Talk:happy dance

RFD discussion: October 2017–February 2018
"A dance that conveys happiness." Unless it is a specific dance with particular motions, this seems SoP. Equinox ◑ 14:49, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * When it's just a dance that's happy, the stress pattern is ˌhappy ˈdance and it's SOP. But when it's a dance that expresses happiness (you often hear people say "This is my happy dance!"), then the stress pattern is ˈhappy ˌdance and it isn't SOP. (The stress pattern parallels the difference between ˌhot ˈdog "a very warm canine" and ˈhot ˌdog "a type of sausage". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)


 * If you were asked to name your "happy place" or "happy song", wouldn't you also stress the first syllable? Should these too have entries on that basis? Possibly the distinction is that stressing "happy" means it's something that makes you happy, while stressing the noun means it's something that is itself happy...? Equinox ◑ 15:43, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think I've heard "happy song" used that way, but I do think happy place is worth an entry. It isn't a place that's happy, it's a place (often just a state of mind, a place in your imagination) that makes you happy. If the usual expressions were "happiness dance" and "happiness place", I'd say they were SOP, but I feel like "happy dance" and "happy place" in the relevant meanings are idiomatic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:24, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the difference in stress pattern has more to do with the nature of the first part rather than whether it's a true compound: "happy dance" seems to be short for something along the lines of "(I-am-)happy dance", and the stress pattern seems to be different for a phrase being used attributively. I can imagine someone saying "she's doing her I'm-hot-and-you're-all-losers dance again", with an equivalent stress pattern. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * To me, the stress thing seems no different from innumerable other examples such as "Mine is the blue suitcase" or "A good criminal is a dead criminal", where you are emphasising that it is one type of thing rather than another type of thing. Whether the "conveys" part of the supposed definition "a dance that conveys happiness" is sufficient to justify the entry seems rather doubtful to me. Mihia (talk) 00:23, 21 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't think your examples are analogous. Yours are stressing a word because there are others to compare it with ("mine is the blue suitcase, not the red one"). A happy dance isn't being compared with a sad one. Equinox ◑ 03:34, 19 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. Whether a compound or an adjective + noun, it is still SOP. The entry began as a request for a slang definition, but I can't find anything that seems like a separate meaning. There are some cases where it means "overwhelming experience of the senses or emotions" or "sexual intercourse" that are little more than ad hoc metaphors. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:22, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. Transparent. DCDuring (talk) 21:32, 21 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. Can't figure out why it should be kept. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:48, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * This brings to mind the Liberty Mutual commercial where the narrator says that, after being inconsolable from totaling a car, "then Liberty Mutual calls, and you break into your happy dance". The implication, to me, is that each person has their own personalized set of movements that constitutes an individual "happy dance". bd2412 T 16:49, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 21:22, 20 February 2018 (UTC)