Talk:not entirely

RFD discussion: March 2023–April 2024
SOP. PUC – 15:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @PUC Can mean exactly (rather than completely) outside of this phrase? "Did she still make it to the wedding?" "Not entirely..." (Here it means exactly, not completely.) &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 23:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Doesn’t the response “not entirely” mean “she only made it to part of the wedding” (e.g. she was late/left early)? Or I guess it could mean “only part of her turned up” haha. I don’t interpret it as meaning “not exactly”, but this could be a regional thing.
 * On a related point, the quotation on the entry doesn’t seem to support this definition: “His analysis is not entirely unsound” means “his analysis is not completely unsound” (i.e. it’s partly unsound, but not fully); it doesn’t mean “his analysis is not exactly unsound”, which has a very different connotation, implying that “the analysis is actually fully sound [but might not look that way at first glance]”. There’s a much stronger argument for being idiomatic, to be honest. Theknightwho (talk) 13:48, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree. PUC – 13:51, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I thought I had heard it used to mean "not exactly" (as a western Canadian speaker), but now I'm not certain. &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 22:58, 10 April 2023 (UTC)


 * While few adults are likely to misunderstand the phrase, it is not strictly sum-of-parts, as the above example makes plain ... i can imagine a cartoonist using this to set up a joke. It seems odd, but I'd say that the fact that we're so used to this construction that we don't notice it's idiomatic is the very reason it must be idiomatic.  I held off from this until now but I will still vote keep.   — Soap — 05:46, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete' Ioaxxere (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete, pragmatic omission. Fay Freak (talk) 11:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 03:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)