Talk:one-acter

RFD discussion: July–October 2022

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one-acter

one + acter. Need I say more? Dunderdool (talk) 15:03, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this one, because the possible number of combinations is very small. There is no realistic possibility of a sixty-one-acter. I actually think "acter" is the term which should be deleted, since it has no meaning on its own. I would keep the frequently used "#-acter" terms and delete "acter". - TheDaveRoss 15:40, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

We have a lot of words/senses like this that are only ever used in combination, e.g. decker, IQer, hander. (Are there examples without the -er suffix? Perhaps senses 3 and 4 of job.)

I think it would be a good idea to have a category for them, something like "English words with senses only used in combinations". 98.170.164.88 19:54, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

^{Isn’t that what the part of speech is for?} Theknightwho (talk) 12:44, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

@Theknightwho: Are you saying that 'acter' and 'eyed' adjective sense 3 should be under the suffix POS? I'm not sure it's accurate to call those suffixes. I do think that they should be categorized in some way, though. 98.170.164.88 17:35, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Keep one-acter, delete the first definition of acter per TheDaveRoss. Binarystep (talk) 16:17, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

• Actually, I suspect that the term one-acter was coined before acter, which is possibly a reason for it not being SOP. Dunderdool (talk) 21:52, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  I analyze this as one act + -er.  --Lambiam 22:52, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

  Me too. I think keep on that basis (and I suspect WF is right about it being coined first, which is WT:JIFFY). To be honest, I can’t see this being attested for more than five acts anyway. Theknightwho (talk) 19:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Abstain. It's intelligible from its parts, but it also seems more likely to be formed as one act + -er (as Lambiam says) rather than one + acter, and we struggle with how to handle SOPs like that, where the term has a space or hyphen in it but that's not where the break between the "parts" is: compare Talk:KJV-onlyer. The number of combinations being very small does make this less of a problem than something like yellow-shirter or yellow-hatter where you could sub in any other colour or item of clothing, but I'm not persuaded to keep by that fact, because the series of (for example) first toe, second toe, etc is also small, but still seems SOP. - -sche (discuss) 00:06, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

It is definitely one-act + -er, although when TheDaveRoss says "there is no realistic possibility of a sixty-one-acter" he is actually illustrating the possibility by saying it and having us all know what it would mean. ("There might be unicorns, but there could never be a tricorn!" We immediately understand that this would be a three-horned beast.) It's certainly easy to find uses of "three-acter", "four-acter", etc. Re acter "in combination": I would definitely keep that. Compare footer (sense 3: "a six-footer"), pounder (three combinable senses), oh there are dozens of entries of this kind. Equinox ◑ 00:13, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

• Kept one-acter, removed sense at acter. - TheDaveRoss 14:13, 27 October 2022 (UTC)