Talk:beet

RFC discussion: November 2016–March 2020
This entry is divided in a very odd fashion into three senses, with odd example sentences to go with them: This is especially odd since the plural mass noun sense (as in "she got beets on her new blouse") isn't mentioned in the lemma or in the plural entry.
 * 1) A singularia tantum for the plant with the example sentence: "The beet is a hardy species"
 * 2) A countable sense for an "individual plant (organism) of that species". Example sentence: "They sell beets by the pound in the supermarket. All I want is the roots. Can I cut off the roots and buy them alone?"
 * 3) A countable sense for the "root of such a plant".

Can somebody make the senses so they make sense? Chuck Entz (talk) 06:47, 1 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The distiction between senses 1 and 2 is grammatical, not lexical, and I have merged them. One could just as well say "the tiger/alligator/oak is a species that...". Is "she got beets on her new blouse" using a different sense than (the plural of) the "root" sense? - -sche (discuss) 20:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not really. My point was that normal usage is closer to always plural than to always singular. There does seem to be a difference, but it probably isn't lexical: one could say "These are big beets- if you cook up even just one, it makes a decent serving of cooked beets". The first is countable and plural, while the second is a plural mass noun. Like most vegetables, mass noun usage tends to be plural only. You can still say "a cup of cooked beet", but "a cup of cooked beets" sounds more natural. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:47, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with Chuck.
 * I'm bothered with usage like sense 1. It feels like an attempt to make beet or common beet a substitute for the taxonomic name, which is a proper noun. It's not really singular only, either, as another species in genus Beta could also be a beet, resulting in beets in sense 1.
 * In vernacular name entries I've ignored usage like that for sense 1 and omitted such a definition, because it doesn't seem to be consistent, in contrast to the taxonomic name usage. Even using English vernacular names in the definition of a taxonomic name, ie, defining a proper noun as a common noun, doesn't seem quite right. One has to read the taxon definition as eliding "often vulgarly called". DCDuring (talk) 20:08, 10 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I think this entry has been cleaned up. The disputed, above-quoted first of three senses has been folded into the current first of two senses. Take a look and see if you think anything else needs to be done. - -sche (discuss) 20:13, 11 March 2020 (UTC)