Talk:drift apart

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This seems SoP, using existing figurative non-locative senses of the components. DCDuring TALK 18:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Delete. Note that google books:"drifted together" gets a rather impressive 11,300 hits, strongly suggesting there is nothing 'special' about this collocation. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Keep, idiomatic, defined at Cambridge, Macmillan. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:48, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Why is this idiomatic? Would be nice if you gave reasons without me having to ask. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

When people drift apart, the don't float or drift in liquid in opposite directions, they gradually lose contact with each other. The definitions of drift and apart don't describe this and they shouldn't. The choice of picking on this term but not on e.g break up puzzles me. It's a great term, which we should keep because for me (as an example), even with sufficient of exposure to English, the meaning is not obvious from its parts. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:34, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. Of course. -- So why didn't you two marry each other, then?. I don't know. We just seemed to drift apart. Clear as a bell to any L2 English speaker, innit? -- @DCD, Impressive number of hits for random (but highly probable) collocations is a non-argument, and you know it. -- ALGRIF talk 16:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• • A discussion has started at Appendix talk:English phrasal verbs#Statistical methods with Phrasal Verbs Join the discussion there, too. Part of my argument there is as follows. -- If a translator picks up that drift apart translates as a functioning phrasal verb - but does not pick up "drift together" in the same way, we can be very sure that "drift apart" is actually being used as a phrasal verb in the bulk of actual samples in actual Corpora. This seems to be a much better result than "my gut tells me it is SoP". We are supposed to be reflecting actual usage, (not prescriptive). If statistical results are strongly indicative of "phrasal-ness" (descriptive) - then to insist otherwise based on an anecdotal sentence pulled out of thin air is surely being prescriptive. -- ALGRIF talk 11:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
• Keep. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
• RFD kept per consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:30, 6 December 2013 (UTC)