Talk:women's suffrage

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women's suffrage

women's suffrage. SemperBlotto (talk) 11:35, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Delete, anyone who ever speaks a little English knows what women means, so all that anyone who doesn't know what women's suffrage needs to do it look up suffrage, and we have an entry for that. I wonder if this was intended as a translation target; if so, in the foreign language entries just put women's suffrage, which is standard and has been standard for ages (since befoire I started editing in 2009). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Delete per Monsieur Gardner. --Æ&Œ (talk) 17:30, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Delete. - -sche (discuss) 10:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Looking up suffrage won't tell you which of the possible definitions applies. Siuenti (talk) 14:02, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

That would be a problem in any NP with at least one polysemous component. And yet people figure out meaning almost effortlessly. DCDuring TALK 16:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Is a green car/plane/boat/vehicle, etc. one that's painted green, or one that has a low impact on the environment? Is a green plant an organism with chlorophyll in its leaves, or an environmentally-friendly manufacturing facility? We can't include every phrase where one of the words has more than one meaning- we have to trust that people can figure it out from the context. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:46, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be making my case for me. Is a green car one that painted green, or that has a low impact on the environment? It depends. Is "women's suffrage" their right to vote, or their right to express an opinion? Siuenti (talk) 20:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

@Siuenti, do you not trust our readers to literally string two words together? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Answer my question and I'll answer yours. Siuenti (talk) 20:57, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

What is your question? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:59, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

So can "women's suffrage" mean "a kind of women's prayer"? I don't know that meaning of "suffrage" at all. AFAIK, "women's suffrage" refers only to the right to vote, but perhaps not. --BB12 (talk) 19:58, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't either; there's a more thorough definition here. In theory, given the right context, "women's suffrage" could mean "an intercessory petition on behalf of women", just as "red dog" could mean "an ugly woman who's a Communist", even though in both cases those aren't the meanings that immediately spring to mind. That doesn't make "women's suffrage" any less SOP than "red dog", though. —Angr 20:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Most, but not all, uses of red dog are SoP ;-}. DCDuring TALK 20:51, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Fine; "brown dog" for "ugly Nazi woman", then, although we don't seem to have that meaning of [[brown]] yet. —Angr 21:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this should be deleted, but nevertheless, if the grounds for doing so are theoretical, then I think it has to stay because Wiktionary is descriptive not prescriptive. (Unfortunately, the CFI is not clear. It says that "bank parking lot" is sum of parts because "parking lot" can go with any definition of "bank." But, in fact, the "(sperm) bank" meaning doesn't work, as I've argued here, section titled "Fifth paragraph - other issues.") --BB12 (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

@BenjaminBarrett12 the problem with that argument, is if we accepted it, we'd have to acceot every word with more than one meaning combined with every other word where that phrase meets WT:CFI#Attestation. Possibly not just every two word term, but multi-word term. We'd end up with blue car because blue car doesn't mean a pornographic car, or even worse, the car is blue because it doesn't mean the car is pornographic. Your argument is a common one in deletion debates, but has been rejected for years because of the reason I've just given. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:32, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It seems fairly improbably that the phrase "blue car" would refer to a pornographic car. But I don't see the concept of "women's right to express an opinion" as inherently improbable. Siuenti (talk) 21:47, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Fair point, another point I usually make at this point (ugh the word 'point' three times in succession) is that we're saying it's hypothetically possible to know the words women's and suffrage but not understand what women's suffrage means. Is there any evidence of anyone actually making this mistake? I don't like the idea of keeping an entry purely based on a though experiment. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:13, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

@User:Mglovesfun: I agree that my argument is not felicitous. That's why I think the CFI needs to be rewritten. Currently, there doesn't seem to be a coherent policy. --BB12 (talk) 23:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Delete. Either that, or create entries for black suffrage, African-American suffrage, negro suffrage, colored suffrage, latino suffrage, Mexican suffrage, Asian suffrage, Native American suffrage, indian suffrage, Jewish suffrage, racial suffrage, female suffrage, sex suffrage, feminine suffrage, women suffrage, woman's suffrage, womanhood suffrage, household suffrage, universal suffrage, free suffrage, equal suffrage, impartial suffrage, manhood suffrage, direct suffrage, municipal suffrage, alien suffrage, soldier's suffrage, youth suffrage, child suffrage, and adult suffrage (to name a few). All of these can be found in Google books, though some may not have the necessary 3 cites. Since the argument for women's suffrage is that one can't tell which definition of suffrage is meant, the same argument will apply for all of these. I think a good case can be made for a manhood suffrage entry, and perhaps one or two others- but the aforementioned argument applies equally to every one of the above. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. That's exactly the problem. --BB12 (talk) 07:55, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• To me the actual issue is an inverse one: whether, because women's/woman's/female suffrage are combined so very commonly in the US in reference to the Suffragist movement, suffrage has as its most common, person-in-the-street meaning "women's right to vote". DCDuring TALK 15:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Landau discusses the issue of SOP in his book "Dictionaries" (add "amazon dot com" to the following URL: Dictionaries-The-Art-Craft-Lexicography/dp/052178512X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341985826&sr=8-1&keywords=landau+lexicography&tag=780065172-20) (I have a different edition, but I think it's the same), but I don't think he really comes to a conclusion. AFAIK and IMHO there probably is no real conclusion; ultimately, prescriptivism must step in to prevent the lexicographic gates of hell from breaking loose with alien suffrage, goldfish suffrage and the like. --BB12 (talk) 05:56, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Deleted by Mglovesfun. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:45, 15 August 2012 (UTC)