Talk:landless

Deletion debate

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It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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landless

Noun: Those not owning land. The ability to form such nouns is a feature of the grammar of adjectives, though I am not sure of the scope of this feature (many/most/nearly all adjectives ?). DCDuring TALK 18:45, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd ditch it. The rich, the aged, the poor, the old, the unhappy. Using an adjective this way seems to be a feature of grammar, though I'm not an expert. Equinox ◑ 18:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Delete, redundant. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:58, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, provided that the example of noun use is moved under "adjective" section. I believe landless is used as noun more than most other adjectives. The landless are an important group of people in many of the world's developing economies. --Hekaheka 09:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure, but not the sole or first usex. After all, the slightly longer "landless class" is perfectly acceptable, even preferable, English, especially for first mention in a text. How a language supports economy of expression is largely beyond the desirable scope of a lexicon.

I can't see how we can can have a multilingual dictionary that can accommodate the whole range of encoding issues faced by translators from every language. That is, not without rendering the English section unusable, not just for monolingual users, but for all. DCDuring TALK 10:46, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Delete per everyone, and move the usex to the other sense per Hekaheka and DCDuring.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:25, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Keep of course why couldn't it become a substantive? the rich, the poor even, would object to such discrimination... --Diligent 12:53, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Virtually all English adjectives can be used as substantives in the way that this is, just as virtually all English nouns can be used attributively. We try to avoid the pointless (and misleading) duplication of content between noun and adjective entries by making sure that an noun used attributively also show some other attribute of being an adjective (See Wiktionary:English adjectives.). It is possible that for some adjectives, especially those with good publicists, we should have a usage note to indicate that its is often used substantively. Do you have any thoughts as to what level of relative frequency would warrant a separate noun header and definitions, what other, lesser level would warrant a usage note, and where we should note the point of syntax that allows all adjectives to be used as substantives in a fairly predictable way. DCDuring TALK 13:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Sense removed.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2010 (UTC)