Talk:poached egg

Wiktionary:Requests for deletion - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of April 2008. 16:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

RFD 2015

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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poached egg

Sum of parts? An egg that has been poached? ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:56, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

• I would keep this one. We define poached as "Cooked, or obtained by poaching", and define poaching as "illegal procurement of protected wildlife ..." - which is not what a poached egg is all about. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:11, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

If we were to delete it, we would have to add an appropriate definition to poached (though we have one at poach, in any event - but not poaching). We have such entries as scrambled egg and baked potato, so precedent suggests keep. Aperiarcam (talk) 06:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

• Keep, even the relevant definition of poach, "to cook something in simmering water", doesn't cover the fact that poached eggs are not cooked with their shells on, as boiled eggs are. To me, the most salient difference between poached eggs and soft-boiled eggs is precisely that poached eggs are cooked without their shells and soft-boiled eggs are cooked with their shells, but that distinction is not (and should not be) provided by the meanings of poach and boil. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
• This entry has been discussed and kept before, by the way. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:42, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

  But why can't be just add the relevant sense to poach or poached and be done with it? ---> Tooironic (talk) 12:39, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

  Because it isn't a property of the verb poach that eggs don't have their shells when they're its direct object. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:28, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. See also poacher (sense 2), an egg poacher. Donnanz (talk) 12:57, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
• Keep Unclear what "poached" means without this definition. An egg that has been poached could mean an egg illegally obtained from the King's land. Purplebackpack89 13:41, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I remember a few years back there was a lengthy discussion about fried egg, which resulted in a "keep". I was on the delete-side then but don't want to reopen on this topic, thus keep. --Hekaheka (talk) 17:19, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• So for every possible poachable food (e.g. pears), we need a "poached X" entry? No, this is just polysemy and our readers have enough brain to tell which sense is meant. I'd like to see these theoretical people who really think "poached egg" could be a stolen one. Equinox ◑ 17:21, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  @Equinox

  1. While many foods can be poached in the stolen sense, only a few of them can be poached in the cooking sense, and those are the only ones we need definitions for.
  2. People who actually looks up "poached egg" on Wiktionary are likely to not know what it means. That's why people use dictionaries after all. The appeal to knowledge is a rather specious argument. Purplebackpack89 17:49, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• In that case you are being inconsistent with your logic. Why is a poached pear different from a poached egg - since, as you claim, either sense of "poach" could be used with either of them. Equinox ◑ 19:07, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  Let's use fish rather than pears, because "poached fish" is in actual use to indicate both fish that's been illegally captured and fish that's been cooked in liquid. By your logic, we should have an entry for poached fish. The problem is that both senses of poached fish are easily attested, so we'll need two senses. Poaching is a common cooking method for many types of fish, and many of those same fish are poached in the "illegal" sense, so there's potential for a great number of entries such as poached salmon. Once we have those, the question then arises: which sense of poached fish is meant in a particular text? You've just created a bunch of entries that don't really do anything- you still have to figure out from the context which is meant. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:45, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  @Equinox @Chuck Entz The reason I'm saying keep this is because poached egg is used nearly exclusively in the cooking sense, which is not the common sense. Poached pear is only used in the common sense, so less of a need for it than poached egg. Poached fish is used in both senses, so less of a need than poached egg. But, no matter, poached egg will be kept, because I'm clearly not alone in wanting it kept, so maybe question their logic instead of mine, mmmkay? Purplebackpack89 22:19, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  I'm not questioning their logic, because it makes sense- which is why this will probably pass. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:21, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

If Angr's comments are right, this passes the fried egg test and we should keep it. Concerns that that will lead to keeping all "poached x" terms seem to be unfounded, inasmuch as keeping fried egg hasn't led us to have fried pork, fried onion, etc. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that reminds of another tenet in my reply to User:Equinox: 3. Just because we could create certain two- and three-word entries doesn't people people are actually going to create them. I consider it unlikely that anyone will bother to create poached pear. Purplebackpack89 19:05, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• Delete I modified the definition of egg to implicitally state that when cooking, the shell is not used. I really hope that's enough for you all to realise that poached egg is totally SOP and that this debate is dumb. --A230rjfowe (talk) 22:47, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  Oh, that totally solves our problem, except for the small matter this nomination hinging on the definition of poached rather than the definition of egg. Purplebackpack89 22:51, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  Well, no, it doesn't solve the problem. Nevertheless, this nomination is not about poached but about poached egg and about whether this entry should be deleted or not. --A230rjfowe (talk) 22:56, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

  Your additions don't change the fact that boiled eggs are cooked with the shell and poached eggs are cooked without the shell, but that fact has nothing to do with the definitions of boil, poach, or egg. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. Passes the fried-egg test. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 00:34, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
• Keep, per Angr's argument. boil and poach are essentially synonyms, yet boiled egg and poached egg are not. Putting the words together introduces an additional shade of meaning (i.e. whether or not the eggs are cooked in their shells) that is not present in the individual parts. Smurrayinchester (talk) 12:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
• Kept: Clear consensus to keep and no comments within last seven days. Purplebackpack89 05:48, 13 September 2015 (UTC)