Talk:sift through

RFD discussion: November 2018–May 2019

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sift through

Isn't it pretty transparent and also covered at sift? --Robbie SWE (talk) 07:18, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. Delete. — SGconlaw (talk) 07:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
• Keep, I think. No reference is made to "sift through" at sift, the most likely place is sense 3. When sifting something like flour, which my mother used to do, "through" isn't normally used, even though the flour goes through a sieve. DonnanZ (talk) 10:29, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Yes, sense 3 ("to examine carefully"). Sift through is simply "to go through while examining carefully". I think it would be adequate to give a usage example. — SGconlaw (talk) 10:36, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

This entry could be incorporated there as a subsense rather than lose it completely. DonnanZ (talk) 10:58, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Certainly the meanings are close, though I think the def "examine carefully" is wanting. In any case, I think we need to treat sift through in somewhere, somehow, since this is the most common collocation/usage now, whereas sift with a direct object (to "sift the evidence" for example) is much less common. I originally added this entry as I wanted to be able to use it in the def for "sieve through" which is the Singapore English variant of "sift through" (e'en though I haven't gotten around to adding that yet). - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 04:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Delete/hard redirect as it is not special enough not to be SOP. One can form such things with through many verbs and one expression being more common does not make it non-SOP. It is just the verb having two different ways of government. Fay Freak (talk) 11:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Note also that sieben durch, durch etwas sieben in German would be SOP, unlike durchsieben (in both stresses). This here is the very same. It’s just been created because of helplessness about adding the government with through at sift in a fair fashion.

So I added the government in this sift revision. Wiktionary can peruse much more addenda regarding the regimina of verbs – especially if formatted smartly, which currently is not so easy. I like the templates {{+preo}} and {{+obj}} quite and one could make the dictionary much more usable and competitive if one were to combine multiple governments at once (on which further discussion should take place at Module talk:object usage, @Rua, Erutuon) Fay Freak (talk) 12:01, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @Fay Freak for alerting me to those templates which I did not know existed. I have preliminarily re-edited the entry to split the two defs since one is trans (and archaic) and the other intrans (and current), and have used the +preo template. I didn't think it was necessary to keep {{+obj}} for the orig. def since the "(something)" in the def makes it clear enough. That said, with the +preo template, the object is actually an indirect object (i.e. it is not sifting something(obj) through a sieve, just sifting through something), but I suppose the entry is clear enough now. Finally, also, the phrase "sift through" needs a hard redirect (sorry, dunno how to do that). - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 19:13, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sonofcawdrey But that’s not what “transitive” means. ”Transitivity” can be mediated through prepositions. It is purely semantical. On Wiktionary transitive is glossed as “takes an object”, and what have you written? “(intransitive) [+ through (object)]” – a paradox. It is not an indirect object either but a prepositional object. Fay Freak (talk) 20:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

@Fay Freak Yeah, you're right, I was only thinking that as I walked to work this morning. Still, the def "examine carefully" is substitutable for the orig. "sift" examples, but not for "sift through" (you can't "examine carefully through something"); so I have re-edited again. Other dicts make a point of mentioning the "through" construction as well. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:46, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Delete, SOP, not a phrasal verb. Per utramque cavernam 01:03, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Keep: In Macmillan and in three idiom dictionaries[1]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:18, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 16:21, 25 May 2019 (UTC)