Talk:way out

RFD discussion: June 2019–April 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

way out

NISoP (= way#Noun + out). Just like way in, way across, way under, way over, way around, way through, way back, way forward, way home. DCDuring (talk) 14:52, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Currently it reads:

1. An exit.
2. (figurative) A solution; an escape.

   This is a real mess. I need a way out.

3. A distance far from shore, home, or other familiar place.

   We're quite a way out now.

I vote to delete sense 3, which seems misconceived. There is no such thing as "a way out" in that sense. I am leaning keep for the figurative sense 2, which I think would also justify our including the literal sense. Mihia (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

• Keep senses 1 and 2 Purplebackpack89 14:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Del sense 3 - not a lexical item, and not a noun. If senses 1 and 2 are nouns, then we should be able to find plurals "way outs" or "ways out" and hyphenated spellings to support their existence, without which evidence, I think they just SoP. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 07:58, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

@Sonofcawdrey I'm not sure that's the case. There are plenty of nouns that are only used in the singular, plenty more that are almost always used in the singular. Purplebackpack89 14:38, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

You obviously haven't done a Google search for "ways out". My main problem with the first two senses is that there are lots of prepositional phrases that can be substituted for "out", depending on the context: "he was looking for a way [over the pass|through the rest of the maze|outside|free of the responsibility|to the exit|past the guards|around the obstacle in the only road leaving the valley|etc.]. It seems like out is just a prepositional phase with an unspecified object, and there are a number of others that could be used for parallel constructions: around, down, east, in, north, over, past, south, through, under, up, west, etc.

As for the third sense, as noted, the example sentence is really "We're quite a way out now.". It's just a phrase that happens to end in "way" that's modifying "out". You could substitute "a good distance" for "quite a way". Chuck Entz (talk) 18:38, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

• I think we are agreed that sense 3 is due to a misunderstanding or misgrouping of words, so I have deleted it. Mihia (talk) 01:12, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
• Btw, I assume that this RFD is only for the noun sense, so I have moved the notice accordingly. I mean, there is no problem with the Adj. sense, right? Mihia (talk) 19:36, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
• keep 1 and 2. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 16:46, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Resolved, sense 1 and 2 kept, sense 3 removed. - TheDaveRoss 17:44, 22 April 2020 (UTC)