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"Peanut butter" would be dealt with by including a reference under the "butter" entry. Something like: 'N, culinary. A paste made of ground up nuts, sometimes
by eszed 8mo ago
"Peanut butter" would be dealt with by including a reference under the "butter" entry. Something like:
'N, culinary. A paste made of ground up nuts, sometimes with additional oils and other ingredients. E.g. "peanut butter", "almond butter".'
"Amusement park", same. Falls very much under the "place of recreation" definition of "park".
"Black hole" is maybe a bit different, because it's a scientific term - and certainly in a science dictionary would be included as a two-word item - but, for consistency, in a regular dictionary should be handled identically to the above, with a note on the word "hole".
While including noun phrases as singular entities in a word game is entirely appropriate, I don't think the OP has formed a rigorous definition of the concept that they are trying to describe. I agree with the other comment which suggests that they need some instruction / practice using a dictionary.
- boxed 8mo agoThe word splitting in English is an accident of history, not a linguistic reality though. This is hilariously obvious to Swedish speakers :P
- eszed 8mo agoWell, it's a linguistic reality - all of which are accidents of history - which absolutely isn't to say it reflects anything definitive about reality reality. My point is that English has a straightforward way of dealing with this (admittedly arbitrary) case, which OP either ignores or doesn't understand, and instead adds unnecessary categorical complication.
- boxed 8mo agoIt's not a linguistic reality in spoken English is what I meant. We Swedish speakers can hear it when English speakers pronounce the space and when they don't, because we're super sensitive to that difference because our language cares. We can easily flip from one state to the other and repeat the word/words back and English speakers will instantly hear that it sounds weird and wrong but often they don't understand why. English spelling does NOT line up with pronounced English when it comes to what we in Swedish calls "särskrivning" which is a word that roughly means "separateness writing".
- eszed 8mo agoOh! Yeah, I understand what you mean. "Black hole" (the astronomical entity) and "black hole" (a hole that is black) are said differently, but it takes a good ear, and probably some training, for English speakers to notice. How interesting that speakers of (some) other languages detect that so "automatically"! There also are dialectical complications - some speakers tend to run words together more than others, or maybe use tone / stress rather than syllabic modifications to mark the changes - and I'd be interested to know the extent to which you notice those structures as well? Nevertheless, dictionaries (conventional ones, at least) concern themselves with written rather than spoken English, so I think my point stands. :-)