Talk:mis-sold

Tea room discussion

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

I have just added that this a past participle but is it definitely also an adjective as stated? Pistachio 19:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

First thing is that "missold" and "mis-sold" are almost equally common on books.google.com. Can something be "very mis-sold" (or "very missold") (gradability), "more mis-sold than" something else (comparability)? Is there any meaning to a word as an adjective that is not within the meaning of the participle? There may be other tests, but those are the ones I use. Do the gradable and comparable uses actually occur in written works (fictional dialogue for colloquial usage). If none of these are true, then we wouldn't take it to be an adjective. See w:Adjective.

In this case "very missold", "too missold", "very mis-sold", "too mis-sold" are not found on google Books, Scholar, News, or Groups. (NOT gradable). Nor was "more missold" or more "mis-sold". (NOT comparable) I would need to see usage of any meaning in the participle or past.

Despite all this, we may have an entry for a word as an adjective that is really just a participle. Feel free to correct it or put it into the Request for Verification ("RfV") process by inserting an ((template|rfv}} tag and clicking on the "+" to add it to our RfV page or ask about it in the Tea Room at WT:TR. DCDuring TALK 16:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

One questionable assumption in the above: that mis-sell or missell is actually a word. No dictionary I have checked has it. DCDuring TALK 19:33, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

mis-sell, but not missell (hits are for proper noun Missel or scannos). DCDuring TALK 19:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

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mis-sold

Rfv-sense UK Sold on the basis of misleading financial advice. I doubt that all of that is conveyed solely by the word "mis-sold". I don't find any indication that "mis-sold" in comparable or gradable on any of our Google sources. DCDuring TALK 16:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

That seems to be the common understanding of the term in the UK. Google books has several entries (aside from obvious verb usage) for each of "mis-sold pension", "mis-sold endowment", "mis-sold policy" etc.--Dmol 18:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes. And there is no dictionary I have access to that shows either "missell" or "mis-sell" as a verb. So this follows the other model of a participle-like form that has no non-participial verb forms (I haven't checked "mis-selling" or "misselling".) and therefore can only be listed as an adjective. Arrghh. DCDuring TALK 19:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that necessarily follows. If I recall correctly, (deprecated template usage) babysit is a backformation from (deprecated template usage) babysitting, which is (deprecated template usage) baby + (deprecated template usage) sitting (and used to be hyphenated); but (deprecated template usage) babysitting is not an adjective. Rather, certain kinds of compounds tend to form only with participles (though backformation frequently generates the other verb forms afterward). (However, I don't know whether this applies to (deprecated template usage) mis-sell, and if it does, I'm not sure how we want to handle such cases. You can see one approach at [[shareholding]], but I can't say I'm particularly happy with it.) —Ruakh_TALK 20:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, back-formation, certainly. I was following canons of plausible reasoning, not logically inevitability, in line with my general fallibilism on almost all matters, including most people's (including my own !) application of what is purported to be "pure logic". A wiki is a particularly good fit with fallibilism, IMHO.

In any event, in this case, mis-sell seems to exist, whether by back-formation or not I don't know. Assuming my reading of the b.g.c. hits is correct, we will have stolen a march on the other on-line dictionaries. I think we should verify the lemma. DCDuring TALK 20:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems like the verb is accepted then. Originally I asked whether this is an adjective as well as a past participle. If it is also an adjective, does it mean selling 'on the basis of misleading financial advice' or in a more general sense to sell 'misleadingly, fraudulently or in violation of laws or regulations' (as in mis-sell)? Pistachio 16:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Because it hasn't been cited, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions. From my researches it appeared to be used mostly in the UK and mostly arise in some kind of regulatory/legal context with which I am not familiar. DCDuring TALK 16:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

clocked out as adjective. Verb sense OK. DCDuring TALK 16:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)