Talk:baking

In the figurative sense below:

1. (figurative; also baking hot) Of a person, the weather, or an object, very hot.

   I'm baking - could you open the window?

is "baking" an adjective or actually a verb? In "baking hot", it is an adverb, of course. — Paul G 13:49, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Deletion discussion (RFD-sense)

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baking

@ baking, it says there is an adjective meaning intended for use in baking foods, and gives this example: Here is a baking tray for the cookies. Isn't this just the attributive use of the noun (compare driving school), and not an adjective ? Leasnam (talk) 18:40, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I noticed that, having just added Norwegian. I agree with you in that sense, but the second definition is probably acceptable; "It's really baking out there" referring to hot weather. DonnanZ (talk) 18:56, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the second sense I would leave as is Leasnam (talk) 19:14, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I certainly agree with a delete of sense 1.

As to definition 1, consider the usage example in sense 5 of bake#Verb:

"(intransitive, figuratively) To be hot."

It is baking in the greenhouse.

I'm baking after that workout in the gym.

IF one accepts the validity of definition and its the usage examples, then definition one is redundant to the "present participle of bake" definition of baking.

But IMO, it is verb definition 5 that needs to be removed because I don't think that one can say anything like "The day/car/room baked/will bake/had baked/has baked" and convey sense 5.

Here is a headline I found: 'Melbourne on the Murray' as city bakes in record heat – 'It's stunning. --is this sense 5 or 4 ? It's not literally baking, or is it ? Leasnam (talk) 22:43, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Sense 4 is "figurative" enough for me. I think it includes the headline you found, which doesn't seem strange to me, so I must have been wrong in my earlier assertion. Some "unabridged" dictionaries have an adjective sense for baking, though many do not. I haven't seen a definition like our definition 5 for bake in any dictionary. DCDuring TALK 22:55, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Also definition 2 of the noun, countable sense, seems wrong. Shouldn't it be something like "the bread, cakes, etc, cooked at one time"? I think that is a UK usage. I don't think I've ever heard it in the US. DCDuring TALK 22:05, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Noun def 2 doesn't really tie in with the quotations, all over 100 years old, and I wouldn't say it's particularly British; maybe it can be removed too. And that damned plural: can more recent usage be found? DonnanZ (talk) 23:38, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

It may be relevant but I recently cleaned up the entry for cooking for which I added the countable sense with citations (two more recent and one by an American author), and I added a rare label in that case. cooking and baking are semantically similar, so they may both need further editing in terms of the definitions and how they are separated out. Tulros (talk) 10:58, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

• There are now 11 citations of the countable noun baking at Citations:baking. I don't think they match the definitions well and will try to provide substitute definitions. DCDuring TALK 12:51, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

@DCDuring, have you managed to find better definitions? — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:36, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Added noun sense: "(countable) The production of a batch of baked product."

I don't think that the RfDed adjective sense can be supported by sufficient evidence of adjectivity. DCDuring TALK 15:36, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

OK, in that case the "intended for use in baking food" has failed verification for being purely attributive. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:37, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

RFD discussion: May–September 2019

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baking

Rfd-sense: "very hot, roasting" (adjective). You can't say "very baking", "more baking than", etc. And you can say "I'm going to bake if I stay in that hot car." i.e. the "hot" sense isn't restricted to the present participle. Also, we already have a sense at bake (#5), which is therefore covered at sense #1 of baking. Julia ☺ ☆ 17:48, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I would keep: this is the overwhelmingly more common form, and "*the day baked yesterday" is impossible. Will Self wrote of "the local Anglos' proclivity for stuffing themselves with wads of hot food in the very baking oven of midday" (unless he means it like "the very heart of the city"). The 1898 journal Sketch uses "the most baking weather". Equinox ◑ 17:53, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I can see this as "the very (i.e. "quintessential") baking-oven (compound noun) of midday" Leasnam (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Adverb bakingly also exists. Equinox ◑ 17:59, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I think baking in this sense is short for baking hot, in which baking serves as an intensifier of hot, so you can’t say *very baking hot any more than *very extremely hot – which may explain why you can’t say *very baking either.  --Lambiam 18:09, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't think you could replace "baking" with "baking hot" in the first usex ("I'm baking – could you open the window?"). Canonicalization (talk) 18:16, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

You can say "really baking" though, e.g. "It's really baking in here". Of course, "really" can modify verbs too, but the role of "really" in "really baking" in that example seems to me to be the same as its role in "really hot"; cf. "Are you really baking in that old oven?" Mihia (talk) 18:26, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Keep per Equinox. I advocate deleting present-participle attributive "adjectives" where the sense is no more than that the modified word is doing that action. However, "baking" seems to me to have acquired a sufficient "life of its own" as an adjective. Apropos of this discussion, we probably should also review verb sense 5 at bake:

(intransitive, figuratively) To be hot.

It is baking in the greenhouse.

I'm baking after that workout in the gym.

It seems to me that "baking" in these examples should be an adjective rather than a verb. Mihia (talk) 18:23, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

@Mihia Actually "It is baking" or "I am baking" is using the present participle of bake. They can be adjective-like. -Mike (talk) 00:00, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

By derivation, "baking" is the present participle of "bake". However, the question is whether the meaning in some particular context is sufficiently adjectival to be labelled an adjective. For example, we would say that "boring" in "He's boring" is an adjective. In my view, an example such as "I'm baking after that workout" is sufficiently adjectival, though opinions may vary. Mihia (talk) 00:16, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Comment: A couple thoughts given the new input:

• Change the verb sense to "to be made hot" – hence "I baked in the midday heat."
• Keep the adjective but add "chiefly predicative" qualifier or usage note. It certainly is almost always predicative for me; I don't know about others though. Julia ☺ ☆ 21:22, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

• RFD kept: no consensus to delete. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:45, 6 September 2019 (UTC)