Talk:Donald Duck

RFV 1
Needs attributive cites. --Yair rand 00:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * 3 cites for audio attributes. Can't imagine other attributive use. DCDuring TALK 11:21, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Passed. I do hope, Yair and everyone else, that you seek citations (at least cursorily) before RFVing. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 16:47, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see how these are "attributive cites". They're still direct references to the character, not uses as "words" like Darth Vader or Eeyore. --Yair rand 22:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * They are attributive in the sense "such that it modifies a noun and is part of the noun's noun phrase". WT:CFI does not define "attributive". If you have your own candidate definition of "attributive", you can propose it so that we know what you mean by "attributive". --Dan Polansky 13:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "Attributive" has been taken to mean that the word does not refer directly to the specific entity, but is a word that is derived from the entity's attributes, independent of any reference to the entity or parts of the entity itself. Thus, for Donald Duck to pass, it would have to be a word derived from, but unconnected to, Donald Duck the character. --Yair rand 22:38, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you stating your reading of "attributive" in CFI. Is "the New York of the West" an attributive use of "New York", per your definition? Is "the Pericles of the Italian Renaissance" an attributive use of "Pericles"? Is there a wider support among Wiktionary editors for your definition of "attributive" as regards CFI? Can that support be documented? --Dan Polansky 22:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really know exactly what the boundaries of "attributive" are, but I'm pretty sure that the general idea is that it doesn't refer directly to the specific entity or parts of the specific entity. With regards to place names specifically, people generally seem to ignore the standard of requiring attributive cites, but then again, place names is an unresolved issue. "The Pericles of the Italian Renaissance" would work (I think), but the definition would explain the attributes, not the person himself. I don't think that the specific meaning is actually documented in CFI, other than a slight mention in the CFI subpage Criteria for inclusion/Fictional universes, where it says that persons or places from fictional universes shall not be included unless they are used both out of context and in an attributive sense, giving the example "Irabu had hired Nomura, a man with whom he obviously had a great deal in common, and, who, as we have seen, was rapidly becoming the Darth Vader of Japanese baseball." --Yair rand 22:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Our practice has been to find citations in which the proper noun is used attributively and the context does not include prior mention of the proper noun. Thus "a Donald Duck voice" evokes the memory of voice as heard in a Disney cartoon or someone's imitation of it. (It would make a good audio example file. Anyone?) It does not signify "Donald Duck's voice". Admittedly this is not as clear-cut a case as Mickey Mouse where the reference to the character is more remote, more nearly etymological. Virtually every dictionary has the Mouse. Only en.wikt and Wordnet have the Duck. DCDuring TALK 01:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The guideline has two requirements: 1) used attributively, and 2) with a widely understood meaning. (The specific-entities CFI has unclear wording. We really need to improve it.)

An attributive noun is one that acts like an adjective. So D.D. in “Donald Duck voice” is an attributive, while “Pericles of the west” is not.

A widely understood meaning requires that the used of the name has a meaning of its own in the language, independent of any knowledge the listener may have of the eponymic person, character, place, etc. One indicator of this might be that the eponymic entity doesn't otherwise appear in the cited work, but it is not proof. Making this determination is a judgment call. So “[t]hey are putting a Mickey Mouse operation on the ice” has the conventional meaning of ‘unprofessional’ or ‘rinky-dink.’ But “I had Mickey Mouse hands” and “hair [...] pinned up in Mickey Mouse ears” are specific references to the character, having no meaning to someone who's not seen the cartoon.

Donald Duck is not an English adjective meaning “(of a voice), wheezing, high-pitched, and lisping.” Nor does it mean “wearing a blue sailor suit,” “being of foul temperament,” or “having white feathers.” If I said after some stage performance “they were very Donald Duck,” you'd have no idea what I was referring to.

If we claim that Donald Duck is an English word then we are just embarrassing ourselves. —Michael Z. 2010-03-09 17:12 z 


 * The current adjective defintion is "Of or relating to Donald Duck" - this is nothing but a noun/proper noun being used attributively. --Rising Sun talk? contributions 17:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I just created that heading based on the citations. Previously they had been used to show that the proper noun Donald Duck referred to a cartoon duck. It's still ridiculous. —Michael Z. 2010-03-09 20:42 z 

RFV passed, since we no longer have the "with a widely-understood meaning" requirement. But please feel free to list at RFD. —Ruakh TALK 17:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

RFV 2
Rfv-sense: Proper noun. Judging from the paucity of material at WikiCommons, the abundance of branded merchandise being sold at relatively high prices, and the association of the Duck with Disney (See Donald Duck for references to licensing agreements, some from this millennium.), the proper noun (and other senses ?) would seem to need to be cited under WT:BRAND. WT:FICTION seems also to apply. I am not sure whether they combine, as it were, additively or multiplicatively. ("Multiplicatively" here meaning that each citation would have to meet both sets of criteria simultaneously; "additively" meaning here that there would need to be three citations that met each set of criteria separately. I haven't really thought it through. There may be no difference between "additive" and "multiplicative" in practice.) For older fictional characters, presumably only WT:FICTION applies, unless trademark works differently than I expect. I hope we don't need an IP lawyer {:~{. DCDuring TALK 22:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Someone has added some cites. I'd appreciate people's input about whether they feel these cites satisfy WT:FICTION and WT:BRAND. —Ruakh TALK 14:24, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Except for the 1945 Ernie Pyle citation of "Donald-Duck-like", I think they meet both criteria for inclusion. However, they do not support the encyclopedic definition. Specifically, I don't think that most use of "Donald Duck" in ordinary speech has anything to do with the Duck's clothing, for example. The 1945 cite is the only one that is somewhat supportive of "tantrums".

I have been wondering whether and how to include and attest characteristics of historic and fictional characters that are or have been invoked allusively. For example, Cincinnatus has represented a humble military man who did not seek power that could have been his. Plutarch's Lives is a source of many influential allusions of this type. DCDuring TALK 16:10, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the citations meet FICTION and BRAND, so I mark this (noun sense) passed. As for the definition: I believe that once we know what a word refers to, we can define what the word refers to. We can define a bird as having wings, for example, even though a line like "his voice was as lovely as a bird's" does not reference the bird's wings (or its membership in the phylum Chordata) but its song: it nevertheless refers to a bird, and a bird has wings. The quotations refer to Donald Duck; we can define Donald Duck as an anthromorphic duck, even though the quotations all refer to his voice rather than his anthromorphic bearing. (Someone, I think it was Ruakh, has made a similar argument before.) Having said that, if we desired to find quotations that supposed each element of the definition, we could: they might not meet FICTION or BRAND, but we would use the quotations present now to meet CFI, and then use the additional quotations (for example something of the form "he quacked just like Donald Duck, that anthromorphic duck who was always throwing tantrums on TV") to illustrate each element of the definition. - -sche (discuss) 03:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that is a big step away from empiricism and descriptivism. I'm perfectly happy to rely on (out-of-copyright) dictionaries for definitions and to consult with dictionaries for assistance on the words they cover. But citations illustrate meaning. We already have lots of encyclopedic content. Not relying on citations takes us farther in the direction of becoming a short-attention-span version of Wikipedia.
 * To say that citations are only necessary for attestation of an entry also contradicts our practice in attesting the senses of words: they rely on specific citations illustrating the usage. I suppose it is true that even today most of our definitions of words (not MWEs) show traces of their origins in Websters and, to a lesser extent, Century. So we can continue our heritage of unoriginality by copying prescriptive definitions from authoritative sources. If we rely neither on citations nor on authoritative sources, what will we be relying on? We certainly can't claim a great amount of lexicographic expertise nor do we have written principles about how words are to be defined. DCDuring TALK 03:26, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with -sche and thus support the notion that Donald Duck has been cited. The RFV process does not (or should not) require that every part of a definition of a term be attestable by quotations that use the term to convey meaning. --Dan Polansky 09:22, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Donald Duck
RFD for the adjective, which is really the proper noun being used attributively. DAVilla 08:11, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How would the appropriate sense for the Proper noun read? Or is the user to make inference from the WP article. Do we need a sound example? DCDuring TALK 13:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "Known for his voice." Updated. DAVilla 19:15, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Does our attestation support the update? DCDuring TALK 20:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not yet; the "very Donald Duck" citation seems to meet our CFI, but the "most Donald Duck-like" citation uses Donald Duck-like as an adjective, not just Donald Duck. I wouldn't accept that one. The remaining citations seem to be attributive use of the noun. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Have the quotations been correctly rearranged to match the part of speech as you described? DAVilla 10:27, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

deleted as unattested. -- Liliana • 16:57, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

"A fuck"
Be more specific. What kind of "a fuck"? Ready Steady Yeti (talk) 22:58, 28 May 2014 (UTC)