Talk:all square

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all square

NISoP, = all#Adverb intensifier + square#Adjective "even, tied". DCDuring TALK 04:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• Keep CFI: "Compounds are generally idiomatic, even when the meaning can be clearly expressed in terms of the parts. The reason is that the parts often have several possible senses, but the compound is often restricted to only some combinations of them." Square in this definition is distinct from its main sense, that is, the standard geometric interpretation. TeleComNasSprVen 04:34, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  If so, Wiktionary is at least several million English attestable lemma entries shy of completeness. I don't think I'll be signing on for working on any of those entries. Good luck to the rest of you. DCDuring TALK 14:52, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  • CFI is highly inclusionist in this form about these certain types of phrases, and I'm not saying I like that, because I don't. But that would be a good reason to change it rather than challenge it. TeleComNasSprVen 04:32, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

• Keep - definitely idiomatic in my opinion. And we might even be missing a sense e.g. ""I think Master Jack is making it all square with Sophie Mellerby." from Trollope "An Eye for an Eye". SemperBlotto 13:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• I think it has a certain setness, I can't imagine someone saying "the teams were entirely square with only five minutes to play" or "totally square". --Mglovesfun (talk) 14:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  How does it do on tests of setness?

  Are SB and MG suggesting that Wiktionary needs to be able to help folks encode the common collocations rather than merely help people decode them? Shouldn't we then have more statistical information about collocation of senses of words? The answer to that is that, because current freely available resources don't come close to allowing us to say anything about collocations of common polysemic words like all and square, we can't say anything likely to turn out to be accurate. Thus our very selective inclusion of collocations (consisting of the idiosyncratic interests of a small number of contributors) is a new form of prescriptivism. The relatively few collocations included being presumed more worthy of inclusion than the vastly more numerous collocations excluded. At best we will be favoring catchphrases and cliches. DCDuring TALK 17:29, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll admit I wouldn't look this up in a dictionary myself, or if I did, I'd like up square before looking up all square. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep argument: you should be able to simply remove the (deprecated template usage) all without changing the meaning: "the two teams were square with 5 minutes left to play" sounds really wrong; it makes them sound 'uncool' or 'composed entirely of straight edges'. Something like "the game was all over with five minutes left to play", that works if you take out the 'all'. So I'd find it hard to make a credible argument that this is SoP. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:39, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I have added a few citations at square#Adjective to show usage of "square" in the sense of "even", "tied". DCDuring TALK 19:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, though I'm not disputing that. If I were you, I'd be trying to argue that all isn't an intensifying adverb, but something else. --Mglovesfun (talk) 11:50, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Delete. SOP. Like bank parking lot, this is used for other senses of all and square that make sense in combination: [1], [2], [3], etc.​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:21, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Passed, no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)