Talk:secret admirer

RFD

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secret admirer

err, major case of SOP, no? --Itkilledthecat (talk) 22:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

incurable romantic somehow passed RFD so good luck. Delete IMO. Equinox ◑ 23:04, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The argument may be that it is "admiration" rather than the admirer that is secret. But this is not a rare phenomenon and doesn't warrant an entry, IMO. Delete. DCDuring TALK 23:26, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

It was claimed that "incurable romantic" was a set phrase, but see these bgc hits showing it isn't.

google books:"secret * admirer" suggests that "secret admirer" isn't either. DCDuring TALK 23:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Set phrase used pretty much exclusively to describe a specific type of "secret admiration" — the anonymous romantic variety. If you received an unsigned love letter, you'd describe the sender as your "secret admirer," but a candidate running for a political office probably wouldn't describe voters who like him/her but aren't publicly expressing said support as "secret admirers." Someone encountering the expression "secret admirer" for the first time without any clarifying context might not have any idea what it means, as there's nothing in the phrase itself to indicate the specific meaning "anonymous romantic admirer." Astral (talk) 23:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

But you could say the same about any number of phrases with lover, because it's romantic love and not just liking (as in "cake lover"). Equinox ◑ 23:52, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

"Good lover" would be SOP. But "Latin lover," used to describe a specific stock character/stereotype, would not be. "Secret admirer," as a set phrase, describes a very specific phenomenon, and the "secret admirer" is also a relatively common trope in fiction. Should "mad scientist" be treated as SOP because its meaning can be boiled down to "a scientist of questionable sanity?" Astral (talk) 01:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. Compare "secret lover". If you have a secret lover, you have a lover that you know about, but that you are keeping secret from others; if you have a secret admirer, you have an admirer whose identity you don't know. However, quite frequently someone is not referred to as a "secret admirer" until the subject of their admiration knows of their existence, but not their identity. In other words, the "secret" in "secret admirer" refers to identity alone, and not to the fact of the admiration, which is not a secret. bd2412 T 01:34, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep Inasmuch as I'm typically a proud deletionist, this is very much a set phrase with some, admittedly not a lot of, idiomaticity. If you knew that someone admired you, but were keeping it a secret from others, you would not use this phrase. Additionally, you can know that you have a secret admirer; I think what defines this phrase is the intent of the admirer keeping their admiration a secret. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:39, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep per Astral. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:01, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 09:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

If you run BGC for "I am a secret admirer of", you get hits like (these are the first six, no selection done):

• I am a secret admirer of Schleiermacher. I identify with his empathy for the Cultured Despisers of Religion.
• Suppose I am a secret admirer of an obscure amateur philosopher from Alice Springs named Ned.
• When it comes to electronic publishing, I am a secret admirer of interactive databases for scholarly use and of expert systems, and can't wait to have a commercial reason to produce one.
• Although I am a secret admirer of the beauty of the American gentlemen, I am much too modest this morning to come to any immediate terms, so I will restrict myself to the grateful subject of the ladies.
• It must be because I am a secret admirer of Mr. Behrman (hi-ya, Sam!) that I worry so about his passion for dialectics.
• Let me confess that I am a secret admirer of John Holt's pupil, and others like her who discover literary masterpieces on their own and commune with them in the privacy of their own imaginations, […]

The second and fourth possibly hint to romantic admiration, but reading the texts further would reveal that they actually don't. I think the examples demonstrate that the words may be and are used of all kinds of admiration. Keeping this entry as it is would be misleading. Delete. --Hekaheka (talk) 05:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

A Google Books search for "i am a secret admirer of" returns a total of seven hits for me. The six that show a snippet of text are the ones you posted above. A search for "secret admirer of" returns 7,540 hits for me, and these present a more representative picture of modern usage, based on the first-page hits. Astral (talk) 16:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I also don't think a term that's attestable as a set phrase with a very specific meaning loses its set-phrasiness if it's also used in other contexts. I don't think "silver spoon" would lose its idiomatic meaning if a Google Books search returned hits like "my grandmother collected those little silver spoons they sell in tourist shops," or that the stock character sense of "mad scientist" would be canceled by hits like "the research grant cuts caused outrage in the scientific community, and together those mad scientists lobbied the government." Astral (talk) 17:11, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The verb "to admire" has the sense "to look upon with an elevated feeling of pleasure, as something which calls out approbation, esteem, love or reverence" wheras "spoon" does not have a sense that would hint to wealth. --Hekaheka (talk) 18:46, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Kept.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:55, 10 May 2012 (UTC)