Talk:as good as dead

RFD discussion: May 2019–April 2020

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as good as dead

SOP: as good as + dead. Canonicalization (talk) 21:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Two questions:

• Does as good as have good as as an alternative form (in the sense of "almost, practically", I mean)? I see some occurrences for "is good as dead" ([1], [2], [3]), "are good as dead", etc., but I suspect it's not common.
• Should as good as gold and as good as new be construed as SOP too? The former sounds more lexicalised than the latter. Canonicalization (talk) 21:14, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

  The page as good as gold is a hard redirect to good as gold, which I think is wrong; the meaning of the adjective good as gold is totally different from that of the adverb as good as gold. The latter is a non-transparent idiom, clearly not a SOP. Both as good as new and as good as dead, on the other hand, are (IMO) SOP and deletable. My guess is that in phrases such as “are good as dead” the collocation “good as dead” is a variant of “as good as dead” arising from sloppiness; if it becomes widespread, we should record it, just like I could care less. Does it perhaps belong to a particular idiolect, like phrases such as he done what he could?  --Lambiam 22:46, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure I would consider it "sloppy", though maybe colloquial, but yes "they are good as dead" is just an instance of the broader phenomenon of "as" being deleted from comparisons. One can also say cliches (etc) google books:"are old as dirt", "are ugly as sin", etc. I agree that "(as) good as dead" could be considered SOP. Certainly, it is but one of a large number of similar phrases, which are google books:"as numerous as trees in a forest" / google books:"are as many as the grains of sand on the seashore" / as not-exactly-literal-but-still-SOPpy as the average such construction. - -sche (discuss) 01:55, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

You may not find it sloppy, but in fact I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!  --Lambiam 23:33, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Anyway, to make my position explicit, delete. - -sche (discuss) 19:27, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Redirected - TheDaveRoss 16:40, 17 April 2020 (UTC)