Talk:back in

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back in

Non-idiomatic usage of "back" plus "in". But see also back into, which has some idiomatic senses. Facts707 08:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:27, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Keep - this can be transitive or intransitive: we can back in back a vehicle in. --Rising Sun talk? contributions 22:11, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Why does that matter? (Unfortunately since you're blocked you can't reply, if you want to reply to me by email, I'll post it here bona fida). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:13, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Phrasal verb, keep. DAVilla 16:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The unsupported assertion begs the question. By what criteria would we be able to distinguish between a "phrasal verb" and a verb + adverb? I have been looking forward to such criteria for about three years now. CGEL dismisses "phrasal verb" as a syntactic concept, so we need semantic criteria. It seems to me that it just a matter of presentational convenience, of reducing the size of back#Verb by off-loading a portion of what could be presented there to various "phrasal verb" entries. The difficulty that arises from this presentation is that it becomes more awkward to compare "phrasal verb" senses with verb + adverb senses. DCDuring TALK 17:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete. No OneLook dictionary has a definition, except for an oil-business glossary (for back-in#Noun). McGraw Hill's Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs (2004) does not have back in, though it does have back away, back off, back down, back into, back onto, back out, back over, and back up. Whether all of these are really idiomatic, I don't know. DCDuring TALK 17:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Keep as phrasal verb, as disclosed in these sentences: "He backed in steadily and stopped" and "Back the car in slowly". It is an antonym of "back out"--To reverse a vehicle from a confined space. The absence in OneLook is suspect, though. To me, phrasal verb is mainly a syntactic concept; particle phrasal verbs are English analogues of German separable verbs. --Dan Polansky 10:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The example sentences fail to disclose any idiomaticity to me. Could you help me see how there is meaning that is not a trivial derivation of back#Verb + in#Adverb. BTW, CGEL does not find "phrasal verb" a useful syntactic concept. DCDuring TALK 11:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I see anything beyond semantic sum of parts, but what I see is a particle phrasal verb, sum-of-parts or not. English often replaces prepositional and adverbial prefixing of verbs with phrasal verbs (not true for Latin-based invaders that occupy a large section English). The space between "back" and "in" does not disturb my perception of one-wordness in phrasal verbs, so I do not necessarily look at whether the term is a semantic sum of parts. This perception is probably a consequence of analogies with Czech and German, in which the combination of a prefix and a stem in a verb is often rather sum-of-partish but for the missing space between the prefix and the stem; compare log in and einloggen. --Dan Polansky 13:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

So what? What does this have to do with English? If the Czech and German Wiktionaries would like to have such entries, that would be their prerogative. But I don't see any reason to let a possible cognitive convenience to those native speakers of any subset of languages who apparently unwilling to deal with English on it own terms determine inclusion in English. And one individual's perception of one-wordedness, though of Tea Room interest has little probative value. DCDuring TALK 14:49, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete per Facts, DCDuring.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Kept, no consensus. Would probably be worth a second nomination if anyone can be bothered. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)