Talk:pair of glasses

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pair of glasses, pair of eyeglasses, pair of spectacles, pair of specs

Sum of parts? We don't have pair of jeans or pair of scissors, last time I checked. ---> Tooironic (talk) 14:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Seems borderline. One glass doesn't refer to a monocle, nobody refers to an eyeglass, a spectacle is something completely different, and nobody knows what a spec is without more context. So it might be considered idiomatic. While "pair of jeans" or "pair of scissors" may not have entries, we do have "pair of pants," presumably because referring to "one pant" is a modern barbarism. On the other hand, Webster's Third New International Dictionary doesn't have entries for any of these, except for "pair of spectacles", which is a cricketing expression. I expect we could do without these, although knowing about the expression, I think that one should survive with the appropriate definition. P Aculeius (talk) 00:33, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I assume we have an entry for pair of pants because of the mathematical sense. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 00:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I think all the points you mentioned P Aculeius are all reasonable, but surely these are all things that could be mentioned at the respective entries glasses, spectacles, etc.? These "-of-" entries don't seem idiomatic to me, especially considering they are not so fixed given all the synonyms involved. ---> Tooironic (talk) 01:22, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm personally rather neutral on this. On the one hand, Webster is pretty good authority for not needing them. On the other hand, the number of synonyms for "glasses" seems less relevant than the fact that it has to be a pair no matter which of them you use. So I'd like to know what other editors think. P Aculeius (talk) 02:06, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

And some nouns only collocate with certain classifiers. I don't think that indicates idiomaticity. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:17, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

There are too many such cases: a pride of lions, not a herd, a skein of geese on the wing, but a gaggle on the ground, a dozen eggs, a flight of arrows, but not a flight of bullets, a yard of fabric- but not three feet, a glass of water- not a glass of dirt, a herd of wildebeest/cattle/sheep/goats/bison, but not a herd of butterflies. Then there's the matter of a pair of trousers, of pants, of shorts, of breeches/britches, of underwear, of boxers, of briefs, of whitey tighties, of long johns- just about any garment with two legs that doesn't extend above the waist (an even then, there's a pair of overalls). As for a pair of scissors, the same holds true for shears, tongs, tweezers, forceps, pincers, etc. Finally, while we're at it, we might as well incorporate w:George Carlin's observation that no one says "hand me that piano", though I'm not sure where or how... Chuck Entz (talk) 03:45, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Weak keep, pretty borderline. Pengo (talk) 07:31, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Why are you leaning towards keep? ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:38, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Delete. They look obvious to me, and I don’t think that they have much lexical value. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 16:02, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

• Another good example of why we need a "Collocations" space. Delete - But only when we have collocations spaces in glass / -es, spectacle / -s, spec / -s -- ALGRIF talk 13:06, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
• I would keep any "pair of" entry. In some cases the pair is joined, in others not so, such as a pair of gloves, pair of socks - often this means with clothing there are two legs joined at the crotch. A pair of knickers is still so-called no matter how skimpy they are; there are still two holes for legs. A pair of underwear strikes me as rather odd though. Donnanz (talk) 11:53, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

  And yet you haven't demonstrated how that makes a pair of glasses idiomatic. ---> Tooironic (talk)

• Delete SOP.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:34, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
• Keep since it is not obvious to a non-native speaker this actually gets used. We very rarely say "pár brýlí" in Czech: google books:"pár brýlí"; we just say "brýle" or "nůžky" (scissors). I admit that these are clear for the decoding direction, but not for the encoding direction. In English, the pair terms seem relatively common, per glasses,pair of glasses at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., eyeglasses,pair of eyeglasses at the Google Books Ngram Viewer., and scissors,pair of scissors at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:32, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Keep. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 10:43, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Another thought (I've already said "Keep" earlier) - In none of these cases would it be possible to substitute the word "pair" by a synonym, such as "two" or "brace" or "couple". This makes the case for "set phrase", and for "specific idiomatic use of the word "'pair'", which is what these entries are. -- ALGRIF talk 10:45, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Keep because unlike a pair of sock, of shoes, of gloves, a pair of glasses actually refers to the single item which isn't capable of being unpaired (split in two). A pair of pants into two pants paired together, ditto shorts, knickers, etc. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:54, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I beg to differ. --WikiTiki89 18:01, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 05:10, 7 November 2015 (UTC)