Talk:old

Request for deletion
Rfd-redundant "Of a living being, having lived for relatively many years" redundant to "Of an object, concept, relationship, etc., having existed for a relatively long period of time". Or am I missing something? &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 18:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * A lot of languages have different translations for these two senses, that might be why they are split. Polarpanda 20:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That is not a consideration under WT:CFI. Having senses that are redundant in English will be one of the many ways in which polylingual considerations will prevent en.wikt from being a successful monolingual English dictionary and will leave it without enough contributors to bring "Century 1912(?)" and "Webster 1913" English definitions up to date.
 * Delete. DCDuring TALK 23:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete by all means, but remember to merge the translation tables. --Hekaheka 07:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I do think it's worth keeping them separate – not just because of the translations, although that is one clue that these are slightly different concepts. To say that a person is old is not quite the same as saying that the idea of freedom is old, and although "advanced in years" and "long practised or experienced" can both be reduced to "having existed for a relatively long time", it's not necessarily useful to do that. < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ 12:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well yes, there is a difference. The first applies to people and things with a sell-by date, and the second is for things that simply cannot be called new, but do not necessarily have a life expectancy -- A LGRIF  talk 14:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep and rewrite per Algrif. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * So, thinking about it, how about something like Nearing the end of it's expected life time for the first? It needs to cover "old bread" as much as "old person". -- A LGRIF  talk 18:13, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. The senses can be refined even further. Check other dictionaries including modern ones such as Merriam-Webster online and Encarta to see how many useful nuances of meaning can be found. --Dan Polansky 10:43, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I have done some work on the entry. Please check and, if in agreement, remove the RfD-sense. Cheers. -- A LGRIF  talk 16:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Very nice. Thanks. Detagging and striking. &#x200b;—msh210℠ 16:49, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: November 2012–August 2017
In the sense "having existed or lived for the specified time", the translation format is absolutely awful. Aside from the highly invalid red links, the amount of information and how it's presented makes it hard to read. I know it's a bit of a toughie to translate, but surely we can do better than this. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:27, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a separate sense from the main sense. How is "three years old" different from "three feet tall" or "three gallons full"? --WikiTiki89 10:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The format is nonstandard, yes, but works pretty well for the languages I know, at least. I'll leave the RFC tag for now. --WF on Holiday (talk) 07:26, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Emphasis use
Hi, I'm a French speaker and not completely fluent in English, but I think we could add one meaning for this word. It's used - in colloquial and casual speach - to give emphasis to an expression, as in : "anywhere" - - > "any old where" Here's the link to a wordreference forum thread that deals with it : https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/any-old-where.1691835/ And also the excerpt from the book I found it in in the first place : "I was getting a meaning for that lizard thing, but you talked to me, Farder Coram, and I lost it. See, it's just floating any old where." (Northern Lights, Philip Pullman, 1995, p. 153 Scholastic edition) Perhaps a native speaker could come up with a proper definition? Anne.Maias (talk) 09:59, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Possible missing sense
Chambers 1908 has an adjective sense "sober, wise". Equinox ◑ 10:16, 15 November 2023 (UTC)