Talk:rearseat

RFV

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rearseat

rearseats

The citations which had been in the entry (for the singular) were either fake (Lucifer transcribed them incorrectly), or were typos in the book, as the books also used the spelling "rear seat". The plural seems to be attested only as a scanno. - -sche (discuss) 20:27, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Eight cites added here. Independently attesting the plural form strikes me as unnecessary. It's rear + seat. Standard -s suffix should logically apply, as it does to seat. Astral (talk) 03:04, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It is curious that 7 of the 8 cites have it used attributively. An absence of plural, plus a lack of much singular use might make this better presented as an adjective, as odd as that may be. DCDuring TALK 03:11, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

@Astral:It is necessary to attest the plural because there is reason to believe it does not exist and that [[rearseat]] (unlike [[seat]]) is uncountable. Of the first ten hits on Google Books, Google's snippets imply that all are scannos (they also run together "crutchesresting", "Thecarisnot afull fourseaterbut", "systemandsplit", "frontof thevan"), and upon individual inspection of the books, neither "rearseats" nor "rear seats" appears in any of them, AFAICT. - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

@DCDuring: my thoughts exactly. Or if it is a noun, it must be an alternative form of [[rear seat]], not a lemma. - -sche (discuss) 03:16, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I understand needing to attest the plural form to establish it's a noun, rather than an adjective (this possibility hadn't occurred to me until DCDuring brought it up). However, if the singular form of the noun has already been attested (with 1971, 1994, and 2010 now added to the citations page, it is), I don't see a need to independently attest the plural form, unless the word has more than one potential plural form. For example, with the word supercow, the plural form could conceivably be either supercows or supercattle, so independent attestation of both potential plural forms would help resolve which is actually used.

Will root around on Usenet for plural cites. Astral (talk) 04:10, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Plural form cites here. Astral (talk) 04:47, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Kept. - -sche (discuss) 00:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm still not sure if the lemma should be "rear seat" or not. - -sche (discuss) 04:14, 25 December 2012 (UTC)