Talk:furniture

RFV
Rfv-sense: An item, or, used collectively, items, usually in a room, which enhance the room's characteristics, functionally and/or decoratively.

Is this correct? I have learned that furniture is a collective noun and thus one could not call an individual item of furniture as "a furniture". For instance, the sentence "Table is a furniture" would be wrong. Have I been mislead all my life? --Hekaheka (talk) 04:54, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Although I agree with you completely, if you look at Google Books, you will see many hits for "the furnitures." --BB12 (talk) 06:10, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Also, I point out that "furniture" can be "an item" even if *"a furniture" does not exist: "a chair is furniture", that is, "a chair is an item..." (not "a chair is items..."), even when discussing a room which contains nothing besides one chair. To stress that *"a furniture" is not a standard English thing to say, we could add (or per BB's Google Books search, perhaps ) to the definition, but I think the definition itself is correct as it is. - -sche (discuss) 06:34, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * If something is uncountable, it should be defined with an uncountable for ease of understanding. My mind is drawing a blank right now, but is there a way to rewrite that so the definition is uncountable? I like the idea of adding the "usually uncountable" to the beginning, too! --BB12 (talk) 06:47, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll try a solution:
 * 1)  Items, usually in a room, which enhance the room's characteristics, functionally and/or decoratively.
 * 2)  A piece of furniture.

--Hekaheka (talk) 07:25, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds good, as long as we're einverstanden that "a chair is furniture" is a usex of the first (not the second) sense. - -sche (discuss) 08:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
 * @BB: I think that it would be desirable to define each uncountable term with an uncountable term. But often there is not a common one available. That forces us to use a plural. Sometimes the problem is worse. See white trash and associated discussion at WT:RFC. DCDuring TALK 13:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Should the definition include "Items, often wooden...". The usex given (...stick of furniture...) has an implied assumption that furniture is made of wood. Spinning Spark  09:44, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I don't think so. Traditionally furniture was usually wooden in countries where wood was in abundant supply, but the chair I'm sitting on at the moment has no wood in it, and I suppose in countries like Iceland where there are no trees, they had to make furniture out of other things. I think that's really encyclopedic information that isn't part of the dictionary definition of furniture. —Angr 09:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe stick of furniture should have an entry then. It's not the encyclopaedic history of furniture that is vexing me here, rather the idiomatic use of stick. Spinning Spark  11:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Have you seen definition 7 of [[stick]]? —Angr 12:10, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have, but I still think that phrase is idiomatic. One cannot say "a stick of wardrobe" for intance. Spinning Spark  12:39, 29 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I am OK with removing that sense from [[stick]] to its own entry ([[stick of furniture]]). - -sche (discuss) 16:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * One could say a "stick of wood". But this use sense of stick is (almost?) always in the negative: "We didn't have (even) a stick of wood/furniture/firewood/fuel/lumber/timber/spruce/etc". The essence of the matter is not that it is an item. A synonym might be "the smallest bit". Consider, too: "He owned not a stick of his cabin." DCDuring TALK 19:04, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I think "wardrobe" isn't a good test- you can't say "a piece of wardrobe", either. Furniture is a mass/uncountable noun, which is the only reason you can say "of furniture" at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:31, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see why one can't say a piece of wardrobe. Well alright, that one returns mostly fashion meaning, but piece of chair returns a lot of hits that really do mean a piece of a chair. Spinning Spark  01:08, 2 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Struck. Further refinement of the definition would seem to be an RFC / Tea Room matter, not an RFV one. - -sche (discuss) 17:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)