Talk:pumping iron

pumping iron
I doubt that this meets any tests of being a true noun in our sense. DCDuring TALK 07:26, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I doubt it's a true noun, but it's harder than you might think to draw a line here. Do we also delete rowing or swimming? --Mglovesfun (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably the most forgiving test imaginable is modification by determiners (like "much", "little", "more", "less", and most inclusively no), which allows for the possibility of an -ing form being an uncountable noun. I think this might be too forgiving to prevent us from having to duplicate most of the senses of the verb lemma. Modification by an adjective might be better. Verb phrase -ing forms, in particular, have a hard time meeting such tests. A difference in meaning is always grounds for including an -ing form as a noun.
 * But, one thing at a time. I couldn't find an adjective modifying "pumping iron" in the 95 hits for "pumping iron" at COCA. Nor any hits for "frequent", "occasional", "heavy", or "light" "pumping iron" at bgc. DCDuring TALK 15:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Iron pumping would look more like a noun than this. At least "heavy", "light" and "some" work as modifiers. Delete. --Hekaheka 05:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep: Here is a recent book title in which pumping iron is placed in a parallel list along with two other items that are clearly nouns: "The Body Shop: Parties, Pills, and Pumping Iron"; and a quotation that places it in parallel with a clear noun: "To steal a New Age term or two, yoga and pumping iron are symbiotic". --EncycloPetey 20:11, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
 * By that test few English -ing forms would fail to be at least one of adjective and noun. As such, we would then, in principle, need to define each in all of the senses of the lemma. I would be happy to create an entry at "going" for each of its 59 senses to demonstrate the consequences, and then proceed though the phrasal verbs and predicates derived from go. We could than RfV each of them to make sure I hadn't cheated to prove a point. And then there are the -ed forms. I see no special reason to treat MWEs more laxly than single-word English -ing forms.
 * The bad consequence of excluding the noun section would be that someone has to click to the lemma and possibly de-lemmatize the senses and usexes to compare to the form they were looking up. I don't see the point on including repetitive PoS entries when we have only some 200,000 English lemmas (including spurious entries for -ing and -ed forms). DCDuring TALK 20:39, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Deciding whether to keep entries for the "noun" sense of English participles can indeed be a tricky thing. What do you make of this quote I found on b.g.c.? "Too much pumping iron jarred his brain."  Would you call that a clear noun use in accordance with the earlier part of this discussion? --EncycloPetey 21:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that accepting modification by determiners is an attribute of a nominal, as is modification by an adjective. Pluralization is a sufficient test to me, but is biased against -ing forms with only uncountable meanings that have other noun-like features. The obvious thing would be to use "much" which selects for uncountable senses. However, I think that almost no -ing form would be incompatible with "much". COCA has more than 1000 -ing forms modified by "much". To test this, I will run a pseudorandom (last entry on each page or last of each column) sample of -ing forms from Category:English present participles to see how many cannot be found with "much", especially among those with more than 100 raw bgc hits for the -ing form. If I am right that almost any -ing form will accept "much", then another test seems appropriate. The only one I can think of is acceptance of modification by an adjective. This has the disadvantage that there is no single list of adjectives that would work for all -ing forms.
 * I'm open to suggestions about "just-right" tests, not too many inclusions requiring duplicative entries, not too many exclusions of legitimate terms that behave like nouns, not purely subjective (ie, voting or "expert" judgment). Even a purely semantic test (an -ing form sense not present in the base/lemma form) is difficult in practice as we do not (cannot ?) have canonical forms of definitions to facilitate objective comparison. DCDuring TALK 23:16, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
 * keep if you looked up "pumping" and "iron" you would determine this meant "compressing the element of iron". This is a common term that passes the "tennis player" test if you ask me.Gtroy 21:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Though we're not proposing to delete the sense. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

kept, no consensus -- Liliana • 08:27, 30 October 2011 (UTC)