Talk:tired

I don't really agree with definition 1

I think the words "tired" and "sleepy" are not necessary synonyms. If you look at the definition in other dictionaries or sites, you will find the following:

• From Babylon (http://www.babylon.com/definition/All_in/English): "fatigued, dead-tired, exhausted (Informal)"

• From Wikipedia, not Wiktionary, where it is synonym of fatigue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(medical)): "It is ubiquitous in everyday life, but usually becomes particularly noticeable during heavy exercise. Mental fatigue, on the other hand, rather manifests in somnolence."

• From Wordnet (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn): "depleted of strength or energy;"

In this case, sleepiness is just one manifestation of being tired and one can be sleepy without being tired (when taking a pill, for example). Having said that, I pose two questions:

1. Do you agree? Please, give your reasoning;
2. If yes, what would be the best way to change this entry?

--Rick

Tired is first and foremost "sleepy." To suggest otherwise is folly...that's how the word is almost always used. You could supplement the first definition, but to change it would be quite incorrect. Adding two example sentences that reflect the different ways the word can be used would be OK. Book citations would be better, but might not illustrate the distinction you suggest, very well. --Connel MacKenzie 06:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

So you are saying that the sources I quoted here are foolishly mistaken? Also, if you search books for the word tired (http://books.google.com/books?sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2007-38,GGLD:en&hl=en&oe=UTF-8&q=tired&sa=N&tab=xp), you get more references towards the definitions I'm quoting. And as a final note, words in other languages linked to 'tired' (I checked Portuguese and Spanish) also imply the same definition. How can you so surely affirm that "tired" is used almost always in the sense of being "sleepy"? Do you have any statistical data to support that? --Rick 07:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Tireder (comparative form)

According to the CambridgeGEL, page 1583,

Participial adjectives take only analytic comparative forms (A marginal exception is tired)

What are the reasons leading to this exception? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:45, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Tired, incompetent

Added by @Leasnam 2016. I struggle finding this sense. What I do find is many combinations of the sort tired, incompetent leadership ~ tired, incompetent management ~ tired, incompetent government applied to mayors, universities, businesses, as well in the UK or Australia. “crazy Nigerians will vote tired incompetent people into office.” What’s going on here? This is hardly covered by the current glosses, though unmarked in every register I think, @Equinox, Overlordnat1. I understand it as something like “should be put to retirement”, but I can’t gloss like this, since this is more implication than meaning. It is “in need of some rest” and “sleepy”, but metaphorically and transferred for permanent retraction. “depleted of strength or energy”, “fatigued” in the first topic of this talk-page was one abstraction closer. “incompetent” may well be an exaggeration though. Something between it and the most literal sense I imagine. Fay Freak (talk) 17:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, I've added a cite, and also here is a video use of 'tired' meaning "incompetent" [[1]], used between 0:40 - 0:49. In the black community, when we say someone or something is "tired", it is a put-down, an insult. It means they cannot perform up to par. Leasnam (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

@Leasnam: The clip is convincing, the gloss bettered by you. In such written contexts it is difficult to see the slanginess and derogatoriness. The added quotes can be covered by it but I am not sure if it is the same AAVE sense or a parallel figurative development, though it sometimes happens that people pick up terms originally AAVE and don’t realize. And I think it still leaves us with an additional sense of the examples above, a leadership or other things in need of figurative retirement due to depleted powers, perhaps leading to these “played out, ineffectual, incompetent” senses, without reference to the historical development of the powers. Fay Freak (talk) 19:52, 3 November 2023 (UTC)