unlikely to look for it? If you come across dandelion clock and don't know what it means, you might just look it up under dandelion, but it would seem silly to look up the meaning of clock.

To counter those citations of clock, here are the Oxford Dictionaries Online quotations for dandelion clock

'Who too has not, as a child, picked a dandelion clock and blown away the seeds while making a wish?’

‘Its head looks like a dandelion clock, from which flows a long tail which broadens and splits about a degree or so along its length.’

‘His hair is grey and frothy, like a dandelion clock, but he carries his turbulent past and 66 years lightly.’

‘But it disappeared quickly, that top layer of irritation, blown away by the sea breezes as easily as the wind blows the fluff from a dandelion clock.’

‘From the grass and dandelion clock (a visual joke) in the background the reader grasps the rabbit as rather larger than normal bunny size: about the size of a toddler or small child, perhaps.’

The OED gives several quotes of which the stand-out is

You could blow her away like a dandelion clock in the summer fields.

Dandelion clock may unfamiliar to American speakers — even to a lexical semanticist like Lynne Murphy — but it's a very common British English word.--DavidCrosbie (talk) 19:18, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep, by the way. I think it's a far commoner name for the thing than "clock", and probably came first. And hey, we've kept worse SoPs, like "prime number". Equinox ◑ 19:23, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

What quite possibly should be deleted is sense [2]. I haven't seen any evidence of dandelion clock being used to denote the game as opposed to the thing. The common meaning of the word is the flower in the condition that makes it usable in the game. Sense [1] also needs to be tweaked, I believe. The "white seed head of a dandelion after flowering" would never be called a dandelion clock unless the speaker/writer wanted to allude to the game.--DavidCrosbie (talk) 11:51, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Keep but merge the two definitions. SemperBlotto (talk) 11:57, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I've made an attempt at just that.--DavidCrosbie (talk) 18:10, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Kept; adjustment of definitions in the entry is up to the editorial judgment of any editor wishing to take on that task. bd2412 T 16:15, 6 November 2016 (UTC)