Talk:put on

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put on

3 senses:

3. To prescribe (medicine).

The doctor put me on pills for my allergies.

5.To play a recording.

I'll put on your favorite record.

Can you put on The Sound of Music? I'd like to see it again.

7. To record, to add to a record or document.

Put it on the list.

Put it on my tab.

— all redundant to the first sense:

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see put,‎ on.

He put the pen on the table.

​—msh210℠ 16:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

• Delete 7. Keep 5 (..."on" what? There is no indefinite object). Probably keep & improve 3, I think there is a valid sense there somewhere, which is not necessarily confined to medicine. Ƿidsiþ 16:33, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

  (deprecated template usage) on can function as an adverb, modifying many verbs, without making the collocation entry-worthy. In the usage examples for 5 it can appear before or after the object of "put", at least in the sense given.

  Yes it can, but the results are very unpredictable. I would say "to put a record on" is very idiomatic. Ƿidsiþ 18:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

  We would be going boldly where no lemming has gone before (including OneLook's idiom references). I think they must see such a construction as essentially deictic or anaphoric.

Generally, the non-obvious construction argument comes close to trying to substitute a lexicon for knowledge of the world and knowledge-in-context. "Can you put on The Sound of Music?" can refer to the recording on any medium: drum, cellulose, vinyl, tape, CD, VHS, DVD, and even other recorded or transmitted media (or a stage production). That is, the context-dependent understood object of "on" may be any of several playback means. In fact, it often doesn't mean any one of these, but rather whichever of the devices are most convenient for the requestee agent in the situation at hand. If one uttered the sentence in question while in an inappropriate context, say, at a lending library, even one that had a recording of The Sound of Music, it is unlikely that the requestee would know what you meant, because there is not any normal interpretation that fits that context. DCDuring TALK 18:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about lemmings, but the OED has it (sense 2d): "To start to play (a record, compact disc, video, etc.)". Hardly predictable from the component parts. Ƿidsiþ 19:01, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Lemmus oxfordiensis is a distingished member of the genus. As to compositionality, their sense is clearly from the notion of putting the recording on the playback device. I've been wondering whether that sense of "put on" applies when there is no physical embodiment of the material to be played back. I can't actually put The Sound of Music on the radio, unless I am the DJ or music programmer. But I suppose one could say "I have The Sound of Music on the DVR.". I suppose that once we allow anything other than set phrases (possibly inflecting), there is no attestable metaphorical usage that can be excluded. DCDuring TALK 20:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you're exaggerating the slippery-slopiness of this. It's idiomatic even by strict standards. If I say, "I'm going to put a Bond film on and make a microwave dinner" (not something I typically say, by the way), nothing is actually going "on" anything. Except possibly my arse, the sofa. Ƿidsiþ 20:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I nominated 5 (the Sound of Music sense) for deletion as redundant, thinking that it's just put + on, i.e. make the record be on (running, playing). But I'm not sure any longer: you can't put a record off, though you can put it louder or softer.​—msh210℠ 18:46, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

• Delete 5 and 7. But the second usage example at 5. seems to be equally good as an illustration of the sense "to produce, to stage, perform", which some dictionaries show as an idiom run in under "put". This sense is possibly what was intended as sense 8. As the usage example at 5 is plausibly quite ambiguous, it is not a good usage example for either sense. Sense 8 seems to confound the sense of "to produce, stage, perform" with the sense of "to deceive someone by pretending (something)".

OneLook review suggests other senses. Illustrative collocations that might illustrate idiomatic senses of "put on": "put on weight", "put on sunscreen/makeup".

Some of these senses and other senses, especially some shown at Encarta, seem equally well interpreted as as ellipses, eg, dropping the obvious-in-context object of the preposition "on": I'll put your favorite record on (the CD player). The "produce/stage/perform" sense seems to omit "stage" as object of "on".

I am particularly unsure about the prescription sense. It doesn't seem very distinguishable from "put me on a path", "put me on a regimen", "put myself on a diet". But it also takes the "container/vehicle" metaphor one step further.

My confusion on this kind of thing has recently been deepened by the chapter on "construction grammar" (inflectable idioms, snowclones, and many things in between) in Croft and Cruse Cognitive Linguistics. DCDuring TALK 17:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

[e/c] Deleted sense 7, kept 3 and 5.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:20, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Delete 7. Keep 5 and 3. 5 is very widely used, and really doesn't follow logically from the literal senses of put and on. It presumably stemmed from the action of putting a record on a player, but it is long since divorced from physical media being put on physical players. The sense of 'play a recording' needs a little loosening, though - I contend that this is the same usage as 'put Channel 4 on', where Channel 4 might easily be broadcast live. The relation with 'putting a play' on is interesting, and may have influenced usage? 3 is less clear-cut. 'On' here does correspond to meaning 14 of on, 'Regularly taking (a drug)', but it's not clear (however obvious the choice may be to a native speaker) why the verb is put, and not (for instance) make or set. I have substituted 'a treatment' for 'medicine' here, since patients might be prescribed other treatments and talked about in the same way. This is certainly not the same meaning as in 'He put the pen on the table' - the doctor is not placing the patient upon drugs, that would be silly. 7 really is pretty much covered by that, however. --Oolong 20:17, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

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put on

Sense: To prescribe a treatment for.

The doctor put me on pills for my allergies.

The phrase "on pills" is an adjunct. Consider that (deprecated template usage) put has the same sense in the following sense with adjuncts headed by different prepositions:

The doctor put me into a behavioral modification program.

The doctor put me in rehab.

The doctor put me under anesthesia/hypnosis.

It is possible that there are more prepositions. I don't think this is even a separate sense of (deprecated template usage) put. DCDuring TALK 13:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd consider this a misanalysis, the put and on do not function as a single unit in this case. Ergo, delete, perhaps use {{&lit|put|on|lang=en}} instead. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:43, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

{{&lit}} is already in the entry. I wonder how many of these afflict others members of Category:English phrasal verbs. DCDuring TALK 14:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, in similar vein, we can say things like "My manager put me on nights", "The magistrate put me on probation", "The company put me on a written warning", and so forth. So, this purported sense of "put on" seems to be more general than just "prescribe a treatment for". 86.160.216.161 01:15, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

• Yes I think I agree. Ƿidsiþ 06:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
• Yeah, delete.​—msh210℠ (talk) 01:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

deleted -- Liliana • 18:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)