Talk:young

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plural noun[edit]

Is it rather a plural noun? The term with an additional unvariable plural seems to be offspring --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:23, 28 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some common expressions with and have a fixed order which cannot be changed. The shortest expression often comes first. bread and butter , hands and knees, young and pretty, thunder and lightning, black and white, cup and saucer, knife and fork --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:11, 21 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RFV discussion: May 2021[edit]

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The sense "people who are young", with example usage "The young of today are well-educated", is a use of the adjective 'young', not of the noun. The current entry may also have led @SodhakSH to assert, "'Young' can also mean '[a] young person'". --RichardW57 (talk) 10:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It’s a use of an adjective in an absolute form, isn’t it? A large number of adjectives can be used in this way: “the poor”, “the intelligent”, “the young-at-heart”, and they generally (exclusively?) refer to people with that attribute as a class. For young in particular, one cannot say “She is a young”, but “many animals care for their young” is OK. I note that the OED is inconsistent when it comes to labelling such entries. Some are marked as absolute uses of adjectives, while others are treated as nouns. I suppose we should have a policy discussion at some stage on how such terms should be treated here. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this were an RFD I would say "delete". I think we generally remove these. I do. Equinox 02:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57: perhaps this discussion should be moved to either RFD or the Beer Parlour. I don't think it will be a problem verifying such uses of young; it's a question of how uses of this sort should be treated in the Wiktionary. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, moving to RFD. --RichardW57 (talk) 19:41, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]


RFD discussion: May–June 2021[edit]

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(Moved from RfV.) --RichardW57 (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2021 (UTC) The sense "people who are young", with example usage "The young of today are well-educated", is a use of the adjective 'young', not of the noun. The current entry may also have led @SodhakSH to assert, "'Young' can also mean '[a] young person'". --RichardW57 (talk) 10:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It’s a use of an adjective in an absolute form, isn’t it? A large number of adjectives can be used in this way: “the poor”, “the intelligent”, “the young-at-heart”, and they generally (exclusively?) refer to people with that attribute as a class. For young in particular, one cannot say “She is a young”, but “many animals care for their young” is OK. I note that the OED is inconsistent when it comes to labelling such entries. Some are marked as absolute uses of adjectives, while others are treated as nouns. I suppose we should have a policy discussion at some stage on how such terms should be treated here. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If this were an RFD I would say "delete". I think we generally remove these. I do. Equinox 02:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RichardW57: perhaps this discussion should be moved to either RFD or the Beer Parlour. I don't think it will be a problem verifying such uses of young; it's a question of how uses of this sort should be treated in the Wiktionary. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK, moving to RFD. It would be good if there were more documentation of {{rfd-sense}}, analogous to that in the RFV family. --RichardW57 (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: It's a different POS (and hence a conversion, a new derived term), and if you would translate it into German you would also notice a different spelling, like die reichen Leute = the rich people and die Reichen = the rich. --22:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by 2003:DE:3728:BF73:C88E:495A:7F18:2825 (talk).
Being an absolute adjective is a property of an instance of an adjective, not a lexical matter. Any prototypical adjective can be used as an absolute adjective, so it is not something that a lexicon should record, but rather a language's grammar. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think we may be talking apples and oranges here. englishgrammar.org says, "In grammars these adjectives are called non-gradable or absolute adjectives. Non-gradable adjectives do not have comparative or superlative forms. There are very few non-gradable adjectives, so you can learn them by heart if you really want. Here is a list of common non-gradable adjectives in English. Note that this is not a comprehensive list. 'Absolute, impossible, principal, adequate, inevitable, sufficient, complete, main, unanimous, unavoidable, entire, minor, fatal, unique, final, universal, ideal, whole, preferable, dead etc.'" Anyway, aren't we using a noun form here and "young" is not an absolute adjective? It seems to me to be an "implied noun", e.g. www.chicagomanualofstyle.org: "... not negate the fact that the adjectival phrases are in the position of being before the implied noun and therefore should be hyphenated." Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 03:07, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Should be deleted per the general RFD at Talk:sick#RFD_discussion:_September–December_2020, I suppose. - -sche (discuss) 03:51, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. DAVilla 15:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Imetsia (talk) 19:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RFD-deleted. Imetsia (talk) 19:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Etymology section: change *h1 to *H based on the 2nd edition of Ringe's From PIE to PGmc[edit]

In Ringe's 2nd edition (2017), he seems to have refined the laryngeal contained within the word from *h1 to *H(Ringe 2017: 102); perhaps it would be best to alter the laryngeal based on his new interpretation of the laryngeal contained therein. Ringe, Don Jr. (2017). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Vindafarna (talk) 19:00, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a refinement, that's a confession of uncertainty. --RichardW57 (talk) 04:53, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]