Talk:rathering

RFD discussion: May 2019–January 2020

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rathering

It is cited, but is clearly a typing error for "rather". Sort of an occasionally encountered brain fart. Equinox ◑ 22:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Delete. Chignon – Пучок 09:31, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

If there are legitimate occurrences of the present participle of the verb "to rather", this should be kept. Chignon – Пучок 13:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, two of the four quotations for the verb sense use this verb form, one as a present participle (adjectivally), one as a gerund (nominally).

Note that rather also has a (nonstandard) verb sense, so occurrences of rathering may be a legit present participle or gerund. While I believe that in almost all cases it is a (weird) error in which a neighbouring -ing proved infectious, both GBS and GNS show it is a rather common error (search for "rathering than"), so readers are not unlikely to encounter it and try to look it up. I found an occurrence from as far back as 1919. If the “rather” sense is kept, we should label it bluntly a common typing error, not “possibly” and not a “mistake”, and certainly not call it an {{alternative form of}}.  --Lambiam 10:24, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

• The verb examples at rather look kosher to me, also given that the verb is labelled "nonstandard or dialectal". On this basis I have added an entry at rathering for the present participle. The examples presently at adverb rathering are plain weird to my eye. I find it hard to see how "rathering" could be an accidental typo or printing error for "rather", but maybe (as Lambiam suggests) it could just be the case that a neighbouring "ing" was in the writer's mind and they accidentally added it to the wrong word? Mihia (talk) 17:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Now that the verb sense has been added, I think it's clearer that most hits are of it, and I've deleted the adverb sense as a rare misspelling: compare reconditing (recently discussed in the Tea Room, where a syllable has erroneously been left out in typing, instead of added, as here) or Talk:licensize and its discussion of Citations:licencise. Regarding it being hard to see how it could be an accidental typo: -ing and -ed are very different sequences of letters and sounds and have rather different effects on verbs, but I not infrequently have brain farts and write or type one when I mean another (and, in copyediting Wikipedia, I've seen that other people do to). Errors of this sort are not as unheard of as people think, even if they are still too rare relative to the massively common usual spelling to merit entries. - -sche (discuss) 21:48, 16 January 2020 (UTC)