Talk:retiring

RFD discussion: November 2019–March 2020

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retiring

Adjective: "About to retire from work. Today is the party for our retiring co-workers."

This seems to me to be the participle of retire. I don't believe that this sense unambiguously meets the adjectivity criteria. DCDuring (talk) 00:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree, Delete. The same can be said of the first two senses given for dying#Adjective, while the third one is the attributive use of the gerund.  --Lambiam 08:11, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it does not meet the criteria for a "true" adjective, but I wonder whether a case could be made for keeping it anyway, to contrast with the other, true-adjective sense. For example, someone (possibly a non-native speaker) encounters the phrase "our retiring co-workers", concludes that "retiring" is an adjective, looks up the adjective, and finds that it means "introverted, liking privacy and seclusion". On the other hand, I suppose this logic would potentially require us to include entries corresponding to various other senses of "retire", so perhaps it is not such a good idea after all. Mihia (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Where we mention the sense as present participle, as we do at abiding, consenting, disheartening, exciting, hissing, hunting, overpowering, revealing, yielding, ..., we present this separately under the POS heading Verb. This also solves the issue of multiple senses of the verb.  --Lambiam 08:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, yes, of course. However that wasn't my point. My point was to do with present participle potentially appearing adjectival. Mihia (talk)

My point is that, rather in general, grammatically challenged native and non-native speakers alike may misconstrue such present participles, in particular when used attributively (like consenting here), as adjectives; yet this is IMO not a valid argument to list that sense under an erroneous POS. Listing it under Verb may help to enlighten such users.  --Lambiam 12:49, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

• RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:12, 21 March 2020 (UTC)