Talk:sword-bearing

sword-bearing
What's the idiomatic significance of that phrase in English? Just because Latin has ensifer doesn't mean that the English translation is a similar word needing an article. I mean, it's like as if you wrote an article steam-producing sauna stove just because Finnish has one word kiuas for that. :D -- Frous 01:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not idiomatic, but (in my view) as soon as it's attestable as a single word, it becomes a sort of word-particle that belongs in a dictionary. If you've got a hyphen (sword-bearing) you can easily look up the two words and assemble them, but in its absence you might (in theory) not know which words are being put together; there might even be an ambiguity (imagine dog-eared vs. do-geared). This does mean we end up with a lot of annoying things like nonmusician and antifeminist, that might have been hyphenated in the past (hyphens are unfashionable these days), but for me the "single-wordedness" gives them instant importance. Equinox ◑ 01:08, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * But the article says "bearing or carrying a sword" (i.e. the word means exactly what the parts indicate separately), so that's pretty much unidiomatic, so where's the significance, why do we need this? To me, that's similar to the articles tell a lie and tell lies. -- Frous 01:14, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * What I'm saying is that sword-bearing could (should?) be deleted, but swordbearing could (should) not. If you don't have a hyphen, you can't tell what the "parts" indicate because you might not know where the parts begin and end (see my example above). I think that German, Finnish, etc. are happy to run many words together to create new longer words, but traditionally English uses a space or a hyphen. Until we drop that convention, I feel that all attestable single words in English deserve an entry. (Once again: this is just my opinion and not Wiktionary policy.) Equinox ◑ 01:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep both. The one is a word, and the other is an alternative spelling of that word. Google Books yields dozens of hits for the unhyphenated combination - compared to zero for the plausible "shieldbearing", one unreadable hit for "cheesebearing", and two readable hits for "knifebearking". bd2412 T 01:49, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a bit of a paradox here. If there were no single-word compound "swordbearing", "sword-bearing" would be ripe for deletion as sum of parts, correct?  Yet it appears from a cursory check that "sword-bearing" is actually more common than "swordbearing".  The Google results are contaminated for the usual reasons, but are nonetheless highly suggestive at 723:91 on b.g.c.; likewise COCA has 2 hits for the hyphenated form against 0 for the single word.  So following normal procedures, it seems that the lemma entry should be at sword-bearing.  (Even if that's not the case here, there are a great number of such  hyphenated compounds for which it is true.) But then we have a sum-of-parts entry that is tolerated only because one of its alternative forms is written as a single word.  This seems problematic, and becomes more problematic the rarer the single-word form is. -- Visviva 13:14, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * When have we ever looked at the frequency of alternative forms of a word in order to determine if it belongs in the dictionary? The CFI has no out for words that get more Google hits when a hyphen is stuck in them, nor should it, since people who see the entire word will tend to look it up as an entire word. bd2412 T 16:45, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, exactly -- and to my mind, this is why we should delete sum-of-parts phrases even when they are alternative forms of valid words. I mean, if "sword-bearing" and "swordbearing" are merely alternative forms of each other, with no difference in meaning (which seems to be the case), and if "sword-bearing" (as an adjective) is more common/standard than "swordbearing" (which seems to be the case), and further if "sword-bearing" is eligible for inclusion (as many participants, including you, seem to agree), it is indefensible to have the lemma entry anywhere other than sword-bearing.  But in that case, either "sword-bearing" is somehow not the sum of its parts (which no one seems to believe) or it is included solely because it has an alternative form that is not sum of parts.  (sorry for all the italics, semantics is just so exciting!!) --  Visviva 17:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. Because swordbearing is an attested word, we should have alternative forms of that word. It is the attested word that pulls its alternatives into the dictionary. I would, frankly, support having a redirect in this situation, but we don't do redirects from alternative forms. bd2412 T 05:08, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So we put the main entry at the most common form unless that form happens to be sum of parts, in which case the main entry goes to whichever non-sum-of-parts form is most common? If that's supported by the community, we should really codify it somewhere; it makes a certain amount of sense, but it's not exactly intuitive.  -- Visviva 06:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep both. Pardon me but thousands of compound words we take for granted are in dictionaries, and as far as we are concerned as long as we could prove 3 reputable citations they belong (see WT:CFI) - even if they mean exactly what you think they would mean..."jumprope" (jump + rope) and pancake (pan + cake) come to mind. My humble opinion is that keeping hyphen version are useful when they're known to exists, so readers look up words they want and get the meaning if needed through a redirect to the lemma purist form. I know compounded "ing words" gets abused in sports today but this is a historical and mythology term not a sports term. Goldenrowley 04:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ha! I'm surprised you haven't RFD'd ice cream yet. A pancake is a cake shaped like a pan, and jump ropes are what they used in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to get the actors really high in the air. DAVilla 09:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep swordbearing because it is a single unitary word, with no clitics or other funny business involved. Weak delete on sword-bearing.  I would prefer if we simply listed these sum-of-parts alternative forms unwikified in the single-word entry.  They will then show up in search without appearing to suggest that every hyphenated phrase is welcome. -- Visviva 04:58, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep both, for the reasons well stated by user Equinox above.--Dmol 07:04, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep swordbearing, delete sword-bearing per Vivviva. It ought to be or become policy. DCDuring TALK 10:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep swordbearing with def  —Ruakh TALK 18:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So in your view, having an alternative form that is not sum of parts is grounds for keeping? Or is there another reason? I'm just trying to get the rationales straight here; there are many thousands of similar cases, and it would be good if we can agree on the general principles that should apply (or failing that, at least understand the various potential principles and their effects). -- Visviva 06:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, misread that somehow. I have to say, that seems a teensy bit unhelpful.  Perhaps we could have a specialized template for these cases?  -- Visviva 06:47, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep and define per Ruakh’s proposal or have two “main” entries (per the resolution to the – controversy), thus making that part of this discussion moot. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not understanding the rationale for keeping "sword-bearing" in any form. Can you elaborate? -- Visviva 14:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Why is it unhelpful? If we're saying that this term is absolutely straightforward and SOP, provided only that the reader can tell where one P ends and the next begins, then we don't need to provide any more help than that. (Even clearer would be =[[sword]] + [[bearing]], but people have objected in the past to this sort of "wordless" explanation.) —Ruakh TALK 12:27, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, at least for me, when I see "alternative form of X", I assume that "X" is a single term and that when I click on the link I will be taken to the main entry, not to the entry for one or another component word. In fact, for me personally, this assumption was so strong that even looking at the bare wikitext with the separate links in plain view, I still didn't parse it properly (see stricken-through comment above).  So at the very least this violates the principle of least astonishment IMO.  More generally, if something is worth having an entry for, we don't really save any effort by not having a simple definition like "Bearing a sword", which at least has the potential to be helpful to someone somewhere at some time.  -- Visviva 14:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep swordbearing per RFD for Dutchman. Weak keep sword-bearing as alternative spelling, could always be listed as sword-bearing. DAVilla 02:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep swordbearing, seems open and shut: it's a word. Delete sword-bearing as instantly understandable from its parts, per the CFI. Link as alternative spelling from the entry [[swordbearing]] to .—msh210  ℠  17:02, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

So far swordbearing kept. DAVilla 02:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Kept sword-bearing too as a harmless alternative spelling, with marginal consensus to keep. --Jackofclubs 12:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)