Talk:have to try twice as hard just to stay standing

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Zero native Google hits for the term (in quotes). SemperBlotto (talk) 16:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

They're trying (unsuccessfully) to express a common figure of speech based on the line from Through the Looking Glass where the Red Queen says: "it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. And, if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast". It's basically a snowclone: you have to [verb] twice as [fast/hard/etc.] to stay [in one place/where you are/even/etc]. I think there's an entry in there somewhere, but this obviously isn't it. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes. There are quite a few Google hits for (deprecated template usage) run twice as fast just to stay in the same place for example. SemperBlotto (talk) 16:41, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that a quote (or at least a near paraphrase) from Through the Looking-Glass? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:09, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't even see a figure of speech other than stay standing. I would have RFD'd this as SOP. --WikiTiki89 17:35, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

It looks like a snowclone, as Chuck says, perhaps in the form he recommends. We could keep it as such in Appendix:Snowclones. This particular form might not make it in principal namespece if it doesn't get any hits in Books. DCDuring TALK 01:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Even stay standing can be rephrase remain standing, keep standing so it's SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:59, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't even seem like a snowclone to me. It's just an idea that can be expressed with a variety of phrasings. It doesn't seem idiomatic enough to be a snowclone. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Construction grammarians would say that an ideal dictionary would have a way of accommodating such things, but their efforts to exemplify such an entry seem to me to have a lot of hand waving. And I don't know how one would be assured of finding the entry one might look for. The best I could imagine would be to have examples redirect to an appendix that had the general form of the construction with some kind of explanation of the restricted sent of possibilities for filling in the slots. This is not an example I would pick to try out the idea. DCDuring TALK 00:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Failed RFV. Equinox ◑ 18:27, 10 May 2014 (UTC)