Talk:twelve-year-old

twelve-year-old
Sum-of-parts. 2602:306:3653:8920:F14D:7716:1583:E124 01:28, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. "All words in all languages". Also, it is a useful translation target. SemperBlotto (talk) 07:25, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete. Is there anything particularly significant about a twelve-year-old, compared to an eleven-year-old, a forty-year-old or a sixty-eight-year-old? (Note that one-year-old also exists, so the discussion should extend to that term too.) — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 07:36, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Not to mention all the "-and-a-half-year-old" combinations. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:57, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Really, we should have all the terms from up to  and beyond that can be attested. But it would be a bore - may be it could be automated. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:04, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * If you look at a search for "-year-olds", there are also things like "5-7 year olds". It's true that there's a space rather than a hyphen in there, but it feels like the same construction.Chuck Entz (talk) 14:28, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep per Semper. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 08:53, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * In response to SemperBlotto's comment that the term is a "useful translation target", I note that there is a word in Italian, dodicenne, meaning a twelve-year-old. However, I'm not sure that the mere existence of a word in one language means there should be an entry in all other languages. To give a silly example, if there is an Inuit word meaning "half-melted green snow", that would not warrant the creation of half-melted green snow. Also, note that we already have -year-old as a suffix. — Cheers, Jack Lee  –talk– 10:10, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * But "all words in all languages" wouldn't apply to "half-melted green snow" as it is a three-word term, not a word. Also, just because we define a suffix, doesn't mean we disallow words that use that suffix - we allow although we have . SemperBlotto (talk) 11:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment Depending on referent some have special meaning, e.g. a three-year-old when talking of a racehorse is very different to a three-year-old when talking of a human. Anyhow just mentioning it as grist for the present mill.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 11:08, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's a lexical difference though: in each case it refers to being three years old. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:39, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * And, of course, we also need the alternative forms such as which is very common, especially for the larger numeric values. SemperBlotto (talk) 11:12, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think in the strictest interpretation of CFI, this fails as single words still need to be idiomatic. However I do feel that this is a single word and were there such a rule to always keep attested single words, I think this would pass it. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. I realise it could lead to a multiplicity of entries; I recently made an entry for ' and thought I would draw the line there. Maybe the entry for ' could be looked at too; it doesn't allow coverage of year-old as a standalone adjective (hard redirect). Donnanz (talk) 13:52, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Redirect this and similar entries, in this case to -year-old [or year-old], where a full explanation can appear under Usage notes. If a translation table there can't be made to work, create an appendix with a table summarizing how FLs express the same thing (possibly with subpages for languages with truly complicated cases). DCDuring TALK 14:22, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a reasonable solution. The alternative of creating individual entries seems unwieldy to me since there is no theoretical limit to the number of hyphenated words of this type that can be created. SemperBlotto said we should include all terms that can be attested, so I just randomly Googled "25-thousand-year-old" and came up with these: ("25 Thousand Year Old Faces"),  ("a 25 thousand year old sewing needle, used by Neanderthal people, was also found"),  ("a balloon sculpture dedicated to a 25-thousand year old fertility totem"). The sites didn't properly hyphenate the term, but I hope you see the point. — Cheers,  Jack Lee  –talk– 14:36, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Those are different: they're phrases that are hyphenated to serve as modifiers. What we're discussing here are nouns, which are far more tightly-bound, syntactically. The best query to use is is the plural: this construction applies to -day-olds, -week-olds and -month-olds, as well as -year-olds (in some cases, you might want to filter for -Oldsmobile). Chuck Entz (talk) 15:01, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Point taken about the adjectival uses, though note that both one-year-old and twelve-year-old list them. Also, note the following nouns that a Google search threw up: ("all the Two thousand year olds are dead"),  ("Meet the million-year-olds"),  ("Do you know any 155 thousand-year-olds?"). — Cheers,  Jack Lee  –talk– 15:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep 1-20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100. They're words, they don't have spaces in them, and other languages write them as single words without spaces or dashes. Pur ple back pack 89   14:43, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. SOP twelve + -year-old. I also think that -year-old should be moved to year-old, since it is not really a suffix (and this would also fix the problem Donnanz pointed out for covering the sense of year-old meaning one-year-old). --WikiTiki89 15:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I checked Google for "thirty-one-year-olds" and found a few examples, then checked for "one-hundred-and-thirty-one-year-olds" and got zip, and then "two-hundred-and-thirty-one-year-olds" and got zip, and then all the way up to "nine-hundred-and-thirty-one-year-olds" and got zip. I also got zip for "thirty-one-and-a-half-year-olds". So I suppose we could use frequency here as CFI stipulates, and just include those. However, that said, they all seem very SOP-ish to me. What the def? "A person or thing which is 31 years old".--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 16:15, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * But that is not linguistic frequency but simply a reflection of the natural frequency of people's ages. How many two-hundred-and-thirty-one-year-olds do you know? --WikiTiki89 16:57, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I think that linguistic frequency will, of course, be connected to natural frequency, but there are bound to be linguistic clusters, mostly around the fives and tens, that deviate from the natural distribution of people by age. bd2412 T 18:41, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is linguistic frequency (because of natural frequency) - I was following on from prev. comment about "25-thousand-year-olds" (which clearly don't exist but the word does, apparently). Anyhow, on a different tack, I noticed that fifty-year-olds actually refers to people anywhere in the fifties (50-59) and so I guess those ones at least are not SOP.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 05:16, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Careful, look at the difference in pluralization: "25-thousand-year-olds" has no results either. It is also a "round number", so comparing it with "two-hundred-and-thirty-one-year-olds" is wrong anyway. Now round numbers are a special case even on their own. If you say you have "fifty chickens", that can be an approximation just as much as "fifty-year-olds". --WikiTiki89 15:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * If redirecting does not get sufficient support, then delete. DCDuring TALK 17:36, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Redirect to year-old. Shoof (talk) 20:46, 17 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect. Equinox ◑ 11:48, 18 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Sod it then, keep, even if CFI doesn't explicitly protect single words from the idiomaticity criterion, it has always been the de facto policy that single words are kept even if they aren't idiomatic. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * So you regard hyphenated words as compound words rather than SoP? Interesting, this would certainly apply to all the non- variants when spelt the British way. I notice also that the entry for doesn't mention the use of x-year-olds as a plural form. Donnanz (talk) 10:54, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, they can be words and sum of parts of course. And not all hyphenated terms, no. Some are two or more words linked with a hyphen instead of a space. But this one, to me, is a single unit not a couple of units linked by hyphens. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:52, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep since the translations of the adjective are not really fully word-for-word. The Czech one is not *dvanáct-let-starý; it is dvanáctiletý, as if *twelve-yeary. Similarly for German . --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:58, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect per DCDuring. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 18:51, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

No consensus after extended discussion. bd2412 T 22:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

RFD discussion: September–October 2016
This made it through RFD with no consensus. I'd like to nominate it again for redirection to -year-old, following the precedent at (to be archived at Talk:71-year-old). Just because it has single-word translations doesn't mean that a predictable English compound separated by hyphens needs to be kept. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect per nom. - -sche (discuss) 22:32, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep for the sake of the translations, and also have more entries for lower age groups. DonnanZ (talk) 07:44, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete. --WikiTiki89 11:38, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete. DCDuring TALK 12:50, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete; preferably just delete. Equinox ◑ 18:22, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep per DonnanZ + more entries. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:57, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep single word. Ƿidsiþ 13:49, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Since we have no criteria on this, it's editor judgment whether this is a single word or not. I say it isn't therefore delete. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Many editors seem to like compound words as they avoid the SoP spectre, but often they look stupid. That would certainly apply here, twelveyearold is a non-runner. Widsith definitely has a point. DonnanZ (talk) 18:20, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you have to look at citations and usage. There may be ways this is used that are worth recording but no one really checks, they just assume they know what it means so why bother. For instance, you will get lots of results for "drinking a good twelve-year-old" because it's a common ageing for Scotch whisky, but you won't get any for thirteen-year-old because whiskies are not aged to 13 years. Though there may be other uses for 13-year-old, I don't know. I just see no reason to exclude this. Where does it fail the CFI exactly? Ƿidsiþ 06:52, 21 September 2016 (UTC)


 * A whisky aged for 13 years would still be a thirteen-year-old, if people talked about it. It's still SoP. The brewing practices of whisky-makers don't change what it means. Equinox ◑ 15:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The point is only that there are users interested in the pragmatics of language use, rather than in general theories. Either way, I don't see any justification for deleting this under CFI. The fact that you think it's obvious what it means, I feel, is neither here nor there. Ƿidsiþ 06:44, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 *  Redirect or delete. Keith the Koala (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete, or redirect if you must. PseudoSkull (talk) 06:25, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment: There appears to be consensus to redirect both this and 71-year-old (in a separate discussion). Should we go ahead and redirect everything in between? Otherwise it will seem like we have a few random ages redirecting to -year-old. bd2412 T 15:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd say yes to that. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:15, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I oppose systematically creating new redirects. Only if the page already exists, I'm ok with redirecting as an alternative to deleting. --WikiTiki89 21:32, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That would result in a circumstance where redirects will come to exist wherever people happen to create errant SOP combinations that end up being deleted. bd2412 T 01:26, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I am OK with creating such redirects, as a way of salting the entries. Incidentally, we seem to lack the sense of salt I just used (see w:WP:SALT); is it limited to wiki jargon? Salting the earth quotes someone as having "salted the houses of José Mascarenhas", which is a bit more literal, but still not very well covered by our current entry. - -sche (discuss) 03:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If I am to go by that analogy, there is no reason to salt earth upon which there was never a city. --WikiTiki89 15:03, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I grew bored with this exchange, so I went ahead and created them all up to 100/one-hundred. Cheers! bd2412 T 16:37, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm very unhappy with this action. You should have waited for more input. All mass edits need a clear consensus. --WikiTiki89 17:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I see no need for consensus to create 198 legitimate redirects any more than 198 other kinds of legitimate entries. There is clear consensus to redirect this term, so it can't be against consensus for such redirects to exist. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 17:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Mass edits need a clear consensus and you can't project consensus about one term to a set of similar terms. --WikiTiki89 19:04, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's a matter of perspective. On Wikipedia, I once made 17,000 template fixes in one day. Now those were mass edits. This was a trifle. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 19:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not even about the number but about the systematicity. --WikiTiki89 19:45, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Redirected. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 16:50, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Late comment: This did have interesting translations that did not contain the word "old"; good job deleting this: Made the dictionary better? You bet. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:19, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Czech: dvanáctiletý
 * Esperanto: dekdujara
 * German: zwölfjährig
 * Italian: dodicenne
 * Polish:
 * Russian:
 * Slovak: dvanásťročný
 * Swedish:


 * I agree with DP here. Some editors like to remove entries because they don't meet their ideals, conveniently ignoring any translations. A perennial problem. DonnanZ (talk) 09:30, 8 October 2016 (UTC)