Talk:full throttle

Wiktionary:Requests for verification - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of February 2009. 07:03, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

This word has under the heading Alternative Spellings "full-throttle (attributive use):" Now I wonder, isn't this really tantamount to an adjectival form? __meco 09:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

We haven't been showing a separate PoS for attributive use of a noun. I have relied on the simple tests: "Is it used in the comparative or superlative" or "Is it used with a 'grading' adverb (eg,"too", "very"). If it attestably meets at least one of these tests, arguably it should be presented as an adjective and/or adverb. DCDuring TALK 13:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that full-throttle, when created, should definitely have the POS header "Adjective", since it is never used in any non-adjectival way. However, calling it a derived term in the full throttle entry would be a bit much; keeping it under ===Alternative forms=== is best IMO. -- Visviva 17:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Relatedly, I find that the usage preference favoring hyphens in some cases and disfavoring them in others is often disregarded in both directions. It verges on being misleading to present it as I have in this and some other entries, but presenting relative frequency-based usage notes seems like a colossal waste of contributor and user time. It is a case where economy of effort (aka laziness) favors that much orthgraphic prescriptivism. DCDuring TALK 17:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree. A templated usage note might be a happy medium; it could also reference the various usage authorities that have weighed in on the issue (or that info could be hived off to a linked Appendix). -- Visviva 17:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen "full throttle" in the plural, and wouldn't the engines be AT full throttle, so the noun sense in the current definition is probably out. Also, I could conceive this phrase being used as an adverb, as in "hit the engine full throttle!" In the imperative verb form it has a meaning similar to "step on it." -VitaminN