Talk:it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it

RFD discussion: May 2021–January 2022
Sum of parts. 212.224.228.122 11:34, 1 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The definition is really the opposite of what you'd expect ("The role or assignment is a particularly attractive or desirable one") but it is glossed as sarcastic. Equinox ◑ 12:51, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I would question whether the sarcastic use is especially conventionalized. Browsing google books, literal uses definitely outnumber sarcastic ones. Colin M (talk) 13:59, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I changed "sarcastic" to "ironic", but I agree that the phrase is also often used unironically. I also know it as the variant it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it (and both can substitute "someone" for "somebody", of course). —Mahāgaja · talk 14:29, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I vaguely remember that we decided not to include ironic senses since almost any positive phrase can be used as an ironic snarl. (“A masterly move, Fred. Great, just what we needed. You deserve an award for this.”) --Lambiam 00:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * There's a bit about this at WT:CFI. Colin M (talk) 01:48, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a pompous cliché, like something out of an old public-service newsreel, and it's used to make ordinary things sound heroic. It's precisely those qualities that make it fun to play against. I don't know if those added connotations are enough to make it idiomatic for dictionary purposes, though. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I am seconding Entz here- there is something special about this phrase that deserves extra consideration. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:02, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. The ironic use is, in my experience, the most common and it would really difficult for non-L1 speakers to make much sense of it. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 03:43, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. This probably doesn’t qualify as a set phrase, and I think that it’s self‐explanatory, but it’s so iconic/cliché that I feel like we need to mention it somewhere. I would demote it to an example sentence in an entry like tough or job. —(((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 20:50, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - also moved entry to ...someone... (most common in Google) and made a proverb. Facts707 (talk) 20:03, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete sense 2, since this falls pretty clearly under Criteria for inclusion. For sense 1, I have no opinion. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:39, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep because of sense 2. &mdash; Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Kept and moved to "...someone's...". There is a rather strange dichotomy here, in that some editors would prefer to keep because of sense 2, and others would like to keep sense one but not sense two, but there is a clear absence of consensus for deletion, and a stronger preference for keeping in either case. bd2412 T 20:50, 31 January 2022 (UTC)