Talk:knock someone over with a feather

RFC discussion: June 2014–March 2017

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knock me over with a feather

Recently added. Cursory GBooks search seems to indicate this is in use. May need a better lemma, definitely needs a better definition. — Keφr 20:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Here are the 12 instances found on COCA with a search of "* * [knock] * over with a feather"

YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FEATHER 6

IT COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

, AND THEN KNOCK IT OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

. YOU COULD KNOCK ME OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

YOU TALK ABOUT KNOCKING SOMEONE OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

DE FLAN-COULD 'VE KNOCKED HIM OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

YOU COULD JUST KNOCK IT OVER WITH A FEATHER 1

I conclude that whatever the lemma, if it is kept, you could have knocked me over with a feather should redirect to it. DCDuring TALK 23:26, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Also used are "could have knocked/could knock me down with a feather," "could have been knocked down/over by a feather," and the imperative "knock me down/over with a feather." Also "might" can sometimes replace "could." — Pingku^dimmi 13:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I think this should be moved to "knock over with a feather" or "knock someone over down with a feather" (depending on how we deal with phrases like this which have to be used with an internal object). It's also used in the third person ("you could have knocked her down with a feather") and the first-person plural ("you could have knocked us over with a feather"). No evidence of any real use in conjugation ("knocking...", "knocks...") on Google Books, which makes me think it only goes with modal verbs like "could", "could've", "might've" etc. I guess this is one of those phrases that falls into the construction grammar black hole, which we don't really know what to do with. Smurrayinchester (talk) 13:48, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@Pingku The search for the active form with down only found one instance at COCA. I expect it would be thrice attestable on larger corpora and should therefore be an alternative form. The passive (with either down or over) only appeared once, but it too is almost certainly tri-attestable.

@Smurrayinchester Three of the thirteen total instances of the expression involve non-animate things being knocked down. I conclude that knock something down with a feather should be the lemma, something presumably including someone, and that knock someone down with a feather should redirect to it. That is, unless we believe that the inanimate object uses, but not the animate ones, are SoP. DCDuring TALK 15:03, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

The inanimate uses (what are some examples?) must have a different meaning, because "You could have knocked me over with a feather" (crucially over and not down) means "I was thoroughly astonished", which is not something that usually happens to inanimate objects. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@Angr There are truncated examples from COCA above. It is a hyperbole for the situation that something physical, including a person, could easily fall apart or fail. I suppose we could have two lemmas, bidirectionally linked under See also and unidirectionally under Etymology from the "something" entry to the "someone" entry and in the opposite direction under Derived terms, but the "someone" sense is not really radically different, just something figurative. DCDuring TALK 15:34, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

We don't necessarily need two lemmas, just two senses: "(of a person) to be thoroughly astonished" and "(of an object) to be flimsily built" or the like. Or I guess we do need a separate lemma using down rather than over, which is usually used of an object rather than a person, but maybe there are some attestations of its being used of a person too. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:40, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@DCDuring I don't think the inanimate use of the phrase needs much explaining, really. "You could have knocked the house down with a feather" means (very transparently, if rather hyperbolically) that the house was weak, and I think that any non-native speaker with average reading comprehension could work that out from "knock down" and "feather". "You could have knocked my dad down with a feather" doesn't mean that my dad is weak, though, it means that he is surprised, and that information is not contained in the sum of parts. (There may be some occasional use of the phrase to mean "weak" when referring to people as well, but that can be covered by {{&lit}}.) Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

@Smurrayinchester I think I've gone non-native: I've gone soft on the include-every-collocation approach to inclusion and have even internalized it. DCDuring TALK 16:45, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

It does seem like this should be moved to omit "me", but it's quite difficult to define at that point! - -sche (discuss) 08:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Resolved: moved to knock one over with a feather (with the alternative form knock one down with a feather). — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)