Talk:young

plural noun
Is it rather a plural noun? The term with an additional unvariable plural seems to be offspring --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:23, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

young and pretty
Some common expressions with and have a fixed order which cannot be changed. The shortest expression often comes first. bread and butter, hands and knees, young and pretty, thunder and lightning, black and white, cup and saucer, knife and fork --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:11, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May 2021
The sense "people who are young", with example usage "The young of today are well-educated", is a use of the adjective 'young', not of the noun. The current entry may also have led to assert, "'Young' can also mean '[a] young person'". --RichardW57 (talk) 10:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It’s a use of an adjective in an absolute form, isn’t it? A large number of adjectives can be used in this way: “the poor”, “the intelligent”, “the young-at-heart”, and they generally (exclusively?) refer to people with that attribute as a class. For young in particular, one cannot say “She is a young”, but “many animals care for their young” is OK. I note that the OED is inconsistent when it comes to labelling such entries. Some are marked as absolute uses of adjectives, while others are treated as nouns. I suppose we should have a policy discussion at some stage on how such terms should be treated here. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * If this were an RFD I would say "delete". I think we generally remove these. I do. Equinox ◑ 02:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * perhaps this discussion should be moved to either RFD or the Beer Parlour. I don't think it will be a problem verifying such uses of young; it's a question of how uses of this sort should be treated in the Wiktionary. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, moving to RFD. --RichardW57 (talk) 19:41, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

RFD discussion: May–June 2021
(Moved from RfV.) --RichardW57 (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2021 (UTC) The sense "people who are young", with example usage "The young of today are well-educated", is a use of the adjective 'young', not of the noun. The current entry may also have led to assert, "'Young' can also mean '[a] young person'". --RichardW57 (talk) 10:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
 * It’s a use of an adjective in an absolute form, isn’t it? A large number of adjectives can be used in this way: “the poor”, “the intelligent”, “the young-at-heart”, and they generally (exclusively?) refer to people with that attribute as a class. For young in particular, one cannot say “She is a young”, but “many animals care for their young” is OK. I note that the OED is inconsistent when it comes to labelling such entries. Some are marked as absolute uses of adjectives, while others are treated as nouns. I suppose we should have a policy discussion at some stage on how such terms should be treated here. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * If this were an RFD I would say "delete". I think we generally remove these. I do. Equinox ◑ 02:32, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * perhaps this discussion should be moved to either RFD or the Beer Parlour. I don't think it will be a problem verifying such uses of young; it's a question of how uses of this sort should be treated in the Wiktionary. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, moving to RFD. It would be good if there were more documentation of, analogous to that in the RFV family. --RichardW57 (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete for the reason I expressed earlier. (Is there a suitable place such as an appendix for explaining how adjectives can be used in an absolute sense? If not, there should be.) — SGconlaw (talk) 20:38, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I suggest that Appendix:English grammar is the appropriate place, but I don't know how you get people to read it. A link from WT:English_entry_guidelines for difficult cases might help.  I suppose the documentation of English is complete enough that we no longer need to explain the difference between prepositions and adverbs, which would also belong with this explanation. --RichardW57 (talk) 21:36, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * well, if it were documented in an appendix, we could refer readers and editors to it if the issue comes up again. — SGconlaw (talk) 01:55, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I came across a similar case today: "man labours to rebuild the mediaeval whilst he ruthlessly scraps the modern". I decided "mediaeval" was an adjective, and added the quote there, even though there is a PoS for the noun. DonnanZ (talk) 22:21, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete 🔥 ಶಬ್ದಶೋಧಕ 🔥 02:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep if we define "absolute adjective" and agree to have a separate subsection for it like nouns, adjectives, etc. do. But Delete based on precedent if we aren't going to do the foregoing. Alas, I'm neither the leader of the wise nor the great unwashed. Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 19:38, 30 May 2021 (UTC)


 * FYI: It's a different POS (and hence a conversion, a new derived term), and if you would translate it into German you would also notice a different spelling, like die reichen Leute = the rich people and die Reichen = the rich. --22:06, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Being an absolute adjective is a property of an instance of an adjective, not a lexical matter. Any prototypical adjective can be used as an absolute adjective, so it is not something that a lexicon should record, but rather a language's grammar. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:44, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I think we may be talking apples and oranges here. englishgrammar.org says, "In grammars these adjectives are called non-gradable or absolute adjectives. Non-gradable adjectives do not have comparative or superlative forms. There are very few non-gradable adjectives, so you can learn them by heart if you really want. Here is a list of common non-gradable adjectives in English. Note that this is not a comprehensive list. 'Absolute, impossible, principal, adequate, inevitable, sufficient, complete, main, unanimous, unavoidable, entire, minor, fatal, unique, final, universal, ideal, whole, preferable, dead etc.'" Anyway, aren't we using a noun form here and "young" is not an absolute adjective? It seems to me to be an "implied noun", e.g. www.chicagomanualofstyle.org: "... not negate the fact that the adjectival phrases are in the position of being before the implied noun and therefore should be hyphenated." Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 03:07, 3 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Should be deleted per the general RFD at Talk:sick, I suppose. - -sche (discuss) 03:51, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. DAVilla 15:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Imetsia (talk) 19:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * RFD-deleted. Imetsia (talk) 19:29, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Etymology section: change *h1 to *H based on the 2nd edition of Ringe's From PIE to PGmc
In Ringe's 2nd edition (2017), he seems to have refined the laryngeal contained within the word from *h1 to *H(Ringe 2017: 102); perhaps it would be best to alter the laryngeal based on his new interpretation of the laryngeal contained therein. Ringe, Don Jr. (2017). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Vindafarna (talk) 19:00, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * That's not a refinement, that's a confession of uncertainty. --RichardW57 (talk) 04:53, 9 July 2022 (UTC)