Talk:the measure of a man

RFD discussion: February 2023–January 2024

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the measure of a man

SOP, see measure (“a standard against which something can be judged; a criterion”). Pinging @FishandChipper (creator) Ioaxxere (talk) 23:52, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see how this could be considered SOP in the slighest. Even your included definition doesn't contradict it's inclusion. FishandChipper (talk) 06:08, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

well it;s an idiom yeah ? if it's in that category, i don';t know , maybe it should be .. i guess i could look on the page and even add myself with hotcat before i post the comment .. whoops ... well yeah of course many idioms, phrases which exist on wiktionary -- not only in english, but in other languages, involve forms of verbs, nouns and so on which already exist .. can't you see that the meaning and context is different ? might as well get rid of all idioms, all sayings .. take for example one's name is mud -- you can say name, named for verb form -- why not nominate it for deletion ? sorry i think i've made the point yeah don't mean to pound you into the mud here trout the new editor beat a dead horse and so on yeah Keep Fishing Publication (talk) 14:05, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The term measure is similarly used in “the measure of a leader”,^[1][2][3][4] “the measure of a statesman”,^[5] and in figurative uses of take someone’s measure.^[6][7][8] So it appears that the contested term is indeed SOP.  --Lambiam 11:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Keep. This phrase may have originated from the King James Bible, Revelation 21:17, which says And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. Now *that* is what I would call sum of parts, because it really is a literal usage of the phrase. The new meaning is much more specific and its meaning would not be immediately obvious to someone who had never heard the phrase before, or perhaps someone who had only come across it in the older Biblical usage. —Soap— 16:54, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The OED citations for this sense of measure (the standard by which something is judged) go back to the 14th century and don't involve man so I don't think it's derived from that Bible passage, which is using a different sense (literal measurement). —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 17:02, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Well I think we agree that the usage of the word measure in the questioned sense is older than the King James Bible, and that the verse in Revelation is using in a truly literal sense. I'm saying that this phrase is not sum-of-parts because there is a literal sense used in the Bible and a nonliteral sense which is up at RFV right now. I see your point, though .... and I understand that something can be considered SOP even if it has more than one definition .... but it seems helpful to me to have a page with the two different senses listed just for those few people who might be familiar with only one sense and be confused when they see the phrase used in the other sense. —Soap— 14:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Delete as an SoP common collocation/cliche. In addition to the collocations Lambiam pointed out above, there are numerous uses of measure, in this sense, of the form take [X]['s] measure, where X can be a pronoun or a proper personal name (eg, Jack's/John's/Fred's). DCDuring (talk) 18:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Soap Akalendos (talk) 17:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

• Kept Fond of sanddunes (talk) 20:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)