Talk:succeedable

RFV discussion: September 2022–January 2023

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succeedable

Seems to be attestable in some nonstandard sense, but I'm not sure this is the one. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:53, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

It could be the sense of succession, i.e. the deceased queen is "succeedable" by either another queen or a king. But it seems to be hardly used at all. Equinox ◑ 20:18, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

What an odd word. I put a variety of cites on Citations:succeedable; a couple of them might actually be this meaning. A couple look to mean either that someone is ?able to be helped to succeed? or able to be succeeded via succession. One has to do with legal succession. Others are opaque. - -sche (discuss) 19:29, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

I've sorted through the cites but the 1700 citation is incredibly enigmatic. My theory is that possibly it's a usage of the obsolete sense of succeed ("to ensue with an intended consequence or effect") and Mosman (if that is the author?) is saying that Man will likely be suffering concequences for his wicked deeds. Maybe someone can weigh in on this.

Ioaxxere (talk) 03:04, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I question if the "succeedable challenge" cite is really using sense 2, though; isn't it just like the "succeedable endeavour" cite (sense 1)? I'm also not sure if the "trust is not succeedable" cite and the "[rabbi] is succeedable" cite are the same exact senses of succeed, although I suppose they're probably combinable. (The rabbi is able to be succeeded in the sense of replaced or followed in his office; the trust is (not) able to ... what? Be replaced/followed in its position? The fit seems a little off.) By the way, this makes me notice that Merriam-Webster marks the legal sense to do with devolving/passing as an heirloom as obsolete and Dictionary.com doesn't have it at all, whereas we don't mark "To descend, as an estate or an heirloom, in the same family" as obsolete, and the sense we do mark as obsolete, "To fall heir to; to inherit" ("if the issue of the elder son succeed before the younger, I am king"), seems indistinct from our (not-obsolete) sense 2. Maybe I will try to clean up succeed later. - -sche (discuss) 18:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the 1700 quote (not by Mosman btw, who's just the printer) is just using it according to sense 1. To reword it in contemporary English, "anyone who's planning to embark on the right path to Heaven will show the world that they're insincere if they dither about it, [especially] now that it's obvious and possible to succeed, regardless of whether ignorance or difficulty might have excused you in the past" (note the rhetorical contrast of "plain and succeedable" with "inconsideration and difficulty", i.e. succeedable is the opposite of difficult). The (to us) awkward placement of the colon and semicolon in the original makes it harder to understand than it ought to be. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:03, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: The "trust" quotation doesn't look mysterious to me either; given that it says "a trust is not succeedable for the reason that a court 'could not appoint a successor trustee ...'" it must be talking about the possibility of anyone succeeding to the trust (as a trustee), in the same way the rabbi one is talking about the possibility of anyone succeeding to the rabbi's office. This is confirmed in context since the previous sentence is talking about how the trust is extinguished if the trustee dies before the children whose name the trust is in. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:37, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Let me just remind our cite junkies that if you can only find like ONE CITE for each (supposed) sense, if you can even find a sense: it might not be worth it. Equinox ◑ 05:17, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, the NED has this as "Succeedable, a. nonce-wd. [...] Likely to succeed." They interpret Byron's remark about Assyrian tales as this sense, so we've got two cites for "likely to succeed", one cite that looks like ~"able to be succeeded in or at", and one cite that could mean either of those. A thorough search could find more cites. - -sche (discuss) 06:27, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The RFV tag was removed by @Ioaxxere back in October without notice here, but I've restored it since the citations aren't totally sufficient at the moment. Sense 1 (capable of success) looks cited. Sense 2 isn't cited at the moment since a quotation there (Boling 2015) was wrongly categorised, and it's also hyphenated in the version I can access—I've moved and edited it accordingly. We're still missing one citation for sense 2. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Why restore the tag for the whole entry instead of just sense 2 though? --Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Overlordnat1: The tag was removed out of process, and the formal process is that there ought to be at least a week's notice in case anyone objects to the citations. (I wouldn't generally fuss but people have found a lot of the citations on this page confusing so it's worth making sure people are on the page.) I've also now cited sense 2 in any case. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 15:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Your move doesn't make sense. A challenge cannot "become successful" or "attain success". Ioaxxere (talk) 16:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: I don't object to removing the citation entirely actually given that it's clearly being used as a nonce word and has a hyphen. However, if we split senses on the basis that it's something that someone succeeds at rather than itself succeeding, then two other citations may also have to fall away and the attestation for sense 1 then becomes dodgy: Aldanov's "succeedable endeavour" and the 1700 "plain and succeedable duty". IMO it's preferable to group them together, though this might mean rewriting the gloss in some way. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

I changed it (again—I originally changed it because "become successful" is strange for an endeavour or duty, "attain" less so) to the more capacious "meet or be met with success", which I think covers all cases ("the challenge was met with success" is perfectly natural). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

RFV-passed. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 03:51, 12 January 2023 (UTC)