Talk:tebowing

Suggest that this page be undeleted, since the word is neither a neologism nor a protologism. Ref http://www.languagemonitor.com/?s=tebowing FusionDude 08:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• ... which says "The first mention of the word can be traced to the dramatic overtime victory of the Denver Broncos football team over the Miami Dolphins on October 23, 2011." - that makes it a protologism as far as we are concerned. SemperBlotto 09:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

RFV discussion: January 2012

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (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.

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tebowing

Not sure submitting an already deleted article is appropriate. I inquired with the deleting admin at User talk:SemperBlotto#tebowing to no avail. I quite disagree with SemperBlotto, so I would like some other opinions. At the corresponding Wikipedia article, w:Tim Tebow#Tebowing the linked section currently reads:

"Tebowing" is a neologism for the the act of taking a knee in prayer during an athletic contest. It is derived from Tebow's propensity for kneeling and praying. The origin of the phrase is credited to fan Jared Kleinstein, who posted a picture with friends on Facebook, in which they mimic a pose by Tebow that was caught on camera following the Broncos' improbable overtime victory over the Dolphins on October 23, 2011. The popularity of the picture led Kleinstein to set up a website showing pictures submitted by people depicting various interpretations of "Tebowing" all over the world.

"Tebowing" was officially recognized as a word in the English language by the Global Language Monitor, due its level of worldwide usage, which was comparable to the word "Obamamania" (referencing President Barack Obama). In December 2011, the life-sized wall adhesions company Fathead released a "Tebowing" sticker that became the company's best-selling product in two days.

__meco 14:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't have speedied it without discussion myself, but I won't call for its undeletion without evidence of its being used (not merely mentioned) by multiple durably archived sources. —Angr 15:13, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Don't forget that we need citations of use "spanning at least a year". And I don't think that "spanning a year" means the December of one year and the January of the next. SemperBlotto 15:34, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

In this day and age that spanning-one-year clause seems to me immediately so out of date. __meco 15:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Why? If the term is still being used in December 2012, it can be added then. There's no deadline. —Angr 16:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Because in the time leading up to that date there will be no dictionary entry for a word which is in widespread use. __meco 16:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I find "'Tebowing' becomes officially recognized as a word" rather funny, as it makes it sound like English is monitored by an official body, though in the text of the article itself, there's no such claim. Only in the title. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I think we can afford to wait 11 months to find out whether this word is really "in widespread use". In the meantime, it can be taken to Urban Dictionary. And of course the Global Language Monitor has no authority (neither does any dictionary, for that matter) to declare a word "officially recognized". —Angr 17:05, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

• Maybe because I am in the US, because US football is my favorite spectator sport, and because I am at the moment visiting Denver, where WWTTD (What would Tim Tebow do) is a popular acronym, but this term is having such major widespread cultural popularity that I would favor a rare special exception to the "spanning one year" requirement. DCDuring TALK 16:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

  But isn't our rule there to exclude words that pop up, are popular for a short while, and then get forgotten about? SemperBlotto 16:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

SemperBlotto is right, WT:CFI#Attestation says "Usage in permanently recorded media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year". I don't think this is used in a well-known work, English isn't a dead language so the only possible way for this to be valid is "Clearly widespread use", which I doubt. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I understand and agree with all that for almost all cases. Occasionally there are cases where some number of us would be prepared to bet on multi-year survival of the term. Should we have some basis for including such terms? To a certain extent, we have a competitive advantage over other online dictionaries in recognizing and incorporating such terms while maintaining some level of quality control on what is included. A protologism tag and a year-end review would seem to be necessary for such things. What else? DCDuring TALK 23:13, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

We already allow failed terms to be re-added at any point as long as the requisite citations are provided; and previous deleted material is preserved in the edit history (and signalled on the talk page by the deletion discussion). I'm not thrilled by the idea of allowing stuff to circumvent the rules just because it's briefly trendy (even if some think the trendiness won't be so brief). Equinox ◑ 23:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree (with Eq).​—msh210℠ (talk) 09:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• A point of order: Properly speaking, the "spanning at least a year" requirement only applies to terms that are verified through the three-cites approach. The clearly-widespread-use, well-known-work, and extinct-language clauses have no such requirement. (This is what Mglovesfun was getting at above, but some editors seem not to have caught that drift.) —Ruakh_TALK 14:33, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

  Does this fit the widespread-use category? I would argue that, though we have not explicitly defined "widespread use" AFAICT, this should now fit most reasonable definitions. We are now far beyond having every use in a US sports context being immediately followed by a definition. I believe that we are coming to have use in US general news media not always being followed by a definition. DCDuring TALK 18:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

  As I understand it (perhaps wrongly), the "clearly widespread use" rule is meant to bar RFVs of things like dog ("an animal") and the (the article). Use of tebowing is not clearly widespread. (You pretty much admit it yourself, DCDuring: "I believe that we are coming to have use in US general news media not always being followed by a definition" (emphasis supplied).)​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

  I thought the best justification for having the "clearly widespread use" criterion was for colloquialisms that did not often make it into print. This term seems to have significant colloquial use.

  There is also the oft-used, never rebutted general justification for many entries ("Someone might want to know what it means.") To the extent that this criterion needs some kind of quantitative supplementation to be applied, tebowing comes up often enough currently in the US so that it would meet a reasonable test based on that justification (which I generally think is wrong-headed, but I have deferred to apparent consensus).

  I would much rather that there were some kind of explicit exception to our "spanning one year" criterion for terms such as this which appear in many general media.

  FWIW, "Tebow" appears 400 times in COCA, "Tebow-like" and "Tebow-ism" once each, but "tebowing" does not appear. DCDuring TALK 20:00, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

• The "spanning at least a year" criterion might be justifiable in a paper dictionary (for several sound reasons, such as space available and delay between decision and publishing, even if these reasons are disputable), but it's really absurd here. Why refusing to provide help to readers as soon as they need it, when they need it? And they probably need it much more during the first months of use than when the term becomes more widely used. Lmaltier 22:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually, quite the reverse. After years of use, people feel justified in using a word without explanation, figuring people can just look it up. In the first few months of use, an author practically has to plan obfuscation to not explain a word when first using it. I see as connected with independence; there's no need to fill the dictionary with neologisms that gain very temporary currency.--Prosfilaes 18:01, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Do you try to explain that it's because people need some explanation that we should not provide it? The reasoning about a possible temporary use is understandable in a paper dictionary (it is understandable to think that space is so precious that it should not be wasted with words which might have disappeared when the dictionary becomes available), but not here. Their presence does not harm anybody, and helps some readers. Lmaltier 21:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I see your arguments as coming from an outdated paradigm. Since the Internet. how language evolves has changed a lot, and what if a word came to widespread use all over the United States in all sorts of media for a few months in 2011, never to be used actively again? Wouldn't people reading those texts from 2011 using that word need a dictionary that could explain it to them? Unless consensus changes here we really should put this to the big vote and change the inclusion criteria to adequately reflect the times we're in. Actually we should make that change in any case, but it'd be nice if y'all could think a little progressively on this matter. __meco 15:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
      • "How language evolves has changed a lot"? Citation needed. If it's never used actively again, I question whether it was ever truly widespread in the first place.--Prosfilaes 00:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

        I'm not sure whether it is more outrageous or more laughable that we include words based on a single use (possibly even an error) in a "well-known work", actually well-known only to a small share of those with higher education in the liberal arts during a certain era, now deemed to include works by Pynchon, Nabakov, and Burgess, but exclude words of widespread current use by a large number of native English speakers (mostly US, mostly male, mostly aged 8-68). DCDuring TALK 05:48, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• FWIW, Tebowing has been used in connection to incidents in ice hockey from Europe in Canadian press, so it's spread farther than American Football in the US. 76.65.128.132 06:58, 20 January 2012 (UTC)