Talk:apricot blossom

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apricot blossom

Unlike cherry blossom, this word is not one I recall ever hearing spoken. --EncycloPetey 21:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The combination of those two words is probably relatively common, at least common enough to find three examples of usage. The question is whether or not it is idiomatic, etc. — Beobach972 03:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• 1951: Wai Wen Ch'u Pan She, Chinese Literature

  Everyone, professor or cadre, would smile at us as if we were the apricot blossom and spring themselves.

Hmm... This sounds more like a literal translation of a Chinese idiom than idiomatic usage in English. --EncycloPetey 17:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

 *shrug* Probably. — Beobach972 20:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

...opened my eyes/and what did I see?/Popcorn popping/on the apricot tree... I don't think I've ever heard "apricot blossom" but I imagine botanists might use it in a sum-of-parts manner. What is the Chinese idiom? --Connel MacKenzie 02:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This is my bad if it is not idiomatic. You'll find several expressions of the form <fruit tree> + "blossom" that I added to blossom. I think these are all in the OED, but that doesn't mean they pass our CFI as the OED often lists unidiomatic collocations as examples. So if "apple blossom", "cherry blossom", etc, are found to be unidiomatic (after checking the OED), they can be deleted. A weak argument in favour of keeping these terms is that "apple", "cherry", etc, refer to the trees of those names rather than of the fruits, and so the sense is not immediately understandable when "apple" refers to a fruit much more often than it refers to a tree. A counterargument to that is, of course, that it is trees that have blossom, not fruits, so the sense is immediately understandable in that context. — Paul G 09:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

PS: I would say, however, that orange blossom should be kept, as this could be understood to mean "blossom that is orange in colour" rather than "blossom of the orange tree", which is, of course, white. — Paul G 09:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, wow, I never made that connection. In Gabriel García Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold (which I read in English translation), it explains that a bride wears a white dress and orange blossoms as a sign of her purity, which I somehow completely failed to understand. I totally thought it meant "orange-colored blossoms". So, yes, definitely keep orange blossom. (I rather feel that apricot blossom should be kept as well, but I can't formulate a coherent argument for why.) —Ruakh_TALK 15:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree it should be kept as a reasonable colocation, (Pawley list?) even if not idiomatic. (But I'm still curious about that Chinese idiom.) --Connel MacKenzie 18:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

"Blooms of degree success"? A-cai? --Connel MacKenzie 18:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep orange blossom, but I'm inclined to RFD the others. The fried egg test requries that the meaning cannot be derived from the constituents nor from their combination. In these cases it's pretty clear that the blossom is not yet a fruit. It's terms like onion blossom that require some explanation. DAVilla 20:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Easily cited. I'm not inclined to RFD at this point. DAVilla 16:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that peach blossom seems to have an erroneous definition. I have listed it on RFV, where I have cross-referenced this discussion. — Paul G 17:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Was just an error, I'd think. DAVilla 20:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

rfvpassed Cynewulf 18:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)