Talk:long and hard

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long and hard

SOP. (WF.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:50, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It's quite common but I have nothing other than that to defend it. Delete. Oh and for novices, WF = User:Wonderfool (permanently blocked user). Mglovesfun (talk) 19:11, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I am relieved to be able to report that no OneLook reference has it. OTOH, this collocation should appear in a usage example or citation at long#Adverb and hard#Adverb. DCDuring TALK 20:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

To make something explicit:

1. "long and hard" is more than 4 times as common as "hard and long" at bgc.
2. "long and hard" appears in books of cliches/phrases to avoid. DCDuring TALK 20:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

This may look like an SoP, but let's take apart the three words that compose this phrase. "long" is different from the specific definition of a physical length (meters) in that it refers to a length of time (seconds) and "hard" is different from the idea of being physically able to resist force in that it refers to the (perhaps) grammatically incorrect definition of "difficult". WT:CFI#Idiomaticity somewhat addresses this ambiguity in expressing that "Compounds are generally idiomatic, even when the meaning can be clearly expressed in terms of the parts. The reason is that the parts often have several possible senses, but the compound is often restricted to only some combinations of them." TeleComNasSprVen 02:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Correct, though that criterion is consistently rejected by the community. And here's why, long and hard is also attestable to mean "long in length" and "hard, dense, solid" (etc.) on Google Books. The problem with such an entry is if we allow one definitions that is sum of parts even by WT:CFI standards, how can you exclude other sum of parts definitions that are also attestable? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Delete. As long as meaning is readily apparent, we don't include terms just because there are multiple senses for component words. There would have to be ambiguity somewhere. DAVilla 07:45, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Like TeleComNasSprVen says, accord to CFI, we do! Mglovesfun (talk) 12:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The CFI he quoted says "often", not in every case, and from that point actually goes into examples, explaining why "bank parking lot" isn't idiomatic even though "bank" has several meanings. DAVilla 15:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

deleted. -- Prince Kassad 10:45, 18 March 2011 (UTC)