Talk:sell oneself short

RFD discussion: March–July 2015
Included under second sense of sell something short. Should be a redirect. DCDuring TALK 20:15, 9 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Both of those entries should be redirects to sell short since something is, obviously, not the only thing that one can sell short. In addition to selling oneself short, one can also sell someone (else) short. - -sche (discuss) 17:05, 10 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Can sell short ever be used without an object between sell and short? I think a lot of our entry titles with something in them could also have a someone as the object, just it would be incredibly pedantic to have two separate entries for them. When I say "ever used", I mean more than incredibly rarely. 95.144.169.113 17:25, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
 * We have a few entries that include something as a placeholder in the headword in the way that I think is warranted for this. See some of the items in this search. There are others for which one, one's, oneself, and someone or somebody are placeholders.
 * The placement of short before or after the object depends entirely on the length/complexity of the object:
 * "I sold the S&P short." / *"I sold short the S&P".
 * "I sold short all of the Standard and Poor's index except for energy stocks." / ?"I sold all of the Standard and Poor's index except for energy stocks short."
 * With enough redirects, either could work. DCDuring TALK 22:43, 10 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I would keep this just to avoid confusion with short selling. bd2412 T 17:16, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Similar cases with "oneself" are found by searching mainspace for "oneself", including make a name for oneself, sort oneself out, and repeat oneself (I skipped a couple of vulgar items). This could be a redirect to sell short, and the redirect would do a fairly good service, but having a dedicated entry seems in keeping with what we currently do, and seems reasonably useful. On another note, these "oneself" forms remind me of reflexive verb forms in Czech, German, Spanish and other langauges. In Czech, we have the reflexives in the same headword as the base verb (e.g. představit), while in Spanish, the reflexives have dedicated headword (e.g. lavarse). sell something short should be deleted as a transitive form of sell short. Hugely many verbs are transitive or have transitive senses and we overwhelmingly, although not always, do not create dedicated entries for transitivity with the use of "something" in the headword. For example, we don't have try something out, pin something down, or make something work. I see that sell something short was created on 9 March 2015‎ by DCDuring. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:38, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * This seems to be an argument based on an assumed moral imperative to subordinate the needs of native users of English Wiktionary to the purported interests of learners whose native language is one of a select group of FLs (or is that any FL). I suspect that this moral imperative has led to inadequate consideration of the true interests of those learners. I doubt that the true interests are accurately assessed above. Why is it not important to use a single entry with multiple senses and/or usage examples to allow/influence FL users to note the range and relatedness of the usages of the underlying expression?
 * No OneLook reference has an entry for sell oneself short or sell something short.
 * The main entry that make sense for this is sell short. Apparently sell something short, sell oneself short, and sell someone short are needed as redirect to get some to sell short'', which might benefit from some expansion, especially of usage examples. If multiple translations are required for some languages, so be it. If contributors need to be reminded of the possible differences for personal rather than impersonal objects, or reflexive rather than ordinary objects, that would seem to be a matter of establishing todo items for contributors in the languages involved. That is the kind of thing that the About pages for languages are well suited.
 * I am also reasonably sure that we could use similar redirects for hundreds, perhaps thousands of English transitive phrasal verb entries. DCDuring TALK 14:02, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 13:17, 23 July 2015 (UTC)