Talk:give

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Yuck, are we trying to become OED part II ? Half of all the (sub)senses can be merged. — Vildricianus 11:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This was the result of a massive update by everyone's favorite, Primetime - my vote is to revert to the way it was. SemperBlotto 11:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

That could indeed be more time-saving than trying to work through the entire mess. — Vildricianus 12:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with this article being expanded? In this case I don't even mind that Primetime is not sticking to WS:ELE since there is no precedence for an entry of this size. We should definitely tolerate Primetime's current edit spree and then change whatever needs improvement. Ncik 11:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

something's got to give

What does that mean? 85.76.4.237 10:39, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

In an untenable situation, some part of the problem has to change. Literally, something has to yield. —Stephen 17:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Etymology questionable and without any references

Why not < OS g(i)efan???? — This unsigned comment was added by 195.4.79.217 (talk) at 08:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC).

That cannot be Ossetic...why do you even suggest it? What in the etymology do you question? This is not Wikipedia, we usually do not give references for etymologies. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose the user meant Old English (or Old Saxon?). Anyway, the reason why this word cannot be simply inherited is that OE g- before front vowels became [j-] and yields modern English y-. Of course, the Norse and OE forms will have merged over time, rather than one actually "replacing" the other. (I'm just saying this incase someone else should ever wonder.) Kolmiel (talk) 00:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Noun?

'Give' is also a noun meaning resilience or springiness. For example "This cord doesn't have much give in it". --Irrevenant (talk) 05:47, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

That’s true. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:37, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 06:53, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

RFC discussion: June 2012

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Drago's "Original" etymologies

While dealing with the "Proto-Oceanic" mess, I ran into (or should I say stepped in?) another long-ignored set of erroneous etymologies:

User:Drago (talk • contribs) wasn't active for more than a few months, but his/her misplaced confidence in his/her expertise, and prodigious work ethic, left errors scattered all over the place, many of which are still yet to be uncovered, six years later.

One innocuous-looking practice was to put "Originally x" in the etymology, where x is a presumed earlier form of the headword. It's only after you stop to examine the specifics that you realize he/she wasn't citing an attested earlier form of the same language, but (sort of) reconstructing a proto-form without mentioning the fact, and without any information about where it fits in the history of the language's development.

I first noticed these in Polynesian-language entries, but I've also seen several Germanic examples, such as Old High German forms followed by an "original" form with the Old High German consonant shifts "unshifted". I also noticed one case of an Old English word oroþ where Drago's etymology said: "Originally very likely *ozoþ, from a Germanic *uzunþa-". Given that the change from *z to *r is supposed to have happened in Proto-West Germanic, and the loss of the *n before *þ is supposed to have happened in Proto-Ingvaeonic, hundreds of years later, *ozoþ could never have existed at all! There are no doubt many more examples where I'm not familiar enough with the sound changes to spot errors as easily as I did with this one.

This strikes me as misleading, rife with inaccuracies, and definitely a violation of our standards for reconstructed forms and proto-languages. We need to go through Drago's edits and either convert these into real, verified etymologies, or remove them.

The problem is that these edits are only a fraction of Drago's 19,672 edit count (12,311 separate pages)- so far, I've found just a few dozen. I tried searching for "Etymology" and "originally" together , but the sheer volume of legitimate occurrences has made it very slow going.

Would it be possible for a bot to tag all entries having 1) an edit by Drago that 2) includes the word "originally" (capitalized or non-capitalized)? If we could get all of these into a temporary maintenance category, we could then sift out the false positives and those that have been fixed, and then fix the rest as we have time. I have the references and background to do the Polynesian entries myself, but someone else will have to help with the others. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:02, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Done- the slow way. It seemed like there were over a hundred of them, mostly in German entries. Thanks to anyone who helped. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:37, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

giv'

They giv’ it the name --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:57, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Indirect object in front of the direct object

1) Physical actions, He gave' the ball a kick'. You do not say'...*a kick to the ball'. He gave the door a push. Judy gave my hand a squeeze. 2)Expressions and gestures, He gave her a fond smile and a wink. 3) Describe an effect produced, I thought I'd give you a surprise. That noise gives me a headache. --Backinstadiums (talk) 21:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

give (someone) to know, give (someone) to understand

What sense covers these? Here are a couple of citations.

1. • 1734, William Rufus Chetwood, ‎William Johnson, The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures and Imminent Escapes of Capt. Rich. Falconer (page 198)

     [T]hey brought before me several of their Women, and gave me to know by Signs that I should take one of them to be my Mate, or Bed-fellow, or suffer Death.

   • 1889, New South Wales. Parliament. Standing Committee on Public Works, Reports on Proposed Bridges (volume 1, page 22)

     We are in the engineering business in Carrington, and when we purchased the present site we were given to understand that the reclamation for the excavation of the inner dyke would be proceeded with and completed in ten years.

Equinox ◑ 09:36, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/give-to-understand Backinstadiums (talk) 10:43, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Slang sense

I assume it's short for "giving x vibes". Here are some demonstrative quotes from Twitter.

• 2023 May 16, @rttssupremecist, Twitter‎^[1]:

  michael is the only man who can wear a fedora without giving incel mouth breather

• 2023 May 17, @theanonymouspee, Twitter‎^[2]:

  just say you can't afford it and go. your tweet is giving sour grapes.

Simplificationalizer (talk) 16:10, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April 2023–July 2024

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give

(giving)

"(slang) To exceed expectations. Your outfit is giving!" I tried some searches and couldn't find any "outfit is giving" (other than longer phrases like "your outfit is giving me a heart attack" which don't count). Equinox ◑ 04:51, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I've heard this, though I took it to be ellipsis of a broader slang use of give we don't seem to cover yet, which is saying an outfit, action, etc is giving Wednesday Addams, giving boho, or giving Ted Cruz during the 2021 Texas weather crisis, etc, itself a shortening of it's giving [me] Wednesday [vibes]. (The Atlantic has an article about this, "'It's Giving': A Gift to Language".) I'm looking for cites, but as you say most hits are longer irrelevant phrases. - -sche (discuss) 05:51, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I added an Elle cite of the other/longer slang use, "it's giving [x]", to sense 1.5 alongside "it's giving [x] vibes". As I said, I've also heard bare "it's giving.", and can find enough examples on the raw web to confirm it's real — e.g., the first of the few hits for google:"outfit is giving girl" are longer phrases of the other slang sense, "this outfit is giving girl boss" [vibes], but the last hits are indeed this RFV'd sense, "This outfit is GIVING, girl!", in comments on tiktok videos — but I have not gotten the sense that it's common enough to meet CFI yet. (Urban Dictionary's top definition will cover it for anyone who looks it up, if we don't.) - -sche (discuss) 15:03, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

This is indeed quite hard to search for, although it's commonly used online. I've added two uses in a tabloid (by the same author but quoting different people). It is used here (page 8) to illustrate the concept of code-switching between language varieties. Einstein2 (talk) 10:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

This absolutely exists and -sche is on point, it's shortened from positive uses of sense 1.5. Bare "is/it's giving" without anything following it can be found e.g. by googling "giving fr". I'm not sure this is old enough for it to have leaked into any source that is considered durable on Wiktionary, but I have no doubt there is a small army of basic bitches working on remedying this as we speak, give it a year or two. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:26, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

One thing to consider: does this exist in other forms, e.g. "that outfit [which you had on yesterday] gave, girl!"? "that outfit is gonna give!" (If not, is it really best considered an inflected form of give still, or an (?)adjective giving?) - -sche (discuss) 17:37, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

@-sche I can find examples of "so giving", "giving asf" on Twitter so I support the adjective interpretation. Ioaxxere (talk) 03:50, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

And I can find very giving ([3], "Pretty is an understatement.. Stella is very giving"), and in the other direction, I can't find other verb tenses like "gave", "will give", "gonna give". So, OK, I'll move the sense to giving (with RFV tag intact, as a separate action from determining whether it passes or fails RFV). - -sche (discuss) 15:17, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

(Thanks to J3133 and Einstein2 for fixing the def post-move, which I meant to do but then got distracted by offline stuff.) - -sche (discuss) 20:05, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

RFV-passed? We have cites of (online) newspapers and there doesn't seem to be any doubt that it exists (and it's reasonably widespread in modern slang). - -sche (discuss) 17:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:42, 9 July 2024 (UTC)