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Latest comment: 12 years ago by -sche in topic RFV

RFV

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The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


Contemptible black person. Cannot see any CFI-compliant usages referring to a person, only the SoP "nigger + nose", i.e. the nose of a black person. Equinox 00:05, 12 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

It's not a black person with a nose, it's mocking someone for having a characteristically african nose, or a large nose, or comparing them with such in the latter case if they only have remote black ancestry or none at all.Lucifer (talk) 04:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

The definition says "A contemptible black person" which is what I am challenging. Equinox 10:42, 12 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Cited, IMHO. This kind of metonymy is hardly unusual and not really entry-worthy, IMO. The definition gives two alternative definitions linked with "or". They seem distinct to me. DCDuring TALK 11:17, 12 March 2012 (UTC)Reply
Aren't those all mentions? —RuakhTALK 04:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
If so, there has been error in previous discussions. I don't see how reported speech is the same as a mention. The mere existence of quotation marks has not been interpreted as indicating a mention. DCDuring TALK 11:25, 4 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
And indeed, the mere existence of quotation marks does not indicate a mention. But those sentences don't even attempt to work "nigger nose" into the grammar of the sentence; in each case it's "called him 'nigger nose'" or "called me 'nigger nose'" or the like. If they were works of fiction, and we were confident that "nigger nose" was the entire utterance, we could say that fictional characters were using the term (which would count), but as it is, these books are simply claiming that unnamed other people have used this term; so even if we accept these claims (i.e., if we treat these books as reliable sources for these claims — an honor that we don't generally afford even to dictionaries), I think we'd have to give the quotations as " [] nigger nose [] " and metadata appropriate to the anonymous quotees. And personally, I don't really want to have three cites that are all identical, and that are all attributed to entities such as "someone's sister and other children". —RuakhTALK 12:11, 4 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
I think the 1998 citation might be valid, but I agree with Ruakh that the rest aren't. - -sche (discuss) 04:41, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
This seems like a novel extension of the use-mention distinction to include reported speech. What is the principle behind this judgment? Can the principle(s) not be subjected to scrutiny?
Is it that all reported speech concerning a single word is a mention? Or is there something about some class of which this term is a member that makes it subject to different rules? DCDuring TALK 08:53, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Part of it is that the citations, especially the 1998 and 2001 citations (the former of which comes closer than the others to actually using the word as part of the sentence, although it still doesn't come very close), don't convey the suggested meaning "contemptible black person or person with a large or disliked nose". The 1942 citation supports a sense "one with a black nose [like a nigger's]". Perhaps the definition could be changed to {{n-g|An insult.}} or something like the def of other meaningless insults (cuntfucker, dipshit, etc)...? - -sche (discuss) 17:18, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
That is logic I understand and agree with, in principle at least. A non-gloss definition would be perfect. After all, the "etymology" (components) of the term would clearly suggest what underlying meanings it might have, though apparently users and contributors might be confused by the polysemy. DCDuring TALK 19:10, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
It would be interesting to have to find three cites meeting a strict conveying-a-sense standard for each sense and subsense of a term like (deprecated template usage) marriage. DCDuring TALK 19:13, 11 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
So, would anyone oppose my closing this by letting the entry stay? - -sche (discuss) 07:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)Reply
Done. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 22 August 2012 (UTC)Reply