Talk:five second rule

RFV discussion: July 2015–February 2016
Rfv-sense: "The thesis that food fallen on the ground remains equally edible and healthful if lifted therefrom within five seconds."

I didn't find it at Google Books, though I found a basketball rule of that name. DCDuring TALK 20:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There are a number of citations in the Wikipedia article on the topic. bd2412 T 20:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I see lots of citations for the spelling "five-second rule", but none for this spelling. If citations can be found for this spelling, I think it should be turned into an entry. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 01:18, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, definitely. Right now we have two different definitions for the same thing. We should only have one, combining the best features of each, and at the most common usage. bd2412 T 01:52, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess I didn't filter very well again. DCDuring TALK 02:23, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and merged them. No sense in having a content fork. I retained the rfv-sense tag, but it's hard to imagine that an attested hyphenated form doesn't have at least some unhyphenated usage. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've never encountered five-second rule in any sense other than the one involving dropped food. I think we can dispense with the primary sense, unless evidence can be found to support that the term is used this broadly. -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 03:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There's also some variation on the number: I first heard it as the "15-second rule", and I think one can find usage as the "10-second rule". Unfortunately, the construction "the x-second rule" is used by just about every self-help and how-to book out there, with dozens of different contexts and dozens of different rules- so finding variant forms of this sense isn't easy. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Non-food uses for a "takeback" concept are likely referential, but see Lee Rowland, There Is No 5-Second Rule for the First Amendment, Ferguson. bd2412 T 04:03, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I've had some success by adding the word "germs" to the search. With searches like that, I think ten-second rule is attestable, and possibly also three-second rule. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 04:49, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * RFV failed: no citations of this form provided. The form five-second rule has been cited and kept. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 01:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)