Talk:mission impossible
Add topicLatest comment: 8 years ago by Dan Polansky in topic RFD discussion: May 2016
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This isn't an idiom, but the noun mission used with the postpositive adjective impossible. Additionally it isn't singulare tantum because you can find plural uses in books. 24.5.143.190 20:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- As the etymology indicates, it is obviously an allusion to the TV series and movie, entitled Mission: Impossible. Note the colon, which makes it seem wrong to call impossible simply postpositive in this expression. Postpositive placement is a lexical property of a small number of adjectives, of which impossible is not one, but also seems to make some expressions set terms. DCDuring TALK 21:19, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- This article (Post-Positive Adjectives: Grossmont College) lists impossible as postpositive in examples. Maybe this college distributes false information in what looks like course materials. It is sad if this is the case. 24.5.143.190 21:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- It could be that Mission: Impossible was a pun on an existing phrase. Did mission impossible exist before Mission: Impossible? Either way, I'd tend to think that most phrases involving post-positive adjectives are idiomatic (with the exception of the kinds of multi-word adjectival phrases that are regularly post-positive). --WikiTiki89 22:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- The TV series launched in 1966. I find a few uses of the exact phrase earlier in the 1960s, most prominently in the title of a 1963 critique of the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of President Kennedy. Before that, it only seems to appear as a coincidental collocation (e.g., "absence of concealment and cover may render an accomplishment of the mission impossible"). bd2412 T 22:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- I would love to see an example of a word other than mission precede impossible other than as a part of an expression like a problem impossible to fix or They deemed such a solution impossible (to exemplify what I think Wikitiki89 was referring to). DCDuring TALK 22:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- There's a minor snowclone derived from the name of the TV series: "X: Impossible", where X is some deed or task alleged to be comparable to the missions in the series. For instance, there was a Food Network series called w:Dinner Impossible, which has been succeeded by something called w:Restaurant: Impossible. There also have been spoofs from time to time playing off of the intense and overly-dramatic tone of the series by adding ":Impossible" to something mundane or silly. The snowclone may look like the addition of an independent lexeme to X, but the very specific format and the fact that it always directly or indirectly alludes to the TV series and/or movie seem to indicate otherwise. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:05, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- I would love to see an example of a word other than mission precede impossible other than as a part of an expression like a problem impossible to fix or They deemed such a solution impossible (to exemplify what I think Wikitiki89 was referring to). DCDuring TALK 22:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- The TV series launched in 1966. I find a few uses of the exact phrase earlier in the 1960s, most prominently in the title of a 1963 critique of the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of President Kennedy. Before that, it only seems to appear as a coincidental collocation (e.g., "absence of concealment and cover may render an accomplishment of the mission impossible"). bd2412 T 22:17, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- It could be that Mission: Impossible was a pun on an existing phrase. Did mission impossible exist before Mission: Impossible? Either way, I'd tend to think that most phrases involving post-positive adjectives are idiomatic (with the exception of the kinds of multi-word adjectival phrases that are regularly post-positive). --WikiTiki89 22:03, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- This article (Post-Positive Adjectives: Grossmont College) lists impossible as postpositive in examples. Maybe this college distributes false information in what looks like course materials. It is sad if this is the case. 24.5.143.190 21:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
- I'd call this an idiom to be honest and keep it. Ignoring the grammar issue i.e. that impossible isn't used postpositively I just think it's not generally used in reference to a mission that is impossible. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:54, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- Yes. I should have said "in running text". I am fairly certain that Mission: Impossible has not (yet?) altered the general lexical characteristics of impossible. Even if it has (or will), mission impossible seems to me to have become a set phrase. It may be readily decipherable and inconsequential, but the idiosyncratic postpositive position of impossible might well cause someone to look up the expression and/or the component terms, which components should link to [[mission impossible]]. DCDuring TALK 11:02, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- I would say keep. Reference added. Donnanz (talk) 11:05, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- Oh, yea. Keep. DCDuring TALK 12:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- Keep. If postpositivity was a full explanation then we could also say e.g. "journey impossible" for going to Antarctica, but we cannot. Equinox ◑ 12:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
- Keep. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:28, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
- RFD kept per consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:28, 14 May 2016 (UTC)