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There are nearly half a million compound phrases that aren’t in any dictionary—simply because they contain spaces. “Boiling water.” “Saturday night.” “Help me.”

There are nearly half a million compound phrases that aren’t in any dictionary—simply because they contain spaces. “Boiling water.” “Saturday night.” “Help me.” I would hope that none of those examples were taking up space in a dictionary.

gligierko 8mo ago
Some are better than others. Many semi-transparents could get legit coverage. And many are good fodder for word game content.
- dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
  The rest of the article did a good job explaining that. I just think those were terrible examples for the introduction. I think "shut up", "good night", and "hot dog" would have really got the point across better, but those might already be in dictionaries.
  - ticulatedspline 8mo ago
    They're clearly a bit over-zealous bout what examples they think have meaning. They cite substitution as a good test for a phrase but double down on boiling water. > Lexicographers used a substitutability test: if you can swap synonyms freely, it’s not a lexical unit. “Cold feet” (meaning fear) can’t become “frigid feet”—so it gets an entry. But the test cuts both ways. You can say “boiling water” but not “seething water” or “raging water.” The phrase resists substitution too. These aren't failures for substitution because "Raging" isn't' a synonym in this case. where frigid would be a reasonable. I wonder perhaps if the author is confusing the idiom "hot water" which is in there https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hot_water https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hot_water and would fail the substitution test.
    - gligierko 8mo ago
      I removed that sentence/claim, I see the point that "boiling" and "raging" was a bad example.
      - ticulatedspline 8mo ago
        Cool, going back over them I'm actually surprised at the strength of the substitution test, thus far I haven't really encountered one that strongly goes against the test if a suitable synonym is picked. There are a few things for which English simply doesn't have anything to substitute and those are harder to assess. boiling is one but so would "blood" in "blood pressure", obviously replacing it with another liquid has basically the same meaning eg water pressure, oil pressure but as far as I can tell there's literally no synonym for blood. I those cases I try to use a stand in from another language to see of the substitution works. for for example "sangre" in Spanish so "sangre pressure" which doesn't seem to affect it's meaning much so I'd argue it's exclusion. Conversely "Red tape" cannot be "roja tape" and a "caliente dog" is one trapped in a car not a food.
        BobaFloutist 8mo ago
        "Simmering H20", for all that simmering isn't quite the same as boiling, is pretty clearly more or less identical to boiling water.
  - butvacuum 8mo ago
    'hot dog' belongs in a thesaurus, not a dictionary. It's just a type of sausage.
    - dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
      It’s a type of sausage, but they are definitely not synonymous. At least not in American English.
    - smt88 8mo ago
      In the US, if you ordered a hot dog and got a sausage (or vice versa), it would be very reasonable to return the item and ask for something else. They are culturally completely different, the same way Cheerios in milk is not another cold soup like gazpacho is.
    - alecbz 8mo ago
      All words in a thesaurus would generally also be in a dictionary? The difference between a thesaurus and a dictionary is what each tells you about a word.
    - Wobbles42 8mo ago
      A dictionary is an enumeration of words. A thesaurus is a mapping between existing words. Every word in a thesaurus belongs in a dictionary.
    - vidarh 8mo ago
      If people assume it's "just a type of sausage" it suggests a dictionary entry is needed to explain otherwise. It's a term referring to a small set of types of sausages served in a specific small set of ways. In some places, a hot dog can be used as a synonym for the predominant type of sausage most common in hot dogs in that place, but the term is still more commonly referring to the assembly of a wiener or frankfurter wrapped in a bread of some sort.
      - krisoft 8mo ago
        > the term is still more commonly referring to the assembly of a wiener or frankfurter wrapped in a bread of some sort I had that disagreement in an alpine resort once. A seller was vending some sort of sausage stuffed in a bread, i was hungry so I walked up to them with money in hand and said "A hot dog please" while pointing at the only thing they were selling. The lady was mortified by my utterance, and was not willing to accept the money until I agreed with her that it is a bratwurst and not a hot dog. :D The disagreement felt a bit academical, but given that she was holding the hot dogs hostage and money does not taste that good she won the argument.
  - dragonwriter 8mo ago
    Yeah, the good examples are usually in dictionaries as headwords, the moderate examples are usually in dictionaries as phrases within the entry for one (or more) of the words that comprise them, leaving fairly weak examples actually “missing” if you want to use “missing words with spaces” as the basis for content.
  - michaeld123 8mo ago
    Fair point. I just rewrote the intro w/ the naming-function argument first.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
simlevesque 8mo ago
The first two I kind of understand what the author means. But "help me" and "severe pain" made me think that I'm just not the right public for this text.
- dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
  I don’t see how boiling water could ever be a single word. Would that mean we need entries for every other liquid boiling? i guess Saturday night could have some extra details explaining the context around our standard work week. But even that is a stretch.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Wobbles42 8mo ago
    A single word for boiling water would be like the single word "slush" we have for ice in water. It likely could apply to other liquids in the same mixed state, but would be assumed to refer to water (or solutions or colloidal mixtures primarily consisting of water) in common speech. Water is extremely common, and has anonymously high heats of crystalization and vaporization, so it is the most common example of a mixed phase system and the only one most people encounter in everyday life.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - DonHopkins 8mo ago
      Inuktitut / Kalaallisut (Greenlandic): qanik -- snow falling aput -- snow on the ground pukak -- crystalline powder snow (like salt) aniuk -- snow used to make water maujaq -- deep soft snow you sink into piqsirpoq (verb) -- drifting snow / blowing snow Central Alaskan Yup’ik qanuk -- falling snow aput -- snow on the ground nevluk -- wet snow aniu -- snow for drinking water
jakub_g 8mo ago
It's quite interesting that "boiling water" in many Slavic languages is actually a separate word (and not derived from "water", but from "boiling"; similar how the author mentions "ice" being used instead of "frozen water").
- epgui 8mo ago
  I mean it’s interesting that this is generally the case with many (or even most) words across languages… But I’d wager it’s more the norm than the exception, so I don’t know if “boiling water” is that interesting of an example.
- dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
  It was mentioned in other comments but boiled water is steam, and frozen water is ice. We do not have separate words for freezing water or boiling water. in the slavic languages do they have a different way to describe boiling or freezing milk, or any other liquid?
  - Wobbles42 8mo ago
    We have the word slush to mean a mixture of ice and water. A single word for boiling water would occupy a similar conceptual space. While these are not separate states of matter, they ARE special thermodynamic systems, with the particular property that they tend to remain exactly at the phase transition temperature while heat is added or removed from the system. This is a somewhere esoteric technical distinction, but it has practical everyday consequences. It's why boiling food works so consistently as a universal cooking option. You don't need to control the temperature of boiling water, it is an exact temperature that depends only on ambient pressure. As a consequence recipes work by only specifying time, sometimes with a single adjustment for people at higher altitudes. This is remarkable given the wide variety of containers and heat sources used, and it is used practically by virtually every cooking tradition, even if it's reason for working is not common knowledge. It shouldn't be surprising it'd acquire a single word as a unified concept.
    - dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
DonHopkins 8mo ago
>"Boiling water" ... I would hope that none of those examples were taking up space in a dictionary. Yeah, I agree! Fuck ICE!

gligierko 8mo ago

Some are better than others. Many semi-transparents could get legit coverage. And many are good fodder for word game content.

dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
The rest of the article did a good job explaining that. I just think those were terrible examples for the introduction. I think "shut up", "good night", and "hot dog" would have really got the point across better, but those might already be in dictionaries.
- ticulatedspline 8mo ago
  They're clearly a bit over-zealous bout what examples they think have meaning. They cite substitution as a good test for a phrase but double down on boiling water. > Lexicographers used a substitutability test: if you can swap synonyms freely, it’s not a lexical unit. “Cold feet” (meaning fear) can’t become “frigid feet”—so it gets an entry. But the test cuts both ways. You can say “boiling water” but not “seething water” or “raging water.” The phrase resists substitution too. These aren't failures for substitution because "Raging" isn't' a synonym in this case. where frigid would be a reasonable. I wonder perhaps if the author is confusing the idiom "hot water" which is in there https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hot_water https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hot_water and would fail the substitution test.
  - gligierko 8mo ago
    I removed that sentence/claim, I see the point that "boiling" and "raging" was a bad example.
    - ticulatedspline 8mo ago
      Cool, going back over them I'm actually surprised at the strength of the substitution test, thus far I haven't really encountered one that strongly goes against the test if a suitable synonym is picked. There are a few things for which English simply doesn't have anything to substitute and those are harder to assess. boiling is one but so would "blood" in "blood pressure", obviously replacing it with another liquid has basically the same meaning eg water pressure, oil pressure but as far as I can tell there's literally no synonym for blood. I those cases I try to use a stand in from another language to see of the substitution works. for for example "sangre" in Spanish so "sangre pressure" which doesn't seem to affect it's meaning much so I'd argue it's exclusion. Conversely "Red tape" cannot be "roja tape" and a "caliente dog" is one trapped in a car not a food.
      - BobaFloutist 8mo ago
        "Simmering H20", for all that simmering isn't quite the same as boiling, is pretty clearly more or less identical to boiling water.
- butvacuum 8mo ago
  'hot dog' belongs in a thesaurus, not a dictionary. It's just a type of sausage.
  - dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
    It’s a type of sausage, but they are definitely not synonymous. At least not in American English.
  - smt88 8mo ago
    In the US, if you ordered a hot dog and got a sausage (or vice versa), it would be very reasonable to return the item and ask for something else. They are culturally completely different, the same way Cheerios in milk is not another cold soup like gazpacho is.
  - alecbz 8mo ago
    All words in a thesaurus would generally also be in a dictionary? The difference between a thesaurus and a dictionary is what each tells you about a word.
  - Wobbles42 8mo ago
    A dictionary is an enumeration of words. A thesaurus is a mapping between existing words. Every word in a thesaurus belongs in a dictionary.
  - vidarh 8mo ago
    If people assume it's "just a type of sausage" it suggests a dictionary entry is needed to explain otherwise. It's a term referring to a small set of types of sausages served in a specific small set of ways. In some places, a hot dog can be used as a synonym for the predominant type of sausage most common in hot dogs in that place, but the term is still more commonly referring to the assembly of a wiener or frankfurter wrapped in a bread of some sort.
    - krisoft 8mo ago
      > the term is still more commonly referring to the assembly of a wiener or frankfurter wrapped in a bread of some sort I had that disagreement in an alpine resort once. A seller was vending some sort of sausage stuffed in a bread, i was hungry so I walked up to them with money in hand and said "A hot dog please" while pointing at the only thing they were selling. The lady was mortified by my utterance, and was not willing to accept the money until I agreed with her that it is a bratwurst and not a hot dog. :D The disagreement felt a bit academical, but given that she was holding the hot dogs hostage and money does not taste that good she won the argument.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  Yeah, the good examples are usually in dictionaries as headwords, the moderate examples are usually in dictionaries as phrases within the entry for one (or more) of the words that comprise them, leaving fairly weak examples actually “missing” if you want to use “missing words with spaces” as the basis for content.
- michaeld123 8mo ago
  Fair point. I just rewrote the intro w/ the naming-function argument first.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

simlevesque 8mo ago

The first two I kind of understand what the author means. But "help me" and "severe pain" made me think that I'm just not the right public for this text.

dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
I don’t see how boiling water could ever be a single word. Would that mean we need entries for every other liquid boiling? i guess Saturday night could have some extra details explaining the context around our standard work week. But even that is a stretch.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- Wobbles42 8mo ago
  A single word for boiling water would be like the single word "slush" we have for ice in water. It likely could apply to other liquids in the same mixed state, but would be assumed to refer to water (or solutions or colloidal mixtures primarily consisting of water) in common speech. Water is extremely common, and has anonymously high heats of crystalization and vaporization, so it is the most common example of a mixed phase system and the only one most people encounter in everyday life.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - DonHopkins 8mo ago
    Inuktitut / Kalaallisut (Greenlandic): qanik -- snow falling aput -- snow on the ground pukak -- crystalline powder snow (like salt) aniuk -- snow used to make water maujaq -- deep soft snow you sink into piqsirpoq (verb) -- drifting snow / blowing snow Central Alaskan Yup’ik qanuk -- falling snow aput -- snow on the ground nevluk -- wet snow aniu -- snow for drinking water

jakub_g 8mo ago

It's quite interesting that "boiling water" in many Slavic languages is actually a separate word (and not derived from "water", but from "boiling"; similar how the author mentions "ice" being used instead of "frozen water").

epgui 8mo ago
I mean it’s interesting that this is generally the case with many (or even most) words across languages… But I’d wager it’s more the norm than the exception, so I don’t know if “boiling water” is that interesting of an example.
dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
It was mentioned in other comments but boiled water is steam, and frozen water is ice. We do not have separate words for freezing water or boiling water. in the slavic languages do they have a different way to describe boiling or freezing milk, or any other liquid?
- Wobbles42 8mo ago
  We have the word slush to mean a mixture of ice and water. A single word for boiling water would occupy a similar conceptual space. While these are not separate states of matter, they ARE special thermodynamic systems, with the particular property that they tend to remain exactly at the phase transition temperature while heat is added or removed from the system. This is a somewhere esoteric technical distinction, but it has practical everyday consequences. It's why boiling food works so consistently as a universal cooking option. You don't need to control the temperature of boiling water, it is an exact temperature that depends only on ambient pressure. As a consequence recipes work by only specifying time, sometimes with a single adjustment for people at higher altitudes. This is remarkable given the wide variety of containers and heat sources used, and it is used practically by virtually every cooking tradition, even if it's reason for working is not common knowledge. It shouldn't be surprising it'd acquire a single word as a unified concept.
  - dec0dedab0de 8mo ago

DonHopkins 8mo ago

>"Boiling water" ... I would hope that none of those examples were taking up space in a dictionary. Yeah, I agree! Fuck ICE!