Talk:beat the shit out of

From COCA

Common forms of beat|knock the X out of

• beat the shit out of 94
• beat the hell out of 86
• beat the crap out of 67
• knock the wind out of 12
• beat the heck out of 9
• beat the tar out of 9
• beat the snot out of 6
• knock the ball out of 5
• beat the stuffing out of 5
• beat the daylights out of 5
• knock the stuffing out of 5
• knock the snot out of 4
• knock the shit out of 4
• knock the hell out of 4
• beat the piss out of 4
• beat the devil out of 4
• knock the bottom out of 4
• beat the truth out of 4
• knock the gun out of 3
• knock the breath out of 3
• knock the crap out of 3
• beat the bejeezus out of 3

Common verbs with "the shit out of"

• beat
• scare
• kick
• pound
• knock
• whip
• shock
• slap
• bomb
• freak
• annoy
• blew
• bore
• fuck
• slap
• smack
• strangle
• sue
• tear
• track

1. This seems like a lot of lexical variety
2. X the Y out of gives even more

Hardly any dictionary have all of these but a precious few learner's dictionaries (Collins COBUILD and Oxford Learner's) have beat/knock the shit out of. DCDuring TALK 19:06, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

RFD discussion: February–May 2016

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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beat the shit out of

Not necessary when we can simply use the shit out of (compare the hell out of). --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 05:35, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I have a funny feeling this has already passed an RFD though it's actually X the Y out of. Such titles are banned by case law (X like Y and so on, click on it) so it goes in Appendix:English snowclones. Since something and someone are valid in page titles, I wonder if the something out of is valid. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:48, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Keep "The something out of" is a poor substitute for entries like these. I doubt people who are looking for that definition would think to search for "the something out of". Also, is "the shit out of" used after any words other than "beat" and "scare"? Purplebackpack89 14:47, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Furthermore, @Renard Migrant, X the Y out of and X like Y were deleted all the way back in 2007. Any chance you could cite something in the past 12-18 months instead? That'd be better case law. Purplebackpack89 14:49, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Purplebackpack89 [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. Need more examples? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 14:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I have to say that I find the hell out of to be a really unsatisfactory lemma... Equinox ◑ 15:11, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

@Equinox Why? Is there some alternate way you would convey that idea? Purplebackpack89 15:58, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Equinox ◑ 00:05, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it is unsatisfactory. It is not a complete unit of meaning, and probably is not something that one would think to look it up. 81.152.224.85 02:51, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• Note: we also have beat the stuffing out of and beat the daylights out of. We could just as easily have beat the tar out of. Obviously, there's a "beat the ... out of" thing going on here. I believe we have precedents for having a single entry for the concept, with the common variations redirected to it. For example, in Kurdish we have di navbera ... de. bd2412 T 16:46, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

But would the average user know that that's where the definition could be found? Purplebackpack89 17:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

If the major variations redirected there, what would that matter? bd2412 T 22:13, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

First of all I think User:Purplebackpack89 has a point and if you read WT:CFI#Idiomaticity there is a rationale that says however 'inefficient' it is to try and enter every variant of X the Y out of, they could all conceivably meet CFI. Secondly in reply to myself it's the something, stupid got deleted on the rationale it's no different from it's the X, stupid so my idea's looking a bit weak now. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:53, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

As long as we are discussing equivalents, "kick" and "smack" can also generally be substituted for "beat"; and the matter kicked, smacked, or beaten out can also be the "crap" or the "bejesus". bd2412 T 19:31, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

I have put some forms of this and related terms, some with frequency data, on Talk:beat the shit out of. My initial conclusion is just that X the Y out of is much too general a formulation. It would be necessary to radically restrict both X and Y to approach adequately capturing the idiom.

If we had a collocation space we might find a way to capture the expression with items on Collocation:beat and Collocation:the shit and on the words that substitute for these. An Appendix or three could also do it. DCDuring TALK 22:46, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

It's easy enough to find the shit out of with words like sing, dance, play, act, sell, love, admire, respect, etc. Those may not be common in any one combination, but the sheer number and range of such collocations suggests that the shit out of is a valid lemma in its own right- or at least it's a variant of something that's a lemma in its own right (here are a variety of taboo words that can be used almost interchangeably with shit).

It seems to me like there are two different senses, the older one one with a negative, destructive overtone, and the newer with a neutral, even positive overtone. The older sense seems to be more tightly bound to beat and various similarly violent equivalents, but I think the shit out of has escaped its violent origins to become a mildly vulgar general-purpose intensifier for a variety of transitive verbs, and has become more independent.

Perhaps we should have both beat the shit out of (with variations) as the original expression, per the Jiffy test, and the shit out of (with variations such as the hell out of) as a derived term that has become independent and more versatile. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:13, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

What Chuck says about the different senses of the shit out of fits my experience.

What drives me crazy about this is that not only beat but also the shit (snot, piss, crap, stuffing, bejezus, devil, hell, daylights, fuck, etc) have a large number of variants, including modification by living, bloody, and probably others.

I don't know what corpora would help identify which of the combinations are used more or less frequently.

I also don't see how we are helping anyone by adding all the variety in the long forms. If we had a lot more volunteers and collocation space, perhaps we could indulge this whimsicality. DCDuring TALK 01:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

• Keep as not sum of parts. For a longer previous discussion, see Talk:beat the crap out of. As for the lemming heuristic, this one is at oxforddictionaries.com[10]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:54, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I think in linguistic terms its definitely sum of parts, but in Wiktionary terms where having trouble finding names for the entries of the parts. X the Y out of being deleted and something the something out of sounds like it wouldn't survive an RFD either based on it's the something, stupid. Renard Migrant (talk) 13:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

keep. Just bekus its a vulgar word not means delete. Johnny Shiz (talk) 22:47, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely nobody is arguing against it on the grounds of vulgarity! Equinox ◑ 22:49, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

The above keep should be discounted, IMHO. Its rationale is blatantly wrong, and it comes from a user blocked on Wikipedia for trolling. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:04, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

• Google "love the shit out of" (Books • Groups • Scholar) DCDuring TALK 23:07, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
• RFD kept: no consensus for deletion. Boldface keeps from Purplebackpack89, and Dan Polansky. Boldface delete only the implied one by the nominator Romanophile. Chuck Entz last sentence suggests a weak keep to me. I disregard Johnny Shiz. Let me ping the non-boldface participants to enable more input in case they want this deleted: User:DCDuring, User:Renard Migrant, User:Equinox, User:BD2412, User:Chuck Entz. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:36, 8 May 2016 (UTC)