Talk:take French leave

RFV passed
From : --Dan Polansky 15:38, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

--Connel MacKenzie T C 17:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd keep it. Has interesting French translation. --Newnoise (Shout louder) 17:55, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * See also the French translation for french letter Andrew massyn 12:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think we are supposed to be looking for citations on this page, not voting. Google books has plenty . Kappa 23:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Added cites; minor mods --Enginear 12:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

take French leave
tagged but not listed -- Liliana • 16:36, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What's the reason for this request? Lmaltier 07:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete as Sum of Parts. It's take + French leave and there are other forms, such as "go on French leave" etc.--Dmol 09:02, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete as Sum of Parts. -- A LGRIF  talk 09:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - are there two separate definitions for French leave. The contested entry has two, but French leave only has one.  Surely they should be merged.--Dmol 10:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. None of the 28 senses described in take can apply here, and it's somewhat normal. It's difficult to describe all senses for such a verb, even those used only in set phrases. I think that this sense of take is used only in some set phrases. Lmaltier 11:35, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * How about nº15 To participate in, undergo, or experience. example; To take a holiday / vacation / leave of absence / etc. "Take" is considered to belong to the group of light verbs, hence the huge range of possible collocates with slightly divergent meanings. See also Appendix:Collocations of do, have, make, and take. -- A LGRIF  talk 14:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You really feel that you experience a French leave? or that you participate in a French leave? But what you write is another way to explain what I mean. Such collocations are worth a page, they belong to the vocabulary of English. It's the same for French verbs such as faire or prendre, etc.: they participate to a large number of set phrases, and you must learn these set phrases to be able to use them. Lmaltier 21:37, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We don't need to have an entry for take French leave for that purpose. Someone's only gonna look the entry up if they see it in a text or I suppose, by clicking or a totally unrelated link (like this section header). I think just adding citations where 'take' is the related verb. Or even just do nothing, as the verb 'take' will be in the original text that prompts the user to look the term up in the first place. I believe this is what DCDuring calls 'decoding as opposed to encoding', that is, you use a dictionary to look up things you don't understand. What you're really talking about is a reverse dictionary (probably SoP) where you search for a meaning to find a word. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. You can be "(away) on French leave". It doesn't have to use the word "take". Equinox ◑ 21:42, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, oh and one more thing for Lmaltier, dictionaries define words in isolation, but texts don't use words in isolation. People like me who are on here a lot tend to forget that. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:45, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

People writing English use dictionaries too (especially foreigners, but English writers too). And you forget that there are other search tools that the search box, especially categories: a dictionary is also used to find words you don't know, or don't remember, not only words you read. It doesn't have to use the word "take".: OK, but how do you know that it may take the word take? And what the word take means in such a case? Lmaltier 21:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is why the above mentioned appendix was started in the first place. I think what you should do in this case (I say "you" as it seems to bother you more than most) is put a good usage example using "take" in the entry at French leave. Just a suggestion. -- A LGRIF  talk 12:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * outside of CFI as a translation target for Czech "zmizet po anglicku" (to disappear in an English manner), Polish "wyjść po angielsku" (similar to Czech), and French "filer à l’anglaise" (from what I can guess, to leave in an English manner); futher similar translation targets that do not work word-for-word include Italian "filarsela all’inglese", Russian "уйти по-английски", and Spanish "irse a la francesa"; a translation that does work word-for-word and thus cannot be used to justify inclusion is German "französischen Abschied nehmen". If Wiktionary were a monolingual dictionary, deleting this as a sum of parts ("take" + "French leave") would be in order. --Dan Polansky 12:33, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * take French leave
 * Problem solved. DAVilla 06:36, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, replacing with a redirect to French leave, following all the other lemmings who have French leave as an entry (not even a run-in), but not take French leave. DCDuring TALK 14:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The lemmings from OneLook are monolingual dictionaries who could not care less about translation into other languages. --Dan Polansky 14:32, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't understand the translation target argument. You might as well create "go on French leave" and link to that too, while you're about it! Other languages should put a literal translation and then link to French leave. That's what I'm going to do with the Spanish entry, anyway. -- A LGRIF  talk 14:57, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * To which English entry do you put French "filer à l’anglaise" as a translation? If you delete "take French leave", you won't be able to put "filer à l’anglaise" into any English entry; ditto for other languages that I have listed. Your (416  hits) and  (11 hits) is a fringe candidate for a translation target for French "filer à l’anglaise", unlike  (716,000 hits) and  (604 hits). And what French translation do you put to "French leave"? For a translation dictionary, "take French leave" is much more suitable as a headword than "French leave". I have no idea how to translate "French leave" into Czech. Imagine you would only have the phrase "leave in a French manner" in English, and someone would ask you to translate "französischen Abschied" into English. On another note, why is there no article like "take a French leave"; why is it "take French leave"? There is "take a nap" and not "take nap". --Dan Polansky 15:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * We have a whole network of wiktionaries, linked by interwiki, to address such matters. Why does this wiki have to accommodate with headwords instances in which one or a small number of languages have one-word translations. One cost of having translation tables is that we invite SoP translations from languages that don't need the accommodation. We can thus not only have a combinatorial explosion of multi-word terms within English, but we can have a further combinatorial explosion among languages.
 * We could probably use additional grammar appendices covering matters such as the rules of construction for phrases and the application of common-sense-in-context to decoding terms. We provide copious usage examples. We could even have more of both if we took the trouble to have high-quality, correct entries instead of merely numerous ones, especially those that get little attention from senior contributors and native speakers. To me it seems that one of the best uses of the RfD process is to improve the component-term entries with additional senses, rewording of existing senses, and usage examples that contain common collocations. DCDuring TALK 15:43, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The English Wiktionary should stand on its own as a comprehensive lexicographical resource, rather than relying on other Wiktionaries. --Dan Polansky 16:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Redirect to [[French leave]]. The translation-target issue should be addressed by listing appropriate verbs at [[French leave]] in a way that avoids misleading the reader. For example: Czech: see zmizet po anglicku  —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 15:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What benefit has this roundabout solution over the current aproach which has "take French leave" as a translations target? Instead of having a "see ... (verb)" workaournd for a handful of languages, why not offer a straightforward solution? Why is this RFD fixing something which is not broken in the first place? I don't get it. --Dan Polansky 15:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It has the benefit of listing the Czech idiom at the closest English idiom. In your approach, how would a reader looking for a translation of the English idiom,, even know that some languages' translations are only listed at [[take French leave]]? —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 15:45, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Illustrative of the quality problem is that we have the colorful terms take French leave and take leave of one's senses, but lack "take leave (of)" (though we have take one's leave). Several OneLook references have what we lack. We shouldn't think we are ahead of the lemmings when we are still behind them in many regards. DCDuring TALK 15:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * @Ruakh (rather than DCDuring above): A usage note in "French leave" should do the trick of pointing the readers of "French leave" to translations at "take French leave". The "see ... (verb)" workaround in "French leave" seems better than nothing, but the most elegant solution IMHO is to have a translations-target entry that nicely maps between many languages.
 * @DCDuring: (sarcasm) Sure, because we are much less complete than commercially funded dictionaries, we are going to get improved by having useful entries deleted, and replaced with clumsy workarounds. (end of sarcasm) --Dan Polansky 16:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * One more thing: "take French leave" seems to be the massively predominant use of "French leave". The Google searches that I have consulted give results that are hard to interpret, though, as there are more hits on Google web search for "take French leave" than "French leave". There they are:, , , . --Dan Polansky 16:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That is certainly why we should have usage examples and/or quotations showing the collocation, as is common practice among the lemmings we strive to follow. DCDuring TALK 16:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

My feeling is that, in this phrase, take is meaningless, although the phrase means something (and the same applies to take departure). This is a major reason for keeping. Lmaltier 21:57, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect. DAVilla 06:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

redirected -- Liliana • 00:40, 11 March 2012 (UTC)