Talk:turn around

Dogbert

Someone asked for a quote from the Dilbert comic strip. The internal search engine of Dilbert turns up this:

https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=360

I dont think the top three (which are newer) are references to the fourth strip, so this looks like it was just a one-off joke to me, unless the search engine doesnt index all the strips. —Soap— 01:43, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I dont think Dilbert is coming back anytime soon, if ever. In theory these strips could be located through a newspaper search, but I never wrote down the dates, so it would be a very labor-intensive search for relatively little gain. I do remember, though, that it had hits for 360 in two different senses, one of which is the widely mocked "turn around 360 degrees" sense and the other is something unrelated that's also mentioned on the 360 page. —Soap— 10:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April–May 2020

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turn around

• "(idiomatic, buzzword, with "180 degrees") To effect a positive reversal of a trend. Let's turn this around 180 degrees and enjoy the rest of our vacation."
• "(idiomatic, buzzword, with "360 degrees") To make a situation worse by trying to make it better. They turned it around 360 degrees and now they're losing even more money."

Also it seems these should be separate derived entries: turn (something?) around 180 degrees and ...360 degrees. However, I'm not sure they exist attestably: "turn it around 360 degrees" is not found in GBooks. Equinox ◑ 22:05, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Here are three citations for the 180-degree buzzword: [1], [2]+[3], [4].  --Lambiam 13:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

And here are three citations for the 360-degree buzzword: [5], [6], [7]. However, in all cases the (intended) meaning is the same as for the 180 version. --Lambiam 14:17, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I question how far these are "idiomatic" (in our sense). They seem more like figurative uses. The "180 degree" phrase seems reasonably self-explanatory, and I'm not sure it would in itself merit an entry? However, the "360-degree" phrase is harder to understand, assuming it is defined correctly, and I suppose if we include one then we should include the other. On the other hand, I suppose "turn it through 90 degrees" could also refer to a figurative change of course, so where does one stop. Mihia (talk) 14:55, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Many idioms consist of the figurative use of a phrase with a plain literal meaning (above water, bad news, catch fire, ...). Just like give something 110 percent (seen e.g. here; no lack of attestations), turn something around 360 degrees has become an entrenched part of the English idioticon. It is like the coach who holds an inspirational talk: “Last year we were standing at the edge of an abyss, but since then we have taken a leap forward.” Clearly, the 360 one is a corrupt version of the 180 original uttered by people who do not understand degrees. Precisely because you’ll never hear that someone managed to “turn something around 90 degrees” in a figurative sense, I tend to think that turn something around 180 degrees is idiomatic.  --Lambiam 19:05, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

That's only because of the inclusion of the word "around", however, which is not very applicable to 90 degrees. I don't see this is as really fundamental to the question of idiomaticity. Mihia (talk) 19:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

You guys are just stuck in Euclidean space, clearly the 360-degree phrasing is used by people who live in non-Euclidean contexts. - TheDaveRoss 12:54, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

So may we call this ”hyperbolic”?  --Lambiam 21:11, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

These are two atrocious definitions of a term that seems pretty much SoP to me. See around#Adverb def. 4. "Buzzword" is an Urban Dictionary-quality label.

Do we have any durably archived attestation for these definitions?

Whoever provided these definitions doesn't seem to appreciate the imprecision of the meaning of words in normal speech and writing. DCDuring (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I think the citations I gave above for 180 degrees attest to the definition here. Those for 360 degrees attest to some sense, but not the one given here.  --Lambiam 11:15, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

The first one (for 180) doesn't look durably archived. And the definition isn't substitutable. It looks like turn around has an meaning that includes many possible degrees. I read 180 degrees as an intensifier, meaning "completely". That is, the turn-around was in the exact opposite direction, compared to, say, 150 degrees. IOW, I think the cites show that 180 degrees is not part of a definition of turn around. I don't know how you would find cites that would support such a definition. DCDuring (talk) 15:10, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

RFV-failed. No citations found. In any case, the 180 degrees version is just an intensifier on definition 3. The 360 degrees is covered by a usage note. Kiwima (talk) 18:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

As a further postscript, logically turning something 360 degrees should leave it the same, not make it worse! Equinox ◑ 22:48, 12 May 2020 (UTC)