Talk:brown-eyed

RFV discussion: July–August 2020

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brown-eyed

Previously raised at Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/English#brown-eyed. RFV sense:

Performed by Black people.

While Aretha Franklin was brown-eyed soul, her protégée Adele is blue-eyed soul.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown-eyed_soul, and also our entry, "brown-eyed soul" is "created and performed [...] mainly by Latinos", so the usage example seems wrong at least. Also, for this entry to survive in any form we need evidence that "brown-eyed" is used generally to mean performed by a performer of whatever ethnicity, and not solely in the phrase "brown-eyed soul". Mihia (talk) 14:04, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I have altered the definition to refer to people of color, not just performed by people of a specific ethnicity. It is now cited Kiwima (talk) 22:19, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

RFV-resolved. passed as amended. Kiwima (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

RFD discussion: July–December 2020

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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brown-eyed

According to CambridgeGEL, page 1630

Words produced by the most freely productive processes rarely become established. It would be inappropriate for a dictionary to attempt to list all words formed on the pattern of brown-eyed. Such highly productive process is comparable to the rules for forming syntactic phrases: we don’t need to list brown-eyed in the dictionary any more than we need to list with brown eyes. 

--Backinstadiums (talk) 11:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep, but define the given definition as simply a literal sense, and add the sense "Black" as in the Van Morrison song "Brown-eyed Girl" and the old folk songs, and the sense "performed by Black people" as in "brown-eyed soul". Khemehekis (talk) 11:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Khemehekis: brown reads: (sometimes capitalised, countable) A person of Middle Eastern, Latino or South Asian descent; a brown-skinned person; someone of mulatto or biracial appearance — This unsigned comment was added by Backinstadiums (talk • contribs) at 23:42, 10 July 2020 (UTC).

This response assumes that White people can not have brown eyes, which is incorrect. bd2412 T 23:51, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Of course there are brown-eyed White people, too. However, I remember reading a few years ago that whenever an old folk song made a reference to brown eyes (like "Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes/I'll never love blue eyes again"), it's believed that it was a coded reference to a Black person. In the case of Van Morrison's "Brown-eyed Girl", it's coded too; he originally wrote it as "Brown-skinned Girl" and then changed it when he decided that a song about an interracial love probably wouldn't make it. Khemehekis (talk) 05:43, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep all. Unlike paper dictionaries we aim to include all words (sequence of letters, characters &c). SemperBlotto (talk) 11:56, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

We don't. Could you stop repeating that falsehood at every turn please? PUC – 12:10, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

See the very first paragraph of our front page - "It aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English." SemperBlotto (talk) 12:14, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clear, but what I'm disagreeing with is your definition of word as "any sequence of letters or characters". We don't aim to do that, as attested by the numerous policies which have been passed over the years. PUC – 12:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

See our definition of word. SemperBlotto (talk) 12:28, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

See Wiktionary:Votes/Timeline. PUC – 12:30, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh yeah, where though? DonnanZ (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

tl;dr SemperBlotto (talk) 13:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Or you could just say that you're wilfully ignoring what doesn't agree with your views, that would work too. Case in point, the section just above. I could also nominate half of Category:English misspellings (which you're the chief contributor of) if I didn't mind being accused of being out to get you. approprimate would be a prime example of an entry that's in clear violation of Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-04/Keeping common misspellings. PUC – 14:03, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

And brown-eyed Susan would become an orphan, poor thing. It was created by Renard Migrant/mglovesfun who, ironically, was the world's worst for wanting to delete SoP terms, with the comment "May as well complete the set with green-eyed and blue-eyed". Keep, I think. DonnanZ (talk) 12:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• As it presently stands, i.e. simply defined as "Having brown eyes", this is a clear Delete per decision to exclude SoP hyphenated terms, which even includes "green-haired" as an example of what is not eligible. Mihia (talk) 20:14, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

But Keep an "&lit" line now that a non-SoP definition has also been added, assuming that survives. Mihia (talk) 20:48, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I know you're on a crusade here, but browneyed is lurking in the system, which doesn't look right, and is liable to mispronunciation in that form. I prefer the hyphenated version, thanks. DonnanZ (talk) 21:45, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

The vote (Wiktionary:Votes/2019-10/Application of idiomaticity rules to hyphenated compounds) had a defect in that it did not at the same time codify COALMINE for hyphenated terms. And the vote mentions ex-teacher as something to be excluded despite ex-teacher, exteacher at the Google Books Ngram Viewer. showing that ex-teacher should be kept per hyphenated analogue of COALMINE. And someone should add reference to the vote to CFI. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:32, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

"Coalmine" is a perpetual annoyance, and the treatment of closed SoP compounds such as "browneyed" is to my mind also an unresolved (perhaps unresolvable) issue. These points aside, there is no reason whatsoever to include "brown-eyed" solely to record that it means "Having brown eyes". In fact, doing so can be positively deleterious, since it can give the false impression that numerous other "-eyed" combinations that we don't include do not exist, when in fact any combination that makes sense is valid. That's unless you think we should aim to include every single one of the trillion possible "-eyed" combinations, and ditto for "-eared", "-mouthed", "-nosed", "buttocked", and every other body part, all with totally self-evident sum-of-parts definitions. A different possible reason for including such combinations that we find attested is to record the fact that they have been used, and to give representative citations and dates. I don't see this argument being made much here, though, and it seems hard to reconcile with our general "SoP" policies. Mihia (talk) 20:50, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2019-08/Rescinding the "Coalmine" policy: "3-21-3, fails". --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:34, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I am well aware of that lamentable outcome, thank you. It makes no difference to the profound annoyance of being obliged to keep "brown-eyed" because "browneyed" exists, or "ex-teacher" because "exteacher" exists. We need to look at ways of catering for the fact that "browneyed" and "exteacher" are themselves SoP, not using these as a licence to add additional SoP terms. Mihia (talk) 13:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I am speaking also for the jury, including unacquainted readers; they should know that the "perpetual annoyance" resides in the above speaker and that a pretty unequivocal decision has been made by the editors, for the editors and for the readers. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:03, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

It may be "unequivocal" in that instance, but I remain convinced that the present state of affairs is profoundly unsatisfactory, albeit I accept that presently no alternative has been formulated to convince the voters. That is what needs to be worked on. Mihia (talk) 22:36, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

A minute's thought discovers that if exteacher is sum of parts, so is obviousness. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:35, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Of course. This kind of thing is why I repeatedly make reference to the difficulty of addressing the problem. Mihia (talk) 22:24, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Donnanz, I must say I don't understand you. Why did you vote in favour of WT:COALMINE? I do not remember seeing you being happy a single time about it. When you mention single-word variants of usually hyphenated terms, it's always to look down upon them (as you should, imo, because even to my non(-?)native eye they look like misspellings) and express your dislike for them (to the point you'd prefer not having them at all?). Has there been a case where you thought having that policy was useful? PUC – 14:51, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Because it can be useful. On the other hand, I wouldn't want an entry, for example, like blueeyed (which looks horrible) to make it COALMINE-compatible with blue-eyed. I would like to see entries for many terms considered by some to be SoP if they are in common usage. For example, much-loved shouldn't be written as muchloved. DonnanZ (talk) 18:19, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep I had no idea there was a nonliteral sense. —Soap— 23:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

• Keep per COALMINE analog for hyphenated terms (not a codified policy): browneyed, brown-eyed at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:57, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Weak keep the literal sense on a COALMINE basis, though I would add {{&lit}} to the start of it; obviously keep the second sense if it is attested (ideally with some examples of references even to black people who don't have brown eyes). I admit this could segue into a grey area, though; compare sixeyed and six-eyed and sixarmed and six-armed (all of which I might also be inclined to keep, if the unspaced forms were attested), and wooden-armed (which I would be inclined to delete)... - -sche (discuss) 19:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I think we need to be satisfied that "brown-eyed" does indeed mean "Performed by Black people" outside of (or even inside of) the one phrase "brown-eyed soul". I did search for a couple of other possibilities but found nothing relevant. There aren't actually all that many relevant Google hits even for "brown-eyed soul", and some of these in fact seem to refer to Latin performers. Mihia (talk) 21:04, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Latino/Hispanic, see reference. 'DonnanZ (talk) 23:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

In fact, we have an entry for brown-eyed soul too, which says the same thing, which I didn't notice. Anyway, I have sent this sense to RFV. Mihia (talk)

Weak keep. It cannot go out of hand since there are basically only three eye-colours, in addition to a limited set of described shapes like “hazel-eyed”. And I find it likely that eventually we will have to have these entries as translation hubs because there will be exotic languages that have unguessable terms for the three eye-colours. Fay Freak (talk) 12:44, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I think you will find that the set of attestable "-eyed" combinations is much larger than you seem to imply. (Btw, "hazel-eyed" would be a colour, not a shape.) Mihia (talk) 22:16, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep. This is a word. Ƿidsiþ 06:33, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Entry has changed. The relevant entry presently reads:

Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see brown,‎ eyed.; having brown eyes. (Should we delete(+) this sense?)

Is it now proposed that this whole line be deleted? Or just the part "having brown eyes"? Since we now also have a non-literal sense "Characteristic of or pertaining to people of color", I support keeping an "&lit" line. I don't know that we also need the explanation "having brown eyes". Mihia (talk) 08:53, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

• It appears there's no RFD any more. I agree that the entry should be kept. Shouldn't this conversation have been moved to the talk page? - Dentonius (my politics | talk) 17:04, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

RFD kept — Dentonius 19:21, 15 December 2020 (UTC)