Talk:tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen

RFD discussion: May–August 2022
Finnish. I don't think this is idiomatic. Other verbs may be used as well, e.g., , such as in: Älä anna kärpäsen tulla/muuttua/kasvaa härkäseksi. I have added an entry for, which I hope will be sufficient. --Hekaheka (talk) 11:52, 26 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Isn't tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen the original form of this idiom, which would mean any uses of outside of it with other verbs would be secondary (WT:JIFFY)? Both NSSK and KTSK only list tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen under their entries for . &mdash; S URJECTION  / T / C / L / 19:53, 26 May 2022 (UTC)


 * True but they still list härkänen and give this phrase as an example under it. Both dictionaries, especially KTSK, quite often "define" a word by giving a usage example and nothing else. I believe one of the prime functions of a dictionary is to be useful for a person who sees a word they don't know. If such person sees e.g. a sentence Tässä on nyt tainnut tulla kärpäsestä härkänen they are more likely to try to find an entry for härkänen than one for tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen. Also, härkänen is often inflected. Placing an inflection table under tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen would be a non-standard way of presenting it. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
 * My point is that if tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen is the original phrase, it should be kept just for that reason and should mention in its etymology that it was originally only used as part of that phrase and that other uses are more recent. &mdash; S URJECTION  / T / C / L / 05:25, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * This is the oldest usage of härkänen that I could find in BGC. It dates back to 1886 and is from the book "Suomalaisia kansansatuja". It seems that the word härkänen is used there to refer to an ox. I would bet this meaning is the original one, but only the figurative usage remains. First reference to "kärpäsestä härkänen" is from 1916. --Hekaheka (talk) 10:34, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Suomen murteiden sanakirja seems to list an old figurative use of härkänen outside the expression: " Sana pääsee suusta kun kärpänen, sitten tullee isoks kun härkänen." That being the case, perhaps this phrase isn't original after all, so leaning on delete. &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 15:20, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Three points:
 * Does that old citation pre-date the first use of the expression, or is it simply derived from it? Otherwise, WT:JIFFY still applies. I'm tempted to err on the side of caution if we don't know, with WT:LEMMING being a bit of a tie-breaker.
 * If it does pre-date, is it attestable as being used in that way outside of of the modern idiom to our usual standard of 3 cites? If not, then I think WT:JIFFY still applies because the term still wouldn't meet WT:CFI until the coining of the term.
 * I'm not sure that minor variations of the verb matter. I've heard "create a mountain out of a molehill" and "build a mountain out of a molehill", for example.
 * Theknightwho (talk) 16:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The citation in the Suomen murteiden sanakirja (a dictionary of Finnish dialects) has no date and thus it is impossible to know how old it is. LEMMING doesn't apply, since Finnish monolingual dictionaries do not have an entry for this phrase (because they have few multiword entries to begin with; all figurative phrases are listed as usage examples). The use of tulla or other verbs could be considered a separate saying that uses the same word, but I'm sure there are more variants too that use and  together in some way. &mdash; S URJECTION  / T / C / L / 16:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * RFD-deleted &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 08:00, 30 August 2022 (UTC)