Talk:no end

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Latest comment: 4 years ago by Backinstadiums in topic to no end
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Is this a valid adverbial phrase? I'm listening to a web lecture where the lecturer (Tau Stephan Hoeller) utters: "Sexual, and sort of gender-related, symbolism in religious and spiritual matters exists, and this of course annoyed the Victorians no end."[1] __meco 17:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Valid? Certainly fairly common in speech. In MWOnline and some other OneLook dictionaries. I'll add it. DCDuring TALK 17:46, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure of the appropriate entry for "no end of X", meaning "plenty of X" or "an endless supply of X". I don't think we have a sense of "end" for this. I suppose "no limit of X" might be synonymous. DCDuring TALK 18:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Sure then. I would have expected "to no end". 72.177.113.91 19:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
Many (but not all) speakers distinguish between (deprecated template usage) to no end and (deprecated template usage) no end. (The former is from (deprecated template usage) end.) —RuakhTALK 03:36, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think this illustrates a problem with the idea of contrasting the meaning of an idiom (which I think both the adverb and noun are) with the literal meaning of the collocation. Displaying one meaning for a polysemic word seems insufficient; displaying them all seems excessive. The idiom tag alone seems appropriate in such cases with perhaps a usage note such as what Ruakh suggests. DCDuring TALK 11:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Striking. (N.B. This entry did not exist before this discussion.) —RuakhTALK 01:47, 18 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

to no end

[edit]

to no end should be added as it's not compositionally understandable --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:52, 26 December 2019 (UTC)Reply