Talk:disease-free

RFD discussion: June–September 2018

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disease-free

Free of disease. DTLHS (talk) 16:28, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Delete --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 17:30, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Keep, per lemming principle. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 20:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Keep, along with all other hyphenated adjectives and verbs. They count as one word. DonnanZ (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Something doesn't become includable just because you've declared it a word. That's a circular argument and you should stop making it. DTLHS (talk) 21:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

To be fair, I didn't invent the word. I did find a couple of hits on Google Books for disease free; diseasefree can also be found, some are scannos for disease-free, but I did find one instance of diseasefree and disease-free both occurring in the same article. Looking at CFI, I don't think anything in there goes against this word. DonnanZ (talk) 22:30, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

That's true. I really think we need to agree on something that can be written down in CFI that applies to hyphenated compounds. DTLHS (talk) 22:34, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

If you do that, you have to bear in mind that certain words are more likely to be hyphenated in British English than in American English, one exception is seamfree for some reason. DonnanZ (talk) 22:49, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Agreed about somehow codifying CFI on hyphenated words. They play so many semantic roles and enjoy such broad productivity that I think it behoves us to have a consistent policy as to when they count and when they do not. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 00:08, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest as a first step a provision that phrases which are hyphenated due to being used attributively should be treated as if the hyphens were spaces for purposes of determining whether they're SOP. That would prevent deletion of hyphenated true compounds and of all phrases that are idiomatic, but would get rid of the "it-must-be-a-single-word-because-it's-hyphenated" argument (yes, I did that on purpose...). It wouldn't cover this type of construction, but it would be relatively easy to apply, and it might be accepted by some who would object to a more sweeping proposal. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:22, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I think that's prudent--it begins address the problem of any-word-can-be-made-up-with-a-hyphen-ism, but cautiously and only in a narrow sphere. From there at some point we can move maybe to illegitimate uses of suffixes using hyphens (like the one I just used), to separate them from legitimate ones somehow (as Donnanz mentions below). --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 13:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

A good yardstick is whether a term appears in a reputable online dictionary, as disease-free does. If it doesn't, more thought has to be put into whether it is entry-worthy or not. The attributive-only argument doesn't always work with hyphenated adjectives, see rent-free which is also an adverb. DonnanZ (talk) 16:00, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that lemming principle reminds me of the above discussion about "ever-X" words. Which dictionary did you find had disease-free? --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 18:57, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Oxford Online, the reference has been there since day 1. DonnanZ (talk) 19:07, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Don't know how I missed it. I'll accept the lemming principle here. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 20:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

• Delete this and all "X-free" where the meaning is no more than "free of/from X". This is a regular formation from -free. weed-free, football-free, buffalo-free ... the list is virtually limitless. Mihia (talk) 02:17, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

words-formulated-with--free-free... --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 02:29, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I would like to include weed-free as it is quite common. I have been spending time lately tackling the weeds in my own garden. DonnanZ (talk) 16:33, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Is being common or uncommon a factor in the decision to include an entry? Mihia (talk) 02:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

It's not uncommon to see DonnanZ give some detail about their personal connection to the thing referred to as a reason to keep the phrase referring to it. Sometimes I wonder if they look in the mirror to see what the weather's like outside... Chuck Entz (talk) 03:00, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh yes, the possibilities are endless, giraffe-free, idiot-free, traffic-free, Irish-free, it's knowing where to draw the line. We should refrain from joining -free compounds up in an effort to get round the problem, as I suspect has happened in the past. DonnanZ (talk) 07:52, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Unlike weed-free, the other two terms do not appear attested, and attestation is a prerequisite regardless of sum of parts: football-free, buffalo-free at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:40, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

The world does not begin and end with 'Ngram' viewer, and, in any case, as explained in the docs, "we only consider ngrams that occur in at least 40 books". That's 40 books. It is easy to find examples of "buffalo-free" and "football-free". You can start by searching for "buffalo-free zone" and "football-free zone". Mihia (talk) 02:26, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

• Keep (I consider hyphenated compounds to be single words). Ƿidsiþ 07:56, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

So you would support an entry for "buffalo-free", defined as "free of/from buffalos"? Mihia (talk) 01:32, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I mean I wouldn't add something like that, but if someone else had, and it had three citations, then yes. Ƿidsiþ 06:22, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

• Keep (per Ƿidsith) Leasnam (talk) 20:53, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
• Keep per WT:COALMINE, if we believe disease-free, diseasefree at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. As for whether something being a word matters: WT:CFI#General rule, "... of including a term if it is attested and, when that is met, if it is a single word or it is idiomatic", italics on "single" mine. The WT:LEMMING card can be played with the help of oxforddictionaries.com[1]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:24, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Kept. (sigh) Per utramque cavernam 10:54, 3 September 2018 (UTC)