Talk:count to ten

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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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count to ten

Sum of parts? Seems more like a command rather than a verb per se. ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:34, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Not necessarily, used as an expression it has the same meaning as "take a deep breath", and doesn't literally mean "count to ten" (although I'm sure many people do). So it seems to be idiomatic. P Aculeius (talk) 14:42, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Delete. Need not be ten, e.g. in Dickens' Little Dorrit an angry girl is repeatedly told to "count five and twenty". Counting to defeat anger is a cultural thing, not a lexical thing. Equinox ◑ 16:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. If it means something in particular other than the literal meaning of the words, it's idiomatic. It doesn't need to be the one and only form of the idiom. Just because there are variations with different numbers (five and twenty, one hundred, etc.) doesn't mean it's not idiomatic. The fact that it's often preceded by "close my/your eyes and" doesn't make it unidiomatic either. It's clearly a figure of speech and has been for over a hundred and fifty years, with some variations. P Aculeius (talk) 17:32, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Delete. How is this different from saying "sit down and have a drink of water". The fact that the action has the effect of helping you relax, doesn't mean that this effect is part of the definition of the word referring to the action. --WikiTiki89 17:36, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't actually mean what the words say. People don't necessarily count when they're "counting to ten". When somebody says, "count to ten", they're not asking you to count. They're asking you to pause and calm down. You can't get that meaning from the words alone; that's how we know it's idiomatic. P Aculeius (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

People might sit down, but not have a drink of water when told to "sit down and have a drink of water". That doesn't mean that that is what the phrase means. --WikiTiki89 15:41, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

• Delete. The number is immaterial. We could add a sense to count for taking a moment to allow anger to pass. bd2412 T 01:33, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

The exact number isn't invariable, but that's not the same as saying that it's immaterial. In point of fact, the number is important. Nobody says "count to eight" or "count to eleven" or "count to thirty-nine." There are at least five times as many Google hits for "count to ten" as there are any other number that might be used; I checked eight, nine, twelve, twenty, forty, and one hundred, and none of them came up regularly. Part of that may be the large number of hits for songs with this phrase in the title; but there are also poems and other works, and even trying to filter out all of these references it comes up a lot. Not to mention the fact that the reason why there are songs and poems with this in the title is because it's idiomatic. P Aculeius (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

• Attested: the phrase is included in The Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, and The Dictionary of Idioms by Martin H. Manser. P Aculeius (talk) 02:27, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

• Hmm... On the one hand, I can find citations where "count to ten" unambiguously means "pause and relax":

count to ten

• 2007, L. A. Banks, The Wicked, Macmillan →ISBN, page 76

  Carlos closed his eyes, fury spikes making him need to count to ten.

• 2011 July 15, Luke Edwards, "Why Newcastle fans are starting to envy Sunderland", Daily Telegraph

  But think for a minute, let the red mist evaporate slightly, count to ten and give me a chance to explain.

• 2015 August 21, Janene Van Jaarsveldt, "Sint Maarten to block Dutch anti-corruption team", NL Times

  Last week I spoke extensively with Sint Maarten’s Prime Minister and Minister of Justice. And then we also concluded that occasionally everyone just needs to count to ten and look at what is in the best interest of the people on Sint Maarten.

But on the other hand...

count to X

• 2010, Suzanne Brockmann, Hot Pursuit: Troubleshooters 15: Troubleshooters 15, Hachette UK →ISBN

  Sam had to count to twenty to keep himself from slapping the punk for her.

• 2012, Roland Green, Knights of the Crown: The Warriors, Wizards of the Coast →ISBN

  He had to count to fifty to avoid an outburst of language that would surely offend the gods and perhaps the dragon, though he was very much in a mood to offend the dragon.

• 2012, Christy Fifield, Murder Buys a T-Shirt, Penguin →ISBN

  I needed to count to ten. Hell, I needed to count to ten thousand. But I couldn't let Peter start talking again.

Annoyingly, it does seem to have some lexical meaning, but it's just not set enough for us to cover properly. Smurrayinchester (talk) 15:59, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Per the Criteria for Inclusion, "Many phrases take several forms. It is not necessary to include every conceivable variant. When present, minor variants should simply redirect to the main entry. For the main entry, prefer the most generic form..." I'm sure that if you could do a quick survey of hits for various numbers (five, ten, twelve, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred) and excluded songs, children's books, references to hide and seek, and adults saying "don't make me count to three" or the like, ten would be far and away the most common version of this phrase. But the presence of multiple variations doesn't determine whether a phrase should be included, nor does whether its idiomaticity is annoying. P Aculeius (talk) 17:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

• Keep per the quotes Smurrayinchester listed first. Even if ten isn't the only number counted to, it seems to be the most common one; entries for other amply attested numbers can be created or redirected to this one. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:30, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
• Keep IMO it means something like "control one's impulse to anger", ie, not SoP. DCDuring TALK 00:51, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
• Keep. Found in almost any book or article on anger management. Also found in advice for such things as "count to 10 before pressing "send"". It does not necessarily mean a literal count to 10. It means "wait and think things through before acting". I'm sure it would take only a short while to find examples of the type "Why not follow the advice to count to ten? Later on, or next day, when you have cooled down, you will probably see things more clearly." -- ALGRIF talk 13:22, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Delete, citations on the page show it to be literal. While counting to ten may make a person calmer, standing on one leg may make your leg stronger. So do we therefore make a page stand on one leg for 'to make one's leg muscles stronger'? No we don't. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:37, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Disagree about taking the phrase literally in most of the examples. People may or may not actually count to the numbers specified when the phrase is used in one of its variations. But it's clearly not required that they do so in order for the phrase to apply. Especially in hyperbolic examples where the speaker alters "ten" to some high number like "fifty" or "ten thousand". The person might or might not begin by saying "one, two, three..." but I very much doubt that anyone says, "...forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty!" and then begins to act, as if playing hide-and-seek. It's not a literal count to a specific number. P Aculeius (talk) 14:10, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

• Keep definitely idiomatic - imagine saying it to someone who is just learning English - wouldn't mean a thing (other than the literal)Sonofcawdrey (talk) 08:21, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 17:08, 22 October 2015 (UTC)