Talk:steal home

Deletion debate

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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Ignoring that the definition is totally wrong, this is covered by steal + home. I'm hesitant because home refers implicitly to home plate, but would we keep steal first, steal second or steal third? That's not a rhetorical question, feel free to answer. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Keep, expand, improve. This differs from the other bases for the higher probability of getting thrown out (since home base will be the most vigorously defended), hence the particular daring and skill required to pull off the feat. Because of this, there is a colloquial sense not currently listed in the definition, that being to engage in any daring feat to achieve a big payoff. There is also the completely unrelated sense of sneaking into one's own home (or sneaking away from something to go to one's own home):
  • 1856, Woodhill, or, the Ways of Providence‎, p. 200:

    He probably took her for a servant-girl, who had got belated at some festivity, and was now stealing home before daybreak, before the family should notice...

  • 1867, The British Drama: Illustrated, Volume 2‎, p. 869:

    And vanish like a shooting star; whilst he Stood gazing on the spot whence she departed: Then, stealing home, went supperless to bed.

  • 2004, Barbara Reynolds, Out of Hell & Living Well‎, p. 24:

    I delighted in my diary and couldn't wait to steal home from school to dote on my imaginary characters.

  • 2009, Charles St John, Short Sketches of the Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands‎, p. 203:

    I shot a wild cat, stealing home to its cairn in the early morning.

• Also arguably SoP, but I think the distinct dual use makes it necessary to define both for the sake of clarity. bd2412 T 04:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Under the rules of baseball, which define the specialized meanings and some grammar of use of baseball terms and the baseball senses of polysemous words, one can't "steal first". I would look forward to some empirical support (attestation) for BD's speculations about the special import of stealing home in baseball and in use of the term outside baseball. DCDuring TALK 16:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I wonder, incidentally, how many citations there are for steal referring (incorrectly according to the rules, but nonetheless) to a batter's running to first on a dropped third strike.​—msh210℠ 17:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The usage whose citations clutter this page above seems like a simple use of an adverbial with steal. Most abverbials that could fit in the slot occupied by "home" will convey a sense of direction, as would be appropriate for a verb with a meaning of movement. Only if we choose to lexicalize vast classes of collocations for the benefit of machines and machine-like language learners should this be retained. DCDuring TALK 17:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Why do we have citations here for an RfD discussion or at all? They belong at the entry.

In recent discussions the sole relevant consideration has seemingly been whether there is a risk of error in a serial mechanical context-free translation process. This is usually interpreted to mean that any component polysemy implies the multiword term should be kept. This generally suggest to me that our target user is a brute-force serial natural-language processor rather than a human or even an associative memory natural-language processor. Deciding that component polysemy was a sufficient condition for inclusion could completely eliminate the need for RfD and would also help establish that we were not really aiming at human users, which would enable us to dispense with many considerations only relevant for non-contributing users.

However, if one allows for context, then that the context is "baseball" implies that neither "home" nor "steal" is polysemous. DCDuring TALK 16:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Right, delete.​—msh210℠ 17:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• Delete Ƿidsiþ 16:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Re quotations, some of those seem to be none baseball ones, "stealing home to its cairn" seems to refer to its home (the place it lives). Mglovesfun (talk) 17:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Right, see the explanatory text above those quotations.​—msh210℠ 17:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)