Talk:model number

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model number

The number of a model. Like account number or credit-card number. SOP; delete.​—msh210℠ (talk) 14:46, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Would belong in a phrasebook, IMO, were we to have one. DCDuring TALK 15:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Not IMO. A phrasebook is for common phrases one needs when traveling or the like, and not this. (I've, some time ago, specified more specific criteria than that, but don't remember where. Certainly the above should not be construed as criteria.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a specific concept of a phrasebook, a common one among print phrasebooks. I thought that anything useful in daily life could be in such a phrasebook. See Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2010/March#Phrasebook for some discussion. McGraw-Hill publishes NTC's Dictionary of Everyday American English Expressions: presented according to topic and situation which has some 18 headings, some of which cover situations not part of normal travel, eg, Employment, Family Matters ("Don't sit on the counter", "gotta cram"), and Money Matters ("I'd like to apply for a loan."). DCDuring TALK 22:46, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It might belong in a phrasebook, but not a Wiktionary one. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:24, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Whether it does or does not would depend on criteria which we don't have. DCDuring TALK 16:18, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

keep someone might want to know how we say this in English it is a unique idea, a noun, and therefore should be included.Gtroy 18:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Not an argument. Someone might want to know how to say "put the green slipper on my left foot" in English. That doesn't make it includable. Equinox ◑ 18:38, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Keep. The definition given applies only to a specific meaning of both model and number. If a gaggle of attractive men and women hired to wear clothing on a catwalk were to be numbered, the numbers would not be "model numbers"; if, in mathematics, some numbers are designated as model examples of some principle, these are not "model numbers"; if a group of different product models were to be lined up and numbered in order of their conception date or some comparable criteria, the numbers assigned would not necessarily be "model numbers" either. bd2412 T 19:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you believe that we should keep every multi-word term containing either model or number? Applying the above would seem to say so. Equinox ◑ 19:35, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, bd2412; an exemplary number is a "model number". Vide:

• 1998, The 1998 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems: proceedings : IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, May 4-May 9, 1998, Anchorage, Alaska, volume 1, page 848:

  For a real number z that is a model number, we consider a special case Z = [z, z₁], [...]

• 2002, Introduction to Java and software design, page 617:

  In our system with four digits of precision, 0.3021 is a model number.

• 1884 February 9, Medical and Surgical Reporter, volume 50, page 178:

  Harper's Monthly for February is a model number both in text and illustrations; the latter of unusual beauty and delicacy.

The last one is a different sense. - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that "exemplary number" or in some cases "model numeral" or "model digits" could be substituted for "model number" in each of these examples, and that is a key distinction between a set phrase and an SOP phrase. If you call up your washing machine repairman and he asks what kind of machine you need fixed and you tell him that the "exemplary digits" are something, it's a pretty sure thing that he'll think you're saying it wrong. bd2412 T 04:18, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The fact that the parts of a phrase have multiple meanings (and that those parts cannot be replaced by synonyms of their other meanings) does not make the phrase any less the sum of its parts. It's true a repairman wouldn't understand if you said the "exemplary digits" of the part you needed were 54372, even though "model" can mean "example" in addition to "particular make of product", and "number" can mean "a digit" in addition to "a sequence of digits and letters"... but a repairman also wouldn't understand if you told him your "back-of-neck hair's urinary system" needed to be repaired, even though "kitchen" can mean "hair on the back of the neck" in addition to "place where food is prepared", and "plumbing" can mean "urinary system" in addition to "the system of pipes in a building". "Kitchen plumbing" is nonetheless not a set phrase; speaking intelligible English does require not using synonyms of other meanings of what you want to express. To use the sentence Equinox wrote, you can't "throw the inexperienced person, who slides often, onto my liberal unit of measure"... but "put the green slipper on my left foot" is also not a set phrase. (Trivia: one Norse style of riddle is to use synonyms of words' other meanings, though, and say eg that something is "in the back-of-neck hair", expecting the listener to realise that another word for "back-of-neck hair" is "kitchen", and that another word for "kitchen" is "place where food is prepared", and thus that the riddle is saying that the thing is "in the place where food is prepared".) - -sche (discuss) 11:06, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

A repairman wouldn't understand "back-of-neck hair's urinary system" because it is not a phrase in use at all, and almost no one would think that "back-of-neck hair" might mean "kitchen". Unlike "kitchen plumbing", model number is a commonly used phrase for which it is much easier to imagine other things it might mean - a dance performed by a group of attractive women who usually wear clothing to showcase the work of a designer, perhaps. Think of the person who might actually look up "model number" in a dictionary, possibly someone with little knowledge of the English language. Should we help this person, or should we tell them sorry, Wiktionary is only here to provide definitions to people who already know the meaning of a phrase, and don't actually need a dictionary? bd2412 T 16:46, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

And what about the fellow reading a work that includes model number with a different meaning (e.g., one of the works quoted by -sche, above)? He doesn't know what it means and looks it up (arguendo, since you seem to think people will do so). He discovers it means "An identifier of a product given by its manufacturer"? Ah, so we need another sense. Surely we don't need one for every single combination of meanings of model and number found three times in the literature, though! (Or do you think we do need all those senses, bd2412?) We'll combine them into "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see model,‎ number.". So what makes the "identifier of a product" sense special, then, that it deserves a sense line (not "Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see model,‎ number.") and the others don't?​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The first two examples occur in sentences already indicating that the use is a reference to a characteristic of the number itself. The third is, in my experience, a pretty unusual usage. bd2412 T 00:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

kept, set phrase. We keep those since the meaning may not be clear to non-native speakers of English, see ex. bus route, CD player etc. -- Liliana • 19:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)