Talk:retiring

RFD discussion: November 2019–March 2020
Adjective: "About to retire from work. Today is the party for our retiring co-workers."

This seems to me to be the participle of retire. I don't believe that this sense unambiguously meets the adjectivity criteria. DCDuring (talk) 00:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree, Delete. The same can be said of the first two senses given for dying, while the third one is the attributive use of the gerund. --Lambiam 08:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that it does not meet the criteria for a "true" adjective, but I wonder whether a case could be made for keeping it anyway, to contrast with the other, true-adjective sense. For example, someone (possibly a non-native speaker) encounters the phrase "our retiring co-workers", concludes that "retiring" is an adjective, looks up the adjective, and finds that it means "introverted, liking privacy and seclusion". On the other hand, I suppose this logic would potentially require us to include entries corresponding to various other senses of "retire", so perhaps it is not such a good idea after all. Mihia (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Where we mention the sense as present participle, as we do at, , , , , , , , , ..., we present this separately under the POS heading Verb. This also solves the issue of multiple senses of the verb. --Lambiam 08:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, of course. However that wasn't my point. My point was to do with present participle potentially appearing adjectival. Mihia (talk)
 * My point is that, rather in general, grammatically challenged native and non-native speakers alike may misconstrue such present participles, in particular when used attributively (like consenting here), as adjectives; yet this is IMO not a valid argument to list that sense under an erroneous POS. Listing it under Verb may help to enlighten such users. --Lambiam 12:49, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:12, 21 March 2020 (UTC)