Talk:no ifs and buts

RFD discussion: March 2021–October 2022
Redundant to ifs and buts. No ifs or buts is more common anyway. Existing definition seems odd, since the obvious interpretation is in relation to the expression ifs and buts, not the rarer ifs, ands, or buts as presently stated. Mihia (talk) 17:57, 2 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Redirect to ifs and buts, just as no ifs, ands or buts is a redirect to ifs, ands or buts. Colin M (talk) 21:46, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I have to say that I really do dislike automatically redirecting, without any explanation at all, and maybe even unnoticed e.g. by learners, from one entry to something that means the exact opposite. I would rather delete it and let people figure out that "no ifs and buts" = "no" + "ifs and buts". Or, if we do want to keep it, I would prefer an actual entry that says "negative of ifs and buts", or whatever the proper phrasing would be. Mihia (talk) 22:40, 3 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Create &thinsp; with the definition “”, and redefine as “”.  --Lambiam 12:15, 5 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I've felt the same way as Mihia, that it's confusing to redirect a positive to a negative or vice versa; if a user fails to notice, they come away thinking the term they typed in (the negative form) means the opposite of what it actually means, because we supplied them with a definition of the positive form. I think this idea of some kind of "Negative of..." definition is good. Curiously, while ands or buts is more common than ands and buts, ifs and buts is more common than ifs or buts. The usage notes suggest the use of and vs or is influenced by polarity, so some more creative search/ngram terms may be needed to get an accurate comparison. Nonetheless... redirect the less common forms of all the synonymous constructions to the more common forms, but leave the negative forms defined as negative forms of the versions without "no". - -sche (discuss) 21:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete as SOP. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 18:40, 5 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Redirected. - TheDaveRoss  13:26, 28 October 2022 (UTC)