Talk:pissing war

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519 google hits for "pissing war". 319000 for pissing contest. In these trying times, do we need to escalate conflict? Andrew massyn 20:09, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Haha. Well, it is interesting. My own opinion be known, if sources can be found for it per the "three-source-rule", we ought to keep it. I tell you what, I'll see what respectable citations I can find! Beobach972 21:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Two so far : a CNN article where the phrase is used by one of the creators of South Park, Matt Stone : [1] ; and one 'Google Books' result, though the content is restricted : [2] . (Anyone have a copy?) I'm looking for more. Beobach972 21:55, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, a WorkingForChange article by Geov Parrish [3] . All of the uses, by the way, suggest a metaphorical sense (which I just added to the article). (Here is the same Parrish article, from the Seattle Weekly [4] - (I do not claim this as a separate attestation - simply as a separate link, for posterity, in case one site or the other goes offline).) Beobach972 22:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Two more citations, though these are from blogs and may or may not be acceptable : [5] and [6] .

Lastly, Steve Duplessie, a senior analyst to the Enterprise Storage Group, uses it in an interview with 'Byte and Switch' [7] . Okay, well if this ain't enough to save it, go ahead and delete it. Beobach972 23:07, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I have marked it as substandard usage for pissing contest. If anyone is unhappy with that, please say why on the talk page and edit as needed. Rfvpassed. Andrew massyn 07:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Does the first sense really exist or is this just a synonym of pissing contest?

I must have watchlisted this a while back and forgotten about it. I think I intended to RFV or at least touch up the first sense. It seems like the type of thing that would be hard to verify since it depends on the author's opinion. To take an extreme example, if I read the sentence

As the first snows fell, Magalahīs launched a pissing war by sending 500,000 winter-hardy soldiers north into Iremim to take on Iremim's entire army all at once.

I would think the author was belittling the conduct of the attacking general, or perhaps even of both sides, rather than lauding the brave soldiers on both sides of the war. Yet it is a perfect example of the supposed violent first sense of the term, since it involves a violent struggle for control of territory.

Put another way, our entry reads as if the serious sense is primary and that the belittlement sense is derived from it. I think that at best it's the other way around, and that it's more likely the first sense doesn't exist at all, being due to occasional readers' inability to read the emotions of an author. Thoughts? —Soap— 10:56, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Its worth noting that when this page was sent to RFV back in 2006 (the results of which are above), the sense Im challenging was the only sense given, and the wording was identical to today's. The first cite is no longer accessible, but from the context given I feel safe assuming that none of the four cites we found during the RFV involve violence. Since the RFV was for the entire page, it may be that we decided the way to save the page was to add a new sense that corresponded to the cites we found, and perhaps at the time it simply wasn't customary to delete the less-founded sense of such a term. —Soap— 13:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)