Talk:megapenny

Curiously, an official looking document has something to say about this construction. Jayvdb 03:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

megapenny
Sense: 1 million pennies. Does being in the Jargon File imply it passes the CFI? Kappa 05:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No. The Jargon File, cool as it is, is a secondary source.  There are a few cool-sounding words that I've personally only seen in the Jargon File; bogotify is another. -dmh 20:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Weakly attested. There's a "Megapenny Project" for teaching orders of magnitude to kids, which eats a lot of hits (including all the b.g.c).  I found one or two legit hits for "a megapenny" and one or two more for "megapennies" (one is a nonce, but "At the time an unfortunate fourth M, cost on the order of a megapenny, was beyond the reach of students' budgets, so the initial hardware deployment in 1985" (from Wikipedia), "A megapenny weighs approximately pi tons.", "A megapenny for your thoughts, please." (remind me to think around this person!) "... which allows websites to manage data without resorting to shelling out megapennies ... ", "Settle out of court for many, many megapennies" and "Nah, whats the point of spending megapennies on your PC to play everything in low res/low detail crapness?" look good.  Idiomatic?  Oh, why not? -dmh 20:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

How is this definition different from mega- + penny? Cynewulf 20:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A good question. Mega has several meanings (106 or 220, really big).  A megapenny is not a really big penny (and a megastar is not a million celebrities).  This is a long-standing argument for inclusion.  It should probably be mentioned in CFI. -dmh 21:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think "sum of parts" is an argument for deleting things written as one word, since wiktionary users can't be expected to know where to divide words in order to looks them up. Kappa 06:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's another good point. Is it "week nights" or "wee knights"? But even without that, ambiguity is grounds on its own. -dmh 15:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I hope im not breaking protocol by participating. I created this entry because I came across it on Andrew Project and didnt know what it meant. It is also used on Workstation. Note that the definition in the Jargon File includes an element of humour -- I wasnt sure how to express that in wikt-speak, and didnt want to copy the text from the Jargon file (I didnt realise at the time that it was public domain). Now that I look through the google hits in more detail, I see very little of note except the "Megapenny Project", which has an journal article dedicated to it, one newgroup posting and it is also mentioned in four books on google books and three others on a9. I'm not concerned if this entry is removed. Jayvdb 13:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't be removed. It's attested, just rare.  It goes in the category of "terms in the Jargon File that appear more in references to the Jargon File than in real life".  Do we have that category yet :-). -dmh 16:00, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

RFV passed. —RuakhTALK 09:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)