Talk:piece of furniture

Please see my comment under item of data as to why these phrases are probably not dictionary material.

Also, "item(s) of furniture" gets about 58,000 Google hits whereas "piece(s) of furniture" gets a much larger 460,000. Why would the slightly artificial-sounding "item" version be the main entry? — Hippietrail 11:46, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

RFD discussion: July 2017–January 2018

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piece of furniture

Sum of parts, surely. ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:36, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I remember that years back there was a leeengthy discussion about this and it was kept. If there's ever a need for a translation target, this is the one. If one translates "piece of furniture" word-by-word to almost any other language, one ends up with nonsense. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:26, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Not in Chinese, and I imagine many other Asian languages. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Hindi फर्नीचर का टुकड़ा (pharnīcar kā ṭukṛā) is nonsensical. फर्नीचर (pharnīcar, “furniture (uncountable); piece of furniture (countable)”) can mean both. —Aryaman ^{(मुझसे बात करो)} 17:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Keep, a piece of furniture shouldn't be called "a furniture". DonnanZ (talk) 17:51, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

So, by that rationale, should we add piece of advice, piece of equipment, piece of information, piece of news, piece of stationery, etc.? This is quite a normal English construction that is used to count a mass noun. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

un meuble is not "a furniture". Neither is et møbel. --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 22:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

And? Why should a feature of a foreign language impact the inclusion of English terms on the English Wiktionary? What you describe would be better placed in a grammar not a dictionary. ---> Tooironic (talk) 00:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Delete. "Furniture" is just a mass noun, and it's normal to treat it this way in English. This translation target stuff is making me roll my eyes a bit. It comes up for everything. We have to either accept at some point that we're primarily an English language dictionary rather than a translation dictionary, or we need to create a collocations section to allow common SOP phrases. I'd much prefer the latter, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be consensus for it.... Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:04, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Don't know. We do need to indicate somehow/somewhere that this phrase is the usual singular for furniture (not "a furniture"). That could be a usage note or something at furniture. Equinox ◑ 00:32, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• Delete: by all means add a usage note at furniture (note that it is also possible in some contexts to say "a stick of furniture" and "a set of furniture"), but it is clearly SoP as Tooironic says. I take it we are not planning to create entries for "bunch of grapes", "piece of legislation", and so on. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:37, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

And what about the remaining "translation targets"? Kill'em all? They are hardly more useful than this one. If that should be the policy, I'm ok with it, but let's be consistent. --Hekaheka (talk) 13:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, this is less of a translation target and more of a clear-cut sum of parts IMO. ---> Tooironic (talk) 23:13, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Less than ace of diamonds, banana peel, national sports team, model aircraft, birthday card and CD player, just to name a few? --Hekaheka (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes. ---> Tooironic (talk) 08:09, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

No. Anyway, why don't we just move it to Category:English phrasebook? That category can obviously accommodate anything from could I see the menu, please to I am English to two beers, please, including 59 entries beginning with "I'm ...", from I'm blind (no, it doesn't have a sound file) to both I'm fine and I'm fine, thank you to I'm twenty years old, so why not a few "pieces of" for the cases which, unlike the abovementioned, can't be translated directly? --Droigheann (talk) 13:19, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Nearly all of the phrasebook phrases are full sentences (even if elliptical, like "two beers please"), not just vocabulary items in a vacuum. Equinox ◑ 17:13, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

And? Does being full sentences make them any less SoPs? Occasionally even sort of "double" SoPs when we have both how do I get to and how do I get to the airport, how do I get to the bus station & how do I get to the train station? --Droigheann (talk) 21:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

The inclusion of phrasebook entries has nothing to do with SoP - rather, we include phrases which are commonly used in phrasebooks and actually useful. "Piece of furniture" is just a common collocation, not a phrase with a specific pragmatic function. ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

That's where we differ, for me having "piece of furniture" is about a thousand times more useful than having, say, I'm agnostic. But maybe these things are always down to subjective opinions ... --Droigheann (talk) 20:18, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't say I'm agnostic is representative of the English phrasebook. Most of the entries we have in there are actually common and useful. ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:24, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Delete SoP, follows a standard English approach to "countabilizing" English mass nouns. It would be important to include the common examples of these in usage examples (less desirably, citations) at the various uncountable nouns that show this behavior. DCDuring (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

An interesting contrast in terms of idiomaticity is chest of drawers, which is sometimes (NOT normally) spelled chesterdrawers, indicating a loss of connection of the idiom with its origins and apparent components. In contrast pizzafurniture is very rare in this sense and pisafurniture is only a crossword clue word. DCDuring (talk) 00:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

For the record, I see no reason why pizzafurniture could not also be a crossword clue word. bd2412 T 01:25, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Weak keep as a translation target. —Aryaman ^{(मुझसे बात करो)} 17:53, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Keep as a translation target.Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 14:52, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Delete, not even convinced it's the most usual form – I would have said ‘item’. Ƿidsiþ 14:12, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

piece of furniture,item of furniture,pieces of furniture,items of furniture at the Google Books Ngram Viewer. suggests the piece is much more common. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:22, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Delete per DCDuring. --Barytonesis (talk) 14:42, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Weak keep Some singulars of mass nouns are irregular, such as

• clothes: article of clothing
• smoke: smoke particle
• rice: grain of rice.

However, this one follows the most common "piece of". It should be indicated on the furniture page as well, but this page is useful as a translation target, as "furniture" is not a mass noun in all languages (i.e. Spanish). Human-potato hybrid (talk) 07:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 22:43, 4 January 2018 (UTC)