Talk:pecker mill

RFV discussion: July 2014–January 2015
I request attestation in use to convey meaning as per WT:ATTEST. The current three quotations are not in use to convey meaning, IMHO, since the invocation of the term is preceded by "called", so the quotations talk about the term rather than using it. Relevant snippets: "Rice mills, called pecker, cog, and water mills...", "and in others by a rude machine, called a pecker mill.", "The first mechanical mills were harnessed to animals: the so-called pecker mill ". --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:35, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the citations in the entry are good enough. 12:44, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Are they used to convey meaning? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:46, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, yes they do convey meaning. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:58, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Additional cites added from the Google Books search on the citations page. Thanks for wasting our time. DCDuring TALK 15:16, 6 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Of the citations in the entry, I think the 1995 and 2003 ones are clear uses; the rest are all mentions or at least very mention-y. I don't doubt that there's a third use out there somewhere, though. - -sche (discuss) 18:49, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If you look at the first one " called a pecker mill", I'd class this as a use not a mention. It's used in context to convey meaning but recognizes that the reader may not be familiar with the term, hence the wording. Renard Migrant (talk) 09:03, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I rest my case. A sentence of the form "X is called Y" does not use Y; it merely mentions it. For the purpose of use-mention distinction, I do not see a difference between "X is called Y" and a dictionary entry "Y: X". Sentence "X is called Y" does not make use of the meaning of Y; instead, the sentence binds the meaning to Y to the reader; in order to understand the sentence, the reader does not need to know the meaning of Y.
 * As for the 2003 quotation ("The pecker mill is likely the fulcrum device developed by Guerrard in 1691."): the phrase "The pecker mill" does not suggest the meaning of the term is clear to the reader and to the writer either; instead, the writer seems to be in the process of figuring out what "pecker mill" means, stating one hypothesis about the meaning of the term in the quotation. That does not seem very use-y to me, but I admit that it is much better than the "X is called Y" quotations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:40, 13 July 2014 (UTC)


 * This passes based on the 1991, 1995 and 2003 citations, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 02:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)