Talk:overseed

Question: meaning of over-

Does the over- imply a connotation of either too much seed (as I would have expected), or perhaps alternatively one layer of seed being laid upon another? Or does this really just mean to reseed? 98.170.164.88 21:59, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

The implied semantic differentiation represents the fact that you broadcast seeds over top of the existing vegetation, as opposed to doing tillage first (to disrupt that vegetation) and then broadcasting the seeds (onto worked/bare soil). Thus the use of the over- prefix in this word is parallel with the semantic implication in certain other words such as overcoat and topcoat. The implicit difference thus makes overseeding hyponymous to reseeding: the latter can be any reseeding (either with preceding tillage or not), whereas the former is a type of the latter (the less laborious type). The distinction is highly relevant in pasture management (which is "a whole thing" [of its own] in agriculture), despite that it can be moot in some other aspects of agriculture (such as row-crop production). The word repaint is hypernymous in the same way as reseed is: did you sand and strip the existing paint first, or did you just paint over it? As for how I (or anyone else) know these notions or are certain that they are true, I would say that farmers take it for granted because it's intuitively obvious to them because tillage is a big deal (a lot of work, an ever-present unspoken but obvious implication, and so on). Relatedly, the word seedbed strongly connotes that tillage has been done to prepare said bed; in fact, that concept is even usually baked into the denotation of that word, because a green pasture that is about to be overseeded is generally not referred to as a seedbed. Quercus solaris (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

I have just now fixed all of the relevant Wiktionary entries to adequately reflect the word senses and the semantic relations. This episode was a good example of how if Wiktionary is ever improved to raise it up to an adequate level, questions such as the one asked here (above) would be answered instantly for anyone who lands on any of the entries, and skims it, and clicks the links for synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, and coordinate terms. Quercus solaris (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2022 (UTC)