Talk:haired

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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haired

By its own admission, this word doesn't occur on its own, but only as part of compounds. However, I don't think that terms like dark-haired are really formed with this "word" at all. To me it seems that it's formed straight from dark hair + -ed. —CodeCat 18:04, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• If the entry says that by its own admission, then it is testifying falsely:
  • 1888, ‎Charles Wyville Thomson, ‎Sir John Murray, Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger, page 40:

    It was pointed at the tip, and whilst its dorsum was haired the opposite surface was hairless, hollowed out into a concha and directed forwards and outwards.

  • 1993, Robert Ruark, The Old Man's Boy Grows Older, page 205:

    He made only one exception: our big rangy Llewellin setter named Frank, a blue-ticked genius that knew integral calculus where quail were concerned, and was haired almost as thinly as a pointer.

• Cheers! bd2412 T 18:33, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• Or (from 1967, The Major Insect Pests of the Rice Plant: Proceedings): "Antennae dark brown, moderately thickly haired, about half the length of body...". Keep. Equinox ◑ 19:20, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• Keep per bd2412 and Equinox; more examples are in google books:"thickly haired". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Searching for is/was/are haired with no modifier also turns up many hits. bd2412 T 20:16, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
• Has anyone checked out the comparatives? Donnanz (talk) 19:49, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
  • 2014, Gerardo Ceballos, Mammals of Mexico, page 306:

    Their tails are both indistinctly bicolored, but N. picta has a thinner and more haired tail.

  • Cheers! bd2412 T 20:17, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I was a little dubious about the comparatives for the standalone sense when looking at this entry before, probably more common when used in combination; e.g. more silver-haired. Donnanz (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Undoubtedly more common in combination, but it would meet CFI as a standalone word. We should probably adjust the definition accordingly, and add a usage note indicating that it is usually found in combination with another descriptor. In the meantime, I have collected all of the above citations at Citations:haired. bd2412 T 21:14, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• @CodeCat: I don't think there is anywhere else to put terms like dark-haired, as entries like dark hair seem to be taboo. Those derivatives are entered here as a result. Donnanz (talk) 21:36, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

  Almost any color (green, olive, strawberry, blue), reflectance (shiny, dull, lustrous, luminous), and many textures (curly, nappy, wavy) can fit with this as simple Google searches would show. I don't doubt that there are many other classes of adjectives that can be so combined as well, as well as nouns like feather, worm, snake, cat, mouse, crepe paper, and mink. What exactly is the point of having these derived terms when the meaning is normally SoP? DCDuring TALK 22:05, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

We seem to chronically underestimate the productivity of such combining possibilities and try to lexicalize some whimsical subset of what actually exists in our efforts to, what, build up our apparent quantitative achievements? DCDuring TALK 22:08, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Standalone definitely attestable in comparative (more/less). DCDuring TALK 11:19, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

This is a completely productive construction: take any noun, make a past participle out of it as if it were a verb, and you've got an adjective denoting "having, provided with". Add an adjective, and you have an adjective for having that which the noun refers to with the attribute referred to by the adjective: given a noun "grelm" and an adjective "freemy", you can say something that has grelms is grelmed, and if those grelms are freemy, then you can say that a flurb is freemy-grelmed. This is the same as in Latin, where it's the perfect passive participle that's used- there are huge numbers of taxonomic names constructed this way. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:48, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment Does -haired have possibilities? Purplebackpack89 22:20, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

  IMO it's superfluous as a full entry but would be a really good hard redirect. We probably need a lot more of such redirects. DCDuring TALK 22:54, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Definitely keep as cited as being real. I see no way that this entry can be deleted. Nothing wrong with waiting the full week, but I consider this debate dead. Renard Migrant (talk) 23:37, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I think we need to distinguish between the two senses: the first is clearly attested and probably valid, but the second is questionable, at the very least. This should have been an rfd-sense, since the OP only refers to the second sense, and doesn't make sense if the first is included.Chuck Entz (talk) 02:17, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

The first sense is attested on Citations:haired. The "combination" sense would seem to be in widespread use. Are talking about haired or another term? DCDuring TALK 02:51, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I added the new first sense during the course of this discussion, to more accurately reflect the standalone usage of "haired" in sources. The entry could not have been rfd-sense nominated to begin with because at the time there was only one sense (which is now sense 2). bd2412 T 03:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I forgot about that. Nevertheless, my point still stands: this should be an rfd-sense for the second sense, now that there's a first sense. We need to address the issues raised regarding this sense without attempting to apply them to the sense you added- in that context, they're still valid and unanswered. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:49, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

So, what is the evidence in support of the claimed morphology? Even if there was some evidence in support of this theory, what would be the point? To have entries for the hundreds of combinations involving haired and the many thousands of combinations involving denominal adjectives ending in -ed? To what real humans is that valuable? DCDuring TALK 08:30, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

The derived terms will probably suffice, although I seem to remember a song about a "long-haired lover from Liverpool". Donnanz (talk) 23:14, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Note that it is also easy to find non-hyphenated references to "red haired", "long haired", "short haired", and so on. bd2412 T 16:21, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

• Kept: No consensus to delete the entry. Purplebackpack89 16:02, 8 April 2015 (UTC)