Talk:pay dividends

RFD discussion: October–December 2016

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pay dividends

This is a lousy entry anyway, created to house a POV quote and poorly defined. More to the point here, there are a number of expressions using the metaphor of beneficial results from some metaphorical investment (an action, time and effort, etc.) as a dividend, so this is SOP. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:33, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

• Possible keep. There may be something in this, if it's expanded a bit - looking at Oxford [1] (sense 1.3). It gives some examples. It's a different meaning to pay a dividend. DonnanZ (talk) 21:33, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

  I think dividend is used in the figurative sense in both the singular and the plural with pay and in other collocations.

Delete. DCDuring TALK 22:43, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Citations demonstrating figurative use of dividend with pay appear under sense 3 of dividend. Do we need to show figurative use of pay with other objects too? Both "figurative" uses seem kind of obvious, widespread use. DCDuring TALK 22:58, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I've always considered this an idiom, and I'm surprised we've not had it at all until now. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:31, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

But there is abundant use of the figurative sense of dividends. Pay + dividends is just a common collocation, carrying over from the literal to the fgurative use of dividend(s). DCDuring TALK 14:21, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

It might help to list some of them (often with modifiers): repaid, brought, bore, realized, ensured, reaped, yielded, derived, there were, had, etc. Basically, we're looking at a metaphor that's expressed in a number of ways. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:45, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Right, I withdraw my objection (to the deletion) in the face of evidence. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:04, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

• Keep. Idiomatic enough. But the "If something ..., then ..." style of definition is horrible. Mihia (talk)
• Keep in my opinion; extremely common idiom in English. Have had a go at improving def, btw. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 12:34, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
• Keep: Purplebackpack89 16:13, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
• Keep with the use of the lemming heuristic: present in M-W[2] and Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary[3]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 20:39, 23 December 2016 (UTC)