Talk:no-

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

RFD discussion: October 2018–March 2019[edit]

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.


Not a prefix, nor slang as claimed. (And how "no-no" is supposed to fit the definition is anyone's guess.) Equinox 21:43, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think one of the issues with this entry is that the examples are a bit of a ragbag of different things. I guess the most common "no-" words are compound modifiers such as in "no-fault divorce" or "no-nonsense approach". To the extent that these are comparable to "low-margin business" or "wide-field camera", it may be seen as a regular feature of the English language rather than a true prefix. On the other hand, there are also the cases like "no-show", "no-ball", "no-op", "no-trumps", which are different in that they are not (only) modifiers, albeit there may be a question about how productive this usage is. "no-brainer" may be different again since there is no such thing as a "brainer" in a relevant sense. "no-no" is obviously misplaced. Mihia (talk) 13:00, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I shouldn't have said "all", since [[no-no] is probably reduplication of no. "no-ball" are poor examples, because they aren't always hyphenated. As for the others, there's some kind of reduction going on in many of these phrases. In modifier phrases, inflection seems often to be lost: it's not a three-pieces suit or a does-nothing/did-nothing administration. Perhaps something analogous is happening to not. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:55, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]