Talk:ride the ... train
Latest comment: 4 years ago by BD2412 in topic RFD discussion: November 2018–March 2020
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Uuuuggghhh. Serious WTF-age. Meh, we cooouuuld move this to train. --XY3999 (talk) 23:04, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
- Shouldn’t this first go to rfv? The WTF-ness does not determine the idiomaticity. BTW, you’ll also find surf the AI wave and jump on the AI bandwagon. --Lambiam 07:39, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
- Personally, I think there is no doubt that the expression "ride the ~ train" is verifiably in reasonably common use (though I question how precisely the present definition captures its meaning). I guess the question is more whether it deserves to be a dictionary lemma in itself, and, if so, how it should be presented. Do we normally allow lemmas to contain "..."? Mihia (talk) 20:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
- This is more of a metaphor than anything fixed and lexical. You can {be on|be on board|board|catch|get on|get on board|ride|take}(or {get off|miss|skip}) the {huge variety of nouns/proper nouns- e.g. w:Peace Train} {bandwagon|train|? possibly others}. I'd call it a snowclone, but it's a bit looser than that. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
- Personally, I think there is no doubt that the expression "ride the ~ train" is verifiably in reasonably common use (though I question how precisely the present definition captures its meaning). I guess the question is more whether it deserves to be a dictionary lemma in itself, and, if so, how it should be presented. Do we normally allow lemmas to contain "..."? Mihia (talk) 20:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
- Move to Appendix:Snowclones/ride the X train. That's how we normally deal with these. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:53, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
- "snowclone" is a word that I had never heard of until I heard it here, but our definition says "A type of cliché which uses an old idiom formulaically placed in a new context", so for it to be one of those, would there not need to be an original or prototype idiom of the form "ride the ~ train", which the others copy? Is there one? Mihia (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
- Could the old idiom be ride the gravy train? --Lambiam 16:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
- That seems more likely than ride the crazy train or any other alternative, yes. Move per MK.
←₰-→Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 10:44, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
- That seems more likely than ride the crazy train or any other alternative, yes. Move per MK.
- Could the old idiom be ride the gravy train? --Lambiam 16:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
- "snowclone" is a word that I had never heard of until I heard it here, but our definition says "A type of cliché which uses an old idiom formulaically placed in a new context", so for it to be one of those, would there not need to be an original or prototype idiom of the form "ride the ~ train", which the others copy? Is there one? Mihia (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
- Not a term I'm familiar with, is it American? I also think the pro-Trump usex should be deleted, even if tne entry survives. DonnanZ (talk) 00:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
- Keep where it is unless existence is in doubt, which is for RFV. I don't like Appendix:Snowclones; let's keep items in mainspace for maximum convenience. We have I'm ... year(s) old, although I prefer I'm twenty years old. An alternative would be to find a high-frequency representative term of the pattern, create an entry for that term to host the snowclone, and redirect other terms matching the pattern to it. The entry to host the whole snowclone could be ride the gravy train (now redirect); see also ride the * train at Google Ngram Viewer. If that approach would be chosen, the nominated entry ride the ... train could be redirected to it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
- Move to the snowclones appendix. Per utramque cavernam 21:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
Moved to Appendix:English snowclones. bd2412 T 20:30, 2 March 2020 (UTC)