Talk:fine-looking

RFD discussion: October 2019–April 2021

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fine-looking

Seems SoP. Raised above under #must-see. Compounds like "fine-looking" can be created in fairly arbitrary combinations according to standard rules of English: tired-looking, indistinct-looking, harsh-sounding, clever-seeming etc. etc. I don't believe that we need to list all possible combinations separately. On the other hand, I would support keeping good-looking. As much as anything, I am listing this to see if there are any objective criteria, other than frequency of use (which I believe we should not take into account, provided a minimum threshhold is reached), that would allow us to keep good-looking, and possibly also fine-looking if desired, while disallowing e.g. indistinct-looking and a million™ others similar. Mihia (talk) 19:57, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

It would depend on how common it is. I came across the term when extracting some quotes from an old magazine, and thought it merited an entry, having found enough usage. There is no problem with good-looking, which probably has lemmas anywhere you look. However, this entry is infinitely more preferable to fine-ass-looking. DonnanZ (talk) 20:53, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but my understanding is that we don't include or exclude entries based on how common they are, provided only that the minimum threshold for CFI is met. Mihia (talk) 21:54, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I'd delete as meaning nothing more than "it looks fine". Equinox ◑ 21:24, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

If it was spelt finelooking nobody would bat an eyelid, but it isn't. I would keep it as a synonym - there may be times when one would prefer to use fine-looking instead of good-looking, as the author of the quote did. DonnanZ (talk) 22:32, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Delete, SOP. Canonicalization (talk) 22:58, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

To refresh your memory, you created bad-looking a few months ago. DonnanZ (talk) 09:51, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

See also good-looking, foul-smelling, gutaussehend, etc. Note that while in German this gutaussehend is quite lexical one can quite arbitrarily mash together participles with adverbs and other parts of speech, writing together. Fay Freak (talk) 23:08, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

• See also Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2019/October#Inclusion_of_hyphenated_compounds. Mihia (talk) 23:28, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Ah, so this is the first victim of your brainchild. DonnanZ (talk) 10:15, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Donnanz, your only rule seems to be that you hate anything being deleted. Other people actually apply coherent rules to what they think is keepable or deletable, even though those rules differ from user to user. For you to accuse people (repeatedly) of being rabid/unprincipled deletionists is silly since you're a more rabid/unprincipled "keepist" than anyone. Equinox ◑ 15:02, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

No, his only rule is whether he likes a term or that to which it refers. He'd vote to delete dog if one bit him, but he'd vote to keep "I like trains" if he could do it without people laughing at him (I'm exaggerating, of course, but at times it's not that far from the truth). Chuck Entz (talk) 15:30, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Both of you are being unfair. You never see terms I reject, and there's plenty of those; today, for example, I looked at transport hub and single-bore and passed over both. DonnanZ (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Imagine a non-native speaker – let’s call him Deniz – trying to grasp the meaning of fine-looking after he overhears an attractive woman saying of him that he is a “fine-looking man”. Naturally, he will consult Wikipedia. Assume now that in the meantime we have deleted the entry, so he sees on the discussion page that it was deleted as being a sum-of-parts. All he has to do now is to decipher the meaning of fine-looking from its parts. Naturally he proceeds from the assumption that the overheard comment is equivalent to the statement that he looks fine. The first meaning of look is “to try to see, to pay attention to with one’s eyes”. This requires an adverb; skipping the definition “Expression of (typically) reluctant agreement”, which he suspects does not apply, he hits upon “well, nicely, in a positive way”. So did the commenter express the opinion that Deniz tries, in a positive way, to see (or that he pays nicely attention with his eyes)? Somehow feeling that this was not the utterer’s intention, he looks further. What about look meaning “to appear, to seem”? And perhaps nice = “being acceptable, adequate, passable, or satisfactory”? (Deniz is humble and does not consider himself to be of superior quality.) This results in the meaning ”to seem passable”. This meaning appears satisfactory to Deniz; satisfied with this answer and unaware of a missed opportunity, he concludes his semantic quest.  --Lambiam 18:00, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Don't give up your day job, Jonathan Swift. "Fine-looking" may in fact mean "looking fine" in pretty much any sense, not just one. So the mistake that you would blame on our not indicating which sense of "fine" is intended (hello, "brown leaf") could equally go badly the other way if we did have, say, the AAVE-style sense ("that's one fine-looking honey!") but omitted others. Equinox ◑ 18:31, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Three examples: "Damn baby, I don't know if I want to let your fine looking ass go, cause I know damn well muthafucka's gon be all over my tender white thickness" (Davine 2014; "fine" = attractive, sexy); "Glancing over the crowd, I noticed a fine-looking carriage and horses" (McLean 1886; "fine" = handsome, elegant); "the inside of the teeth will peel, and by rubbing coke or a piece of grindstone over the teeth's face, it will result in fine-looking teeth" (Dyson West 1882; "fine" = narrowly spaced). Equinox ◑ 19:04, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

You could always add those quotes to the entry... I did find "fine-looking cricketer" and "fine-looking goalie" (admittedly very few hits) where fine-looking seems to refer to the fact they appear to be good at their job. But looking at fine#Etymology 1#Adjective I'm not convinced that fine-looking is covered, the closest is sense 3, good-looking, attractive, but I'm not entirely convinced by the examples. In Oxford (1.6) is the closest, I think, (1.6 Imposing or impressive in appearance. ‘Donleavy was a fine figure of a man’). But I think "fine-looking" is not properly covered here either, and is something else again. DonnanZ (talk) 20:58, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

If you take the argument that including SOP terms because their components have multiple meanings, but then you also include all permutations of those meanings on the SOP terms page, how have you helped Deniz know which sense was meant? He was just as well off looking up the component terms and deciding among their meanings. Better off, really, since we are more likely to have things like translations on the component terms. - TheDaveRoss 12:48, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Adding those citations to the entry suggests I am validating the entry, whereas I actually think it is fucking stupid and should be deleted. I specifically found those cites to prove that "fine-looking" just means "looking fine IN ANY SENSE OF FINE". Why does it still exist? Equinox ◑ 05:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

In this case looking is really just taking on the old obsolete noun sense of "appearance". And because fine is an adjective that modifies looking, you really have an adjective-noun combination being used attributively to modify the man (in Lambiam's example). (Of course participles being what they are, you could analyse it as adverb-verb, but you should get the same result.) One from a previous era could have probably called Deniz "a man with a fine looking". -Mike (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

At the moment this compound sense of looking is not covered (yes, these are compound words, which some users prefer to overlook, probably because of the hyphen). It isn't regarded as a suffix, but there was a suffix entry once, before it was redirected as the result of an RFD. To be fair, Oxford doesn't deal with it either. DonnanZ (talk) 19:33, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

I made an attempt at explaining this at looking. DonnanZ (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you can complete this by adding a sense at fine: “in relation to the visual appearance of a person: physically attractive”.  --Lambiam 22:32, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

As with bad-looking below, I think we should keep: does fine-looking also mean "slender/thin-looking" ? fine means "slender/thin". Does it mean "powdery-looking" ? fine can mean "consisting of minute particulate" ? We need to provide the accurate definition. Leasnam (talk) 23:22, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

It can mean slender/thin-looking, and other things too, yes; see my three examples above. Equinox ◑ 23:24, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Equinox ! I only lightly glanced over the entirety of the conversation. My bad :\ Leasnam (talk) 23:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Leasnam: So, will you maintain your keep anyway? Canonicalization (talk) 22:25, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Delete as hyphenated sum of parts with the current definition of looking. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:09, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Keep - Dentonius (talk) 12:52, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Keep, like "good-looking" this has a default meaning of "physically attractive" rather than say healthy. Troll Control (talk) 12:48, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The definitions do not clearly distinguish good and fine looking. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:38, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Also, wouldn't you stress them differently? FINE-looking teeth look slender, but fine-LOOking teeth look good. Troll Control (talk) 15:30, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

{{look}}

• Going by the rules (WT:CFI) although they might be bad: Delete, but only if good-looking, nice-looking, bad-looking are deleted as well. All are "hyphenated compounds" (WT:CFI) and SOP-y. --幽霊四 (talk) 14:39, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Delete per the above. This RfD has been open for years. Can someone please close it? Chicdat (talk) 11:37, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Delete ASAP. There are any number of such SOP hyphenated compounds, e.g. great-looking, cool-looking, wonderful-looking, marvelous-looking, horrible-looking, nasty-looking... Also bad-looking can go and probably nice-looking. There are infinite combinations that we can't hope to cover and shouldn't spend our time on. good-looking can stay as a representative idiom and for translations to other languages. A good-looking contract. As per CFI: "General rule - A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means..." Facts707 (talk) 10:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Delete: SOP. J3133 (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

• This has gone on long enough. Close as no consensus. DonnanZ (talk) 13:47, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

No consensus. Going by a strict head count, there are seven straight votes to delete (including the nominator), one vote to delete "only if good-looking, nice-looking, bad-looking are deleted" (which has not happened), and four votes to keep. This falls short of a clear consensus for deletion. On a side note, some of the personal attacks in this discussion are unacceptable for this forum. bd2412 T 06:41, 25 April 2021 (UTC)