Talk:your mother is a whore

Usage note?
I am thinking perhaps we should add a usage note explaining that this is offensive. bd2412 T 03:57, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

RFD discussion: July–October 2021
This is not an idiom, strictly speaking, and not really a collocation either — just a statement that is used to offend. Certainly it does not qualify under the phrasebook project. I see no reason someone would look for it in a dictionary. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:02, 14 July 2021 (UTC)


 * It has unusual cross-cultural currency, and on its face is not really used to literally state that the other person's mother is, in fact, a whore. Compare son of a whore/son of a bitch. On the other hand, it is a highly offensive phrase, so perhaps we should not be teaching people how to translate it into other languages. bd2412 T 04:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You created this entry. Please tell me where in CFI "unusual cross-cultural currency" or non-literal expression is the basis for considering a phrase to be lexical. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:28, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I created this entry because we already had longstanding independently created entries (since 2006) for putang ina mo and مادر جنده, foreign language expressions both literally meaning "your mother is a whore". I think that makes a clear case for a WT:PHRASE-worthy phrasebook entry, which is specifically not required to be idiomatic, only useful for translation. bd2412 T 04:35, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Is such a phrase “useful to non-native speakers” (WP:CFI)? Debatable. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:47, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If you find the phrase directed at you in another language, quite possibly. There are other languages that we don't have at the moment for which this is easily attested as one of the more common generalized insult constructions - ta mère est une pute and tua madre è una puttana, for example. bd2412 T 04:57, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * is completely SOP. PUC – 10:11, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * So too for the Italian expression. Imetsia (talk) 18:02, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * and we also have an entry for fils de pute, we should either keep all such phrases or get rid of them allOverlordnat1 (talk) 09:20, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * is comparable to, and both should indeed be kept. your mother is a whore is comparable to mentioned above, and both should be deleted. PUC – 10:13, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, SOP. PUC – 10:11, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, SOP. Given that we have an entire Wikipedia article for "maternal insult" linked on the entry, there are probably countless similar phrases. That is an extra indicator of SOPness. Imetsia (talk) 18:02, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Since son of a bitch and fils de pute are maternal insults too, just slightly indirect ones, should we get rid of them too? Overlordnat1 (talk) 23:24, 14 July 2021 (UTC)


 * son of a bitch doesn't mean this; look at the two senses in the entry. Equinox ◑ 00:02, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Neither does the common usage of your mother is a whore. In theory someone could say "your mother is a whore" (or "you're a son of a whore") and literally mean it in the complimentary sense of you being an excellent person despite coming from such a difficult background. In practice, "your mother is a whore", in any language, is an assertion of the poor quality of the person to whom it is directed. As a side note, it is almost certainly the case that the mother of the person to whom such a statement is directed is not a whore, or at least is not known by the speaker to be one. bd2412 T 00:39, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. The literal, theoretical meanings of all these phrases are maternal insults and the fact that their dictionary definitions differ from that just reflects the fact that they’re not SOP and are worthy of entries. The fact that the claimed definition of your mother is a whore refers to one’s mother’s imputed character or behaviour, rather than her actual character or behaviour, means that it has to be interpreted non-literally too. If this definition is to be rejected then it should be on the basis of the claimed definition not existing rather than on the basis of it being a maternal insult or non-SOP (though I have my doubts that a sufficiently non-literal meaning does exist)Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:02, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * There's a whole genre of "yo momma" jokes. These aren't expressions, they're whole sentences and even paragraphs. And they all share the same semantic properties that you say make this idiomatic. If you want a translation hub, there's always whoreson. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:22, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Strictly speaking, the translated phrase would need to be something more like you are a whoreson to correctly translate to the foreign-language terms for which we already have entries. However, that would still be less exact, and would be a much less common construction. bd2412 T 03:28, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:12, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete — Svā rt ava  • 05:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete The better t-hub is son of a bitch. DAVilla 12:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Fytcha (talk) 00:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Deleted. Consensus is clear. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 01:52, 13 October 2021 (UTC)