Talk:second yellow card

RFD discussion: May–November 2022

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

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.

---

second yellow card

I'm not doubting the truth of the information in the entry, but the information at yellow card or on Wikipedia should suffice. Pious Eterino (talk) 16:54, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed – delete. Don't think it's within the project's scope to explain the rules of every game and sport. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Keep. This doesn't appear to be SOP, so I don't see any reason to delete it. Binarystep (talk) 23:27, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. What other possible meaning could "second yellow card" have than a "second" + "yellow card"? The fact that the punishment may be different for a second yellow card than the first is a matter of encyclopedic nature, not linguistic. - TheDaveRoss 12:28, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

It would be worth seeing whether this is used in a wider context at all. I've definitely heard red card used to mean dismissal and yellow card to mean a warning - usually with children, but not always. Theknightwho (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete, SOP (or else we should also have an entry first yellow card^[1] explaining it as a temporary dismissal). In several sports, receiving more than one yellow card in the same game results in the disqualification of the participant, like in lacrosse^[2] or polo.^[3] Likewise in association football; by the rules of the game, receiving a second caution in the same match is a sending-off offence. The referee showing the yellow card signals a caution, and if this was a player’s second caution, the subsequent showing of the red card then signals the ensuing sending-off. The second yellow card is not the sending-off, but receiving one results in a player’s being sent off, which the referee communicates by showing the red card. So the definition is off, and if fixed, the information becomes an encyclopedia entry that is unduly restricted to one particular sport.  --Lambiam 06:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Keep. As the definition explains, it is not as serious as a red card, but a player who receives two yellow cards in the same match automatically gets a red card and is sent off. DonnanZ (talk) 23:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I wrote, at least for association football, but this does not make it any less SOP. It is zoologically and culturally significant that we have ten fingers, but that does not make it a lexical term.  --Lambiam 10:17, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Keep per DonnanZ. John Cross (talk) 05:47, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Keep Weak keep per DonnanZ. I see how this info could be explained at yellow card, but the fact that it's the second yellow card is pretty integral. While first yellow card could have an entry, my hunch is that that's implied by default. Theknightwho (talk) 08:30, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

We could explain at nose that dogs have a wet nose. We don't and we shouldn't, neither there nor anywhere else. This is encyclopedic information, not lexical.  --Lambiam 10:17, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

That's an argument against first yellow card, not second yellow card. If the term is used in a specific way to mean something that is not merely a synthesis of second and yellow card, then it's not SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 16:33, 28 May 2022 (UTC)Theknightwho (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I meant it as an argument against including non-lexical info.  --Lambiam 16:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how it's non-lexical info if used in (say) "that's a second yellow card". Theknightwho (talk) 23:18, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Consider the use of the term “the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan” in the sentence, “A rocket attack on a U.S. base in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan killed one civilian contractor and injured one U.S. service member, as well as injuring five other contractors.”^[4] Some people may not know the name of this capital city; if they need to know it, they will have to look it up. A place where they will find this information is in the Wikipedia article Iraqi Kurdistan. A place where they will not find this information is in a Wiktionary entry capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Why not? Why do we not even have such an entry? Because Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. The fact that Erbil serves as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan is not in any immediate sense related to the sense of the term capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Parliament of Kurdistan might legislate to make Soran the capital. Likewise, the fact that receiving a second caution during a football match is a sending-off offence is not in any immediate sense related to the sense of the term second yellow card. The association between “second” and “dismissal” exists solely because the current version of Laws of the Game specifies that receiving a second caution is a sending-off offence. The International Football Association Board has regularly changed these laws before, and they are likely to do so again. Red and yellow cards were only introduced in 1970. I am not sure when the current “two strikes and you’re out” rule was adopted, but originally the rule was simply that the referee could send off a player for repeated cautionable behaviour; this was not automatic on the second caution. The rule may be changed in the future, giving a referee a choice to send off a player already at their first caution, or only at their third, or whatever.  --Lambiam 18:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Likewise, the association between "yellow card" and "warning" exists solely because the current version of the Laws of the Game specify that it is a method of issuing a caution. The existence of alternative interpretations of the term, or even alternative versions of the rules, does not mean that the term cannot be used to convey information that is not immediately obvious from its component words.

Your argument is an arbitrary appeal to heritage, and not based on the question of whether we can cite people using it to mean what the definition says. Theknightwho (talk) 19:18, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete per Lambiam; the term is misdefined, and if defined correctly, is SOP; the rules of each sport pertaining to what getting N number of cards in that sport results in are not lexical. If this is not deleted, I will RFV it seeking uses of "second yellow card" in the definition cited ("dismissal..."), as the uses I've seen refer to the card (which merely has a consequence, they do not mean the consequence; compare how to walk under a ladder has the consequence of bad luck, but [[walk under a ladder]] doesn't lexically mean "acquire bad luck", at least in the uses I've seen.) Perhaps metaphorical use exists somewhere... - -sche (discuss) 16:12, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

It would pass RFV, I think. It's common enough - I hear it in match broadcasts on the radio. DonnanZ (talk) 23:32, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

It is easily verified that the term is used, but what, when used, does it mean? It is also easily verified that the term fatal collision is used. It would nevertheless be hard to verify that this term means “death resulting from an accident involving several vehicles”. The main reason that this is hard, is that this is actually not the meaning of the term “fatal collision”, but an outcome of such a collision. — This unsigned comment was added by Lambiam (talk • contribs) at 16:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC).

It means that when a second yellow card is issued to one player in the same match, the team on the pitch is reduced by one for the rest of the match, and it is harder to compete against their opponents. Sometimes managers replace (with a substitute) a player who has received one yellow card, to avoid the risk of that player getting a second one. DonnanZ (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Should we add that very valuable information to the definition of an entry first yellow card?  --Lambiam 18:43, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

We cannot ignore context when defining terms, and a person issuing/being issued with a second yellow card fully understands that that action is intrinsically tied to the fact that the player is being sent off. It is one and the same thing, and cannot be separated. A player who gets a second yellow card is not being handed the thing, so it is wrong to only consider it as referring to the physical object.

Presumably you would support changing the definition of yellow card to "a card sometimes held up by a person on a football pitch from time to time", though? Theknightwho (talk) 19:29, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

That "person" is the referee, or ref for short. DonnanZ (talk) 09:20, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz It was intentionally decontextualised to prove a point. Theknightwho (talk) 11:26, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I’m not sure who you are referring to by “you”. The entry yellow card currently defines it as a yellow-coloured card, shown to a player as a caution, so I also do not understand the import of this putative change. Is it the use of “held up” instead of “shown”? Or the addition of the pleonastic “sometimes ... from time to time”, as if one otherwise might think the card is being held up continuously? We might add “by the referee” after “shown”, but I don’t see that as a significant improvement.  --Lambiam 11:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I was being facetious to make a point about context. In any event, the definition of yellow card clearly should encompass more than just the card itself, because we talk about being “handed” or “given” a yellow card in the same way we do a warning, because the term refers to the warning itself as well as the object. The player isn’t given the actual card, after all. That logic in turn applies to second yellow card, which is (I imagine) why the current definition is written in the way it is. Clearly not SOP. Theknightwho (talk) 11:53, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If we give a proper definition for the soccer sense of caution, we can define yellow card more properly as such a caution, rather than the physical embodiment used for its manifestation. Compare pink slip and green card. There is always room for improvement. This is not clearly germane to the issue of the inclusion of second yellow card.  --Lambiam 12:40, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

It is germane, because second yellow card is not defined as being the physical card but rather the dismissal. If you don’t think it should say that then send it to RFV, but as it stands it is self-evidently not SOP, even with the definition of yellow card being updated. You can’t just declare the definition wrong and then argue against a different one as being SOP, as you’ve done. @-sche as well, as this comment chain stemmed out of that. Theknightwho (talk) 12:55, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I did not imagine that the observation that the definition as phrased is wrong was subject to dispute. I’ve now also put the entry up at RfV.  --Lambiam 14:53, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Isn't getting a red card also a consequence of getting a second yellow card? Or is it a synonym thereof? DCDuring (talk) 15:29, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

It is a consequence in soccer under the official rules as they stand at this moment, as is in fact stated in the encyclopedic definition given for second yellow card sense 1. It is not a synonym; a player can get a red card without ever getting a yellow one. If 0̸ stand for no card at all, Y for a yellow card and R for a red card, the possible patterns for a soccer player during a given match are 0̸, R, Y, YR and YYR.  --Lambiam 20:03, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to keep making this point when there are several examples where that is not the case, and it is used to mean the dismissal in and of itself. Yes, that assumes knowledge, but so do many topical terms.

You're trying to use a concept which applies to grammatical construction, where a term only means something in a particular lexical relation, with topical context, which is far broader and which we already use for categories.

You're also trying to prove the negative - it's irrelevant that other uses or possibilities exist. What matters here is that the word is used this way by some people. It doesn't matter that it's not the only use, or that other uses might be more common. What matters is that it can and is used in a way that is not SoP, and the others can be covered by {{&lit}}. Theknightwho (talk) 14:01, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I don’t know what you mean by “this point”. I gave purely informative answers to two direct questions about matters of fact. The answer to the first question was “Yes – at least in the context of soccer”. The second answer was “No”. No points were scored in providing the information.  --Lambiam 16:41, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam - I've been reviewing WT:CFI, and I'd advise you look at WT:LIGHTBULB: Terms that imply certain social knowledge that could not be derived from any of the constituents, nor from their combination. That clearly applies to the use in question, which means that this is entirely a matter for WT:RFV. Theknightwho (talk) 15:10, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

That is one awkward formulation. I think what is meant is, Terms that, to be understood, require certain social knowledge ... . In other words, “terms for which you already need to know what they mean in order to understand what they mean” – just another, convoluted, way of saying “terms that are not SOP”. Does the lightbulb criterion imply that the receiver also needs to know the attendant consequences of events referred to by the term? I don’t think so. For example, gross misconduct by an employee is generally considered a ground for immediate termination of employment. This is not innate knowledge; it is acquired socially. One cannot understand the implications of gross misconduct without certain social knowledge. But the term itself means just what it says: misconduct that is gross – it fails the lightbulb test.  --Lambiam 17:49, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

How many times do I need to point out that I have given citations that use second yellow card as a synoynm for the dismissal itself? Those particular uses require external knowledge to understand, which is not avaialable from the constituent parts. I have also - repeatedly - pointed out that the fact that the term is used in other ways does not prevent it from being used in this way.

1. The referee gave him a second yellow card, resulting in a red card and dismissal.
2. I received a second yellow card, so ended up missing most of the match.

Do you really not see how these two sentences use the term in different ways? The second requires additional knowledge that is not readily available from the constituent parts. The first does not.

You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that WT:LIGHTBULB is the only way in which a term can be SOP, which is certainly not the case. It simply gives an example of one way in which that can occur, but there are others on that page. Theknightwho (talk) 14:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree that those sentences are meaningfully different in terms of whether second yellow card should be included. If you swapped out hamstring injury in the second example would that mean that hamstring injury was somehow worth including? I also disagree that second yellow card is a synonym for red card or the dismissal which occurs because of the red card. A ref in football can throw a flag to indicate a penalty, but that doesn't mean that to throw a flag means to assess one of the several consequences which follow a penalty call. - TheDaveRoss 18:30, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

There are multiple citations using it that way, though. It does not matter that there might be other uses. Theknightwho (talk) 11:20, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

No, there are not. Just because there are understood consequences of a thing does not mean those consequences are part of the definition of the thing. - TheDaveRoss 13:13, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

It's being used as a metonym, which requires additional knowledge to properly interpret. Those understood consequences are precisely what makes it not SOP, as per WT:LIGHTBULB. It does not matter that it is frequently not used this way.

Quite honestly, this whole conversation has been a great example of the way that WT:IDIOM frequently gets unjustly ignored, because at this point the argument is just prescriptivist "nuh uh". Theknightwho (talk) 13:28, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

• No consensus, moved to RFV. - TheDaveRoss 17:07, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

RFV discussion: June 2022–February 2023

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

---

second yellow card

Are there uses in which the term is used unequivocally as meaning “dismissal” – as opposed to referring to the second caution, which, although automatically triggering a player’s being sent off, is not the sending-off itself? (See also the discussion at WT:RFDE#second yellow card.)  --Lambiam 14:47, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

This is a misconstructed request, because it is impossible to differentiate between the issuing of a second warning and the dismissal that that results in. All this needs are citations that show that second yellow card does not refer to the physical card. Theknightwho (talk) 22:25, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

As I also made clear before, I think the definition is off and should not say that it is the dismissal. If it is your position that this request is “misconstructed”, why for heaven’s sake did you advise me to “send it to RFV”?  --Lambiam 11:15, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

It is not hard to find instances where “second yellow card” quite clearly does not mean “dismissal”:

• Joy soon turned to despair for Darko Vucic when he celebrated his wonderful overhead kick by removing his shirt only to pick up a second yellow card resulting in his dismissal.^[5]
• Clearly a bit shocked, Myazin pushed him back and received a second yellow card, resulting in his dismissal.^[6]
• The goal seemed to rock the visitors, and in the 33rd minute, Rob Holding was shown a second yellow card in just seven minutes following a coming together with Son, leaving the referee with no option to flash the red as the Gunners’ disciplinary issues under Mikel Arteta reared its head once more.^[7]
• But with Birmingham unable to seriously threaten Chris Wilder's men, the points were secured for the Teessiders as Folarin Balogun curled home impressively in the 62nd minute before Pedersen was shown a second yellow card resulting in his dismissal late on.^[8]

What is shown to the players is a card, and not a dismissal, which is signalled to them by the referee flashing the red – the usual omission of the latter in a report on a match simply stems from the fact that the writer assumes their readers are knowledgeable on this aspect of the laws of the game. It is really weird to say that a dismissal results in a dismissal, as would result from applying the substitutivity test. Decapitation inevitably results in the death of the decapitee, but a dictionary should not define decapitate as “to kill someone by severing their head from the body”.  --Lambiam 12:14, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam I've added three cites which use it to refer to the dismissal. Theknightwho (talk) 18:25, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I do not see how these uses mean anything else than a “second caution”, where “caution” is the term for a warning issued by the referee that a player has committed a ”cautionable offence”. Since 3 March 2017, the Laws of the Game recognizes two systems for dealing with punishments, called “System A” and “System B”.^[9] Under System A all cautions are punished by a temporary dismissal. Under System B, not all cautions are punished by a temporary dismissal, but a second caution is punished by the player being sent off (as signaled with a red card); moreover, they may not be replaced by a substitute. It is up to the competition to decide which system to use, but as far as I'm aware all major-league competitions use System B.
     It is easy to find uses of to escape the noose, meaning, “to avoid the death penalty, to be executed by hanging”.^[10][11][12] I submit that it would not be appropriate to define a sense of noose as “the death penalty, to be executed by hanging”. Then we should also add this to gallows, since knaves have also been said to escape the gallows^[13]; next we have those who managed to escape the guillotine,^[14] and so on. The instrument for executing a death penalty should not be glossed as the resulting death itself, and the reason for the sending-off (only under System B) should not be glossed as the sending-off itself.  --Lambiam 11:46, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

• It's irrelevant that second yellow cards can be issued in systems that don't automatically issue red cards. That doesn't change that the term can be used to mean dismissal, and is being used that way in these examples. I have already explained this to you.
• It's also irrelevant that you can't use an idiom to define part of it. That's just the concept of not being the sum of its parts. There is no evidence that "second yellow card" is restricted to a particular phrase or some variation thereof, as applies to "escape the noose" and its variations. What matters to your examples is that they're restricted to a particular lexical construction, but you are trying to apply that logic to the topical context. Topic labels and and usage notes can easily suffice to deal with any of that.

The fact is that in these instances, the term is being used as a substitute for dismissal in the context of association football:

1. "He will miss the Joburg game after collecting a stupid second yellow card."
   That doesn't apply to the fact he received a caution - it applies to the fact he received a dismissal.
2. "If McCall had been incensed about Varga escaping a second yellow card in the first half, he was much quieter when Billy Dodds got involved in an off-the-ball incident with Henrik Larsson early in the second half."
   Why was he incensed, exactly? Are we supposed to assume that the narrowly-escaped dismissal is just a secondary aspect of the message being conveyed there? No. It's a straightforward example of metonymy.
3. "Some managers may instruct players to ‘earn’ a second yellow card and miss a relatively unimportant group game rather than risk missing important semi-finals or finals."
   This quite literally doesn't make sense if it doesn't mean dismissal.

Theknightwho (talk) 17:40, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that, when something is a known consequence of something else, we often use the action to refer to the consequence. Does this mean that every action which has an obvious and well-known consequence also has the meaning of that consequence? Sometimes I am sure it does, but in this case I don't think so. Other sports terms which are similar; "he left the batters box after a called third strike", in which a called third strike implies that the batter is out, but doesn't mean "being out"; "she was sulking on the bench after her fifth foul", a fifth foul implies an ejection but doesn't mean an ejection. None of the quotes provided clearly indicate that this is more than second + yellow card with the assumption that the reader will understand the consequences of such a yellow card.

I'll also note that in your final example there, it doesn't refer to a dismissal, it refers to a suspension from a subsequent game. Yellow card accumulation in some leagues (second yellow card across games) results not in a dismissal but instead in suspension from a later game. - TheDaveRoss 12:59, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

You make a fair point, but that assumption that readers will know what they’re referring to is precisely why we use topic labels, and is also the basis for metonymy. In other words, that assumption is precisely why it isn’t SOP, because it can only be made about the whole, and does not come from either of the two parts. It’s just how terms like this get used, to be honest. It does feel a bit like second yellow card is being held to a higher standard by virtue of looking obviously sum of parts on the face of it, combined with it only being used this way some of the time (in durably archived sources, at least, which is a problem because they tend to be more formal and therefore spell out the fact a red is given as well).

You are right about the 2021 cite, by the way, though I’ve also added a new 1996 cite which is subtly different: “the suspension of Garre after receiving a second yellow card”. Unlike 2021, it can’t be glossed as “suspension”, but I will need to verify that the dismissal is the operative point here, rather than the accumulation of yellow cards. Theknightwho (talk)

It is actually quite common that an SoP term has a context-specific use; for example, risk tolerance is used in economics as meaning, more or less, “the willingness of an investor to accept financial risks in exchange for the possibility of a high return on investment”.^[15] Someone who does not understand the concept of investing and its inherent risks may not get this just from the two parts. But that is not in itself an argument to include such an encyclopedic context-specific definition for what is, essentially, a sum of parts that can be applied equally to other contexts involving risk taking.^[16]  --Lambiam 21:11, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

A collocation like risk tolerance does not appear in any general-use OneLook dictionary, but it does appear in two financial glossaries (with another six links being spurious, dead, or to paywalled pages). The entries are paragraphs: long, encyclopedic or nearly so. DCDuring (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

That's an argument to have an entry at risk tolerance, not an argument to exclude second yellow card. There is no policy against including terms that have meanings in specific contexts, and I'm not sure why you would imply that. Theknightwho (talk) 14:04, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Whom are you addressing? DCDuring (talk) 15:40, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Lambiam. Theknightwho (talk) 04:48, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

@DCDuring @Lambiam - it seems that WT:PRIORKNOWLEDGE would explicitly allow the example of risk tolerance. Theknightwho (talk) 15:16, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Whether the term risk tolerance has a specific technical meaning in the field of investing is a judgement call. IMO its meaning in that field is the general sense of the term, but, obviously, applied to risks that are relevant in that context. These are not the risks of walking a tightrope while blindfolded (other than figuratively).  --Lambiam 16:58, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

You're conflating etymology with meaning. risk tolerance in that context refers only to the willingness of an investor to tolerate variability in returns, and while that obviously derives from the conventional meaning, it is necessary to refer to that definition to understand sentences such as "Those with gilt portfolios achieved low yet highly consistent returns on investment, while those with the greatest degree of risk tolerance tended to achieve the highest and lowest rates of return."

It's very easy to work backwards from a definition to its etymology and conclude that it is obvious, but that is only because you have the necessary context to make sense of it. To anyone who doesn't, it might not be obvious at all - which is precisely why financial risk tolerance is something that any investment manager will explain to new clients. Theknightwho (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

But if the context required is the context required to understand risk and tolerance, then what is the point of the entry risk tolerance except to avoid forcing the user to actually use the dictionary? Furthermore financial risk is definitely not the only kind of risk to be tolerated: sky-diving/vaccination/infection/traffic/natural hazards/career risk come to mind. DCDuring (talk) 20:51, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Because the context we would give is the label (finance), and even then it's not at all obvious that risk tolerance actually manifests in that way without explanation. That's why the concept has to be explained in the first place. As for the rest, isn't that just what {{&lit}} is for? Theknightwho (talk) 21:08, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Anyone who reads "second yellow card" and doesn't understand it (a) will not understand "yellow card" either and hence (b) is more likely to search a dictionary for "yellow card" than "second yellow card". Definition #1 at "yellow card" will give them all the information they need to work out the meaning of "second yellow card". This suggests to me that "second yellow card" is SOP+metonymy, and thus the entry is superfluous. The difference between a "second yellow card" and a straight red card is better explained at red card, which entry is currently inadequate. BTW the "second yellow card" was introduced in the 1992; it was just a red card before that, so one couldn't tell until the referee's report whether it was a "straight red" or a "second bookable offence" red. Jnestorius (talk) 19:31, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

In the interests of closing old RFVs, I'll call this  cited and offer a final chance to object Ioaxxere (talk) 04:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

RFV Passed. Ioaxxere (talk) 22:21, 16 February 2023 (UTC)