Talk:barely legal

barely legal
Looks suspiciously like barely legal to me. ---&#62; Tooironic 11:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the pornography meaning is too specialized to be easily deduced from barely + legal. —Angr 11:36, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Could it even be a pun? SemperBlotto 11:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep the porn definition. Very specific meaning not easily deduced from parts.--Dmol 12:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I too favor the keep, but the definition isn't limited to porn. In the UK, a teenager who is barely 16 could be referred to as 'barely legal' with respect to having sex with them. So I think the definition needs to be expanded to cover this. But yeah, in this case it isn't saying the person is barely legal, but having sex with them or filming it is. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Legal is obviously context-dependent in its exact meaning. There is nothing very special about its meaning in the porn context in this regard apart from the frisson of hormonal enhancement involved. Delete. DCDuring TALK 13:15, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Not really, in almost all circumstances it is age 18, in some places its some age near that. The term however is an English one and in most English speaking jurisdictions it is 18. It may also mean 16 in the UK but I found no evidence of that. In any case the definition I wrote left the door open to any variation of 18, but it is usually 18. Keep as it is indeed a very specific not sum of parts def.Lucifer 13:45, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Age of consent, not usually 18. Do some research before commenting next time. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:51, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes sir in English speaking countries it is, for the vast majority of English speaking people (i.e. USA) it is, and for the vast majority of those participating in porn in English speaking countries it is. Most English language porn is made in America. Saudia Arabia and Brazil's age of consent are irrelevant for this matter.Lucifer 13:58, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I take it you didn't bother looking at the article linked to. As per Ages of consent in North America, in only 11 out of 50 states in the US is the age of consent 18.--Prosfilaes 16:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between the "age of consent" for a person to engage in intercourse, and the minimum age of models for which pornographic images of a person can be sold. In virtually every jurisdiction in the United States, it is illegal to sell pornographic images of a model who is under the age of eighteen; 18 U.S.C. Section 2257 requires the sellers of all such images to retain records showing that the models used were of legal age at the time the images were created. bd2412 T 20:07, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Isn't this age discussion off the point? Whatever the limit is, "barely legal" means that one is operating barely on the legal side. For a pornstar "barely legal" means slightly over 18 years of age, for a tire slightly over x mm of tread depth, for a salmon catch slightly over y cm of length etc. We simply cannot have them all. --Hekaheka 22:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Tooironic. The pornographic sense is not any more difficult to grasp than the sentence "My tires are barely legal". In both contexts (tires and porn) it is possible to imagine several ways of being illegal. "Barely legal" simply indicates that things are - well - barely legal. We cannot cover every possible consequence of ignorance in a dictionary. The "law" sense is nonsense. There's no such juridical term. Delete. --Hekaheka 22:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * @SemperBlotto, a pun on what? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:24, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It basically means 18 and is also a genre of porn; neither which is easily surmized from the sopLucifer 20:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It might be attestable as a genre of porn, but then it needs a noun definition, preferably with citations. The discussion here is about adjective, because that's the only POS we currently have for this term. --Hekaheka 17:33, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * For terms for which no dictionary has an entry, instead of making up definitions as you go or creating entries based on your own idiolect, why don't you start by getting three citations that, in your opinion, support a single meaning, then write the definition if you can or insert and, then see whether others agree? Repeat to taste or try multiple senses with citations at once. DCDuring TALK 20:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * On reflection, the argument I've made above to keep the term doesn't work, so please disregard it. Mglovesfun (talk) 04:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * @Luciferwild, do you read anything anyone says to you? Mglovesfun (talk) 04:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Here are some citations, although it may ambiguous as to whether the legality in question is that of the age of consent or the age of pornographic modelling. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:38, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 2011, Tucker Max, Assholes Finish First, p. 290:
 * But this was not a barely legal girl; she looked too young for Tiger Beat.
 * 2010, Susan Andersen, Burning Up, p. 57:
 * He screwed around on you with a barely legal bimbo and your friends took his side?
 * 2008, Claire Thompson, ''Switch, p. 124:
 * In her case it didn't even matter that she was a thirty- something woman and I was a barely legal gay man.
 * 2006, Jack Sheehan, Skin City: Behind the Scenes of the Las Vegas Sex Industry, p. 241:
 * Here was a barely legal-looking couple offering themselves on an open market, and accessible in about a minute online, to a universe of sex-hungry visitors to Las Vegas.
 * 2006, Deborah Blumenthal, What Men Want, p. 234:
 * ...all the tidbits about Reilly's love life that would have been perfect for the gossip column, including the voice on the phone at the Waldorf who I realized was a barely legal actress who was in one of his upcoming films.
 * Thanks for the citations, but they do not solve this discussion. There is no doubt about attestability of this combination of words. --Hekaheka 00:18, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They support the idiomacity of the sense of the term relating to a person, as they could refer to any number of things (citizenship, licensure, sobriety), but in fact refer to age. bd2412 T 01:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the same could be said about the tires in Hekaheka's example, they're not barely legal because of size or color or whatever. I think in reality barely legal means a lot of things in a lot of contexts; the pornography sense is just one possibility. The reason for being barely legal is actually cultural, i.e. depends on the laws of where you are. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:13, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But turns up "Your search - "My tires are barely legal" - did not match any documents." BD2412 turned up real examples of "barely legal" in the age sense being used without surrounding context, which I can't find for tires.--Prosfilaes 20:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep ; good citations by BD2412.--Prosfilaes 20:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Too narrow search:
 * Alexander Bell - 2009 - 152 pages - Preview: I checked the wear bars on my tires, and they were just barely legal. 
 * Douglas Weiss - 2007 - 240 pages - Preview: ... really cared-for vehicle gets the occasional detailing and even a special air freshener for a new-car smell. Then on the same street in the city, there's the uncared- for car—you know, the one where the tires are barely legal
 * Kelly, Alison - 2003 - 185 pages - Preview: Your two rear tyres are as bald as bowling balls and the front ones are barely legal. --Hekaheka 02:10, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete because if we keep this definition we really ought to add all the other literal uses of something being 'barely legal'. Why single one out? Such as


 * "To find out, we gathered together a dozen state-of-the-art drivers — some illegal and some just barely legal"
 * "But they shine as textbooks of legal, quasi-legal, and barely legal strategy."
 * In other words, if kept, to avoid repetition, change definition to . Mglovesfun (talk) 21:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Given that legal has the appropriate sense of underage, I see no need for barely legal. Delete.--Prosfilaes 09:41, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. < class="latinx" >Ƿidsiþ 07:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The more I think about this, this doesn't function as a single unit at all; the definition should be at legal, which it is. You an rephrase it any number of ways, e.g. "not yet legal". Mglovesfun (talk) 10:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * First, "barely legal" could not be rephrased as "not yet legal" because that would mean the opposite of "barely legal"; something that is "not yet legal" is therefore not legal' something that is "barely legal" is legal. It could in theory be rephrased as "having just become legal", but that phrasing does not seem to be imbued with the sense of illicitness conveyed in the citations. Perhaps that is what is missing from this discussion. If someone told you they had a "barely legal desk" or had taken a "barely legal nap" or grown a "barely legal tree", it wouldn't make any sense, because if something like a desk or a nap or a tree is "legal", why use a qualifier at all. For someone to be dating a "barely legal" girl or driving on "barely legal" tires suggests that the law allows them to do what they are doing, but are still behaving in a morally questionable manner by doing it. bd2412 T 15:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete SOP. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

deleted -- Liliana • 19:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)