Talk:more equal
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With a little reluctance, I have to nominate this ‘idiom’. If kept it needs cleanup: it's clearly not a noun and the etymology isn't one. But I don't think it should be kept. It's at best a literary quote. To call it idiomatic is to spoil Orwell's joke. The whole point about the phrase is that it makes no logical sense and to ‘define’ the collocation as meaning ‘superior’ kills the whole point of the tortured phraseology. In that sense it's not a set phrase, it's no more than the sum of its parts, i.e. illogical. Widsith 19:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, delete it. How interesting that I just looked up and saw this addition to WT:RFD after looking through The Gulag Archipelago (for greensward)! — Beobach972 19:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
- I don’t think this idiomatic adjective is definable. It relies on being logically absurd (as Widsith said), conceptually impossible, and by appealing to the quite visceral and nebulous feelings of positivity that are associated with æquality and égalitarianism by the pigs’ subjects and the typical Animal Farm reader (i.e., those with leftist idealistic tendencies like socialists and communists). That is, like newspeak, it knocks out a person’s critical faculties and appeals to that person’s underlying emotional motivations, thus inspiring admiration, devotion, and so on for the authority privileged with being called “more equal”. As an analysis of Orwell’s literary device, this is interesting; however, as it cannot be reduced to a dictionary definition, it is perhaps unsuitable for inclusion in Wiktionary. If that is the case, then it ought to be deleted. But in any case, it should not remain whilst it retains such a simplistic and incorrect definition that does the subtly clever literary device no justice whatsoever. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 19:38, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
- Keep. Is someone intentionally picking on Connel? Anyway, I removed the etymology rant and added 2 citations. The definition could still use some work. The idiom is useful simply because "more equal" often gets used instead of "more/greater equality" (even though it shouldn't), so it's important to understand there's an idiomatic sense.--Halliburton Shill 08:48, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Eh? What's Connel got to do with this? Widsith 08:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Ummm... the original author of the page? -- Visviva 15:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- The quotation from Jane Austen’s Emma seems like a different sense — I don’t personally understand it. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 14:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- It is a different sense, it's been moved to the equal page now (that sense always comparable). Widsith 14:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- The CBS quotation is a reference / an allusion to Orwell's use of the words (and probably not durably archived), which, in turn, derive their ‘meaning’ precisely from their lack of meaning : equal is (often taken to be) incomparable (although, as we've seen, some senses are comparable), hence more equal makes no sense. — Beobach972 14:51, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Hmm... why is this defined as a noun, by the way? — Beobach972 14:51, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Keep, in frequent and idiomatic use in English -- and while some aspects of its significance may lie beyond our scope, the definition given seems to cover the most common use of this phrase fairly well. See these Google results. Although I think perhaps a move to more equal than others might be ideal. -- Visviva 15:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Regarding the nominator's broader point, it certainly wasn't idiomatic when Orwell used it, but it has become idiomatic since then, thanks to the popularity of Animal Farm and the uptake of many of its concepts. -- Visviva 15:33, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Keep. While I understand it may be hard for people to witness me lapsing into a momentary bit of "descriptivism," (having entered this term after seeing it used as a cliché here in a Wiktionary discussion,) I'm taken aback by the RFD nomination. I do routinely expect to see cleanup on entries I make. But for an expression of such historic importance and rock-solid unquestionable literary value (not to mention the clearly widespread idiomatic use colloquially,) I'm pretty confused as to why it is nominated for the memory hole instead of WT:RFC. That is, with the "appearance in a well-known work" clause, it passed RFV before being nominated here. I trust the rewrite(s) it has received, makes it an acceptable entry, to all, now? Or is it that we shouldn't define it, instructing our readers to read the classic, instead? --Connel MacKenzie 23:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
- Keep. I hear my housemates (for example) use it often enough, and the Google evidence shows that it is well established as a common English idiom. If we are wrangling over the definition, then let's wrangle, not delete. ArielGlenn 02:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
- Keep. If only because I entered the cliché that Connel saw (I believe), and then wondered if perhaps it deserved an entry. This discussion leads me to think that it does. Algrif 16:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Meaning
[edit]I've always been puzzled by the structure of the idiom "more equal". If you don't know the context that this phrase was used in (Orwell's Animal Farm), how does "more equal" suggest "better"? As a native Hebrew speaker, this phrase is perfectly logical to me, because in Hebrew one word, שווה means both "equal" and "worth", so "more equal" and "worth more" are the same phrase, making Orwell's phrase very logical. But I wonder how native English speakers actually find logic in this phrase. Nyh (talk) 12:47, 18 April 2012 (UTC)