Talk:food fish

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food fish

SOP — a fish that is food. Pingku 10:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

This entry was apparently created because Finnish has a single word for it. Is English the tail or the dog? DCDuring TALK 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Page history reveals that this entry was created by SemperBlotto. I added the fi translation 2,5 years later. --Hekaheka 16:57, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for not bothering to check. DCDuring TALK 17:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

The grammar seems a bit weird; I can't imagine anyone saying food bird or food plant. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:40, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the weirdness. What seems weird to you? DCDuring TALK 16:50, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm still interested in the weirdness. I'd like to avoid bringing things here that have widespread support. DCDuring TALK 17:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

"Food plant" seems to have two senses according to quick Google search: 1) industrial scale food processing plant 2) plant used for food. Also "food fish" seems to be widely used as well as "food animal", but I found nothing for "food bird". --Hekaheka 17:13, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you think anyone ever confuses sense 1 and sense 2 of "food plant"? DCDuring TALK 19:43, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I did not mean that they might be confused. I just wanted to demonstrate (to Mglovesfun) that many people seem to be able to imagine saying "food plant". --Hekaheka 00:19, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Seems weird to me. Also it's not any food, only human food, as opposed to say fish that are used to feed other fish. Keep. DAVilla 09:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The definition that is given is not SoP; I read this discussion, clicked over to the page, and found the definition surprising. I was expecting food fish as in a fish you buy to feed your pets, not human food. I suspect the definition that is given may be overly narrow, though.--Prosfilaes 19:56, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Answer: I've never seen food used attributively mean mean "edible, comestible". So if food didn't collocate with another noun in this way, this expression would be unique. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:39, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that's how it's being used here. The vast majority of fish are edible, but this seems to be specifically about types (not individuals) of fish that are treated as food by man, not just could be eaten. I found isolated examples of "food cattle" and "food cow" with food being used attributively in this sense. A couple for food snake: "When a harmless food snake was introduced into Junior's cage, Junior would immediately approach it and seize it anywhere on the body." but that's for zoo animals (or possibly even in the wild, from another citation). Food animal and food animals get a lot of hits. I suspect this is just one attributive use.--Prosfilaes 21:59, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Delete as SoP.--Prosfilaes 21:59, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Prosfilaes. Usage of "food" in this sense at COCA includes "crop", "plant", "stuffs", "animals", "commodities", "product", "protein", but not such other collocations as "person", "people", "professional", "parcel", and "baby". I think the point is that context determines the nature of the relationship between Noun1 and Noun2 in Noun1-Noun2 combinations. If there is ambiguity, the conversation may be interrupted by laughter or a clarifying question or the speaker may use a circumlocution, possibly just a helpful preposition, to make the relationship more (not perfectly) explicit (eg, "fish for food", "fish used for/as food". DCDuring TALK 22:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

If we delete food fish (which dictionary.com has), why do we have fish food (which dictionary.com does not have)? Btw, definition for "fish food" appears narrow as this citation shows: ...Belinda Balaski is the more sympathetic of the two camp counselors and she ends up as fish food. --Hekaheka 00:12, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Taking your question non-rhetorically:

1. we don't follow a lemming rule (or indeed any rule) uniformly and
2. we don't have systematic search-and-RfD projects.

I'm not sure we have a culture that is very rule-friendly or consistency-friendly, so the situation doesn't seem likely to change. DCDuring TALK 01:41, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Because fish food isn't any food that a fish eats, it's food that is specifically manufactured to feed fish. DAVilla 09:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm.. I don't think Belinda Balaski is manufactured to feed fish. She just ended up being eaten by fish (not in reality, in the movie that is). --Hekaheka 14:44, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

So they called her fish food in the movie? Then it must have been figurative use, a sort of joke. DAVilla 04:44, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

(back on topic) Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:37, 26 December 2010 (UTC). Striking per arguments below. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that we include terms that (some of) our users might not understand. In the case of terms having the form "noun<space>noun" there is often the possibility of confusion or misunderstanding. So we keep (deprecated template usage) aircraft carrier (not obviously a ship) but not (deprecated template usage) toast rack (a rack for toast). Unfortunately (deprecated template usage) food fish seems to lie between the obvious extremes. I would keep it as it is not doing any harm. SemperBlotto 10:44, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Keep per WT:COALMINE: google books:"foodfish". Furthermore, this term is surprising by being very common yet much more so than "food mammal", "food reptile", "food snake" or whatever comes to mind. --Dan Polansky 11:47, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Curiously there's a problem with this: "Unidiomatic terms made up of multiple words to officially meet WT:CFI when significantly more common than a single word spelling that already meets CFI." Foodfish seems to be more common than food fish, so it wouldn't pass under that criterion. Yet, I feel we may as well keep it. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I see no entry for foodfish. The evidence offered indicates that "foodfish" is limited to use in special contexts, which makes me suspect that its definition would differ from most usage of food + fish. Without an actual entry for foodfish, arguments based on WT:COALMINE are merely hypothetical. Such canards should not influence this discussion. DCDuring TALK 12:26, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

My searches show "food fish" to be much more common than "foodfish". --Dan Polansky 12:52, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• kept per WT:COALMINE. We now have a valid entry for foodfish --Parttimer 14:06, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Hang on, coalmine only works when 'significantly more common'. My Google Books search found 597 hits for "food fish" and 599 hits for foodfish. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:10, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Unstriking.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:36, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Why do we have slapdash entries (as both food fish and foodfish), slapdash arguments (as invoking WT:COALMINE before we even have an entry, and slapdash process (as ultra-rapid striking of this matter)? Don't we have the patience to do this right? Or is Urban Dictionary to be our standard? DCDuring TALK 16:03, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

The spirit of coalmine is to not mislead dictionary users into an incorrect spelling. If anything, we should be happy that the spaced version existed before the unspaced: no one was misled. Although stated in terms of commonness, the spirit of coalmine allows the entry when it is the preferred spelling. Other dictionaries have food fish[1], but no dictionary has foodfish. If anything we should tweak WT:COALMINE to admit that this is the correct outcome. DAVilla 18:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Without a proper cited entry for foodfish I don't see that we can invoke WT:COALMINE at all or draw any conclusions from frequency. DCDuring TALK 15:27, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

You're still holding out? Stubborn man, you could cite it yourself. DAVilla 20:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Let us look at some numbers. google:"food fish": 596,000 hits; google:"foodfish": 35,100 hits; google books:"food fish": 597 hits; google books:"foodfish": 599 hits; my search for "food fish" in Google books: 112,000 hits; my search for "foodfish" in Google books: 2,810 hits; google news:"food fish": 25 hits; google news:"foodfish": 1 hit. I do not know what explains the difference between my searches in Google books and the searches in Google books provided by the templates. --Dan Polansky 09:54, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure you aren't also hitting food-fish? DAVilla 20:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

a borderline term

I love this nomination because it is so clearly on the border. The suggestion that it might be a legitimate term comes from the inclusion in other dictionaries, the single-word translation in other languages, and the existence of an as common compounded form, none of which are enough by any current criterion. The argument that it is idiomatic, applying to food specifically for humans, is very weak. However we decide to keep this, I would hope that it's clear where all the evidence points, if that can be somehow internalized, as I don't think there will be any survivor rules written from this one. DAVilla 18:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

kept. When I try the search, the spelling food fish is always way more common than the other spelling. -- Prince Kassad 08:32, 12 February 2011 (UTC)