Talk:growing

RFD discussion: January–September 2022

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

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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growing

falling

surrounding

serving

spinning

I have struck the ones not being discussed. List separately if you must. DonnanZ (talk) 08:26, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

RFD-sense the adjectives; they're just present participle with no additional meanings. Compare them to present participles that actually carry additional information in their adjectival senses, like becoming or eating. See also the RFD-deleted #spiring. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 03:48, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Delete Vininn126 (talk) 09:18, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Keep. Although it is also a present participle, it is definitely an adjective, and that assertion is utter nonsense. Four references now bear testimony. DonnanZ (talk) 10:57, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

It's as much an adjective as any other present participle. Do you want to have two parts of speech, verb and adjective, for every single -ing word? Compare this to eating which actually has a true adjective sense that is distinct from the present participle. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:38, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not, it depends. But the evidence of this as an adjective is there, so why argue the toss? DonnanZ (talk) 13:45, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Because it's essentially the same information doubled, as it's already there in the active participle information. We don't have a habit of doubling information - and if we do, usually it's removed. And tbh the noun senses feel like they might be covered by the gerund as well. We don't need all the same information 3 times. Vininn126 (talk) 13:50, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Donnanz – Where is that evidence? I don’t see it. Did someone remove it? Milk is good for growing children. – Chicken manure is good for growing potatoes.^[1]  --Lambiam 17:37, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Milk is good for growing children is included as a usex; it could be rephrased as Milk is good for a growing child.. I don't know whether the chicken manure one was ever included, but growing as used there seems to be a present participle. I did add a quote to grow today, dangers to trespassers, especially children, are growing [increasing]. DonnanZ (talk) 18:25, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

The bit in small print was just a joke. The question remains. When the Titanic is sinking, she is a sinking ship. When Titania is growing, she is a growing child. Are both adjectives? Are all present participles adjectives? If not, how is growing different?  --Lambiam 00:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I would say yes, definitely an adjective in both cases, as growing is preceded by "a". DonnanZ (talk) 00:43, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

If you read the English Wikipedia on Modern English Participles, you get this: "Participles, or participial phrases (clauses) formed from them, are used as follows:

1. As an adjective used in an attributive sense", so while they do work that way, it's already implied by having the entry list "present participle". That covers its 1) usage in the "continuous" tenses, 2) its adjectival use and 3) its gerund use. Why should we separate them when it's already built into the definition of "present participle"? Vininn126 (talk) 00:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I wish that editors wouldn't add other terms after the debate has started. First of all, adjectives need not be comparable, that is a popular misconception. And what about the combinations, fast-growing, ever-growing, are they not adjectives? "The children are growing" uses the present participle, "there is a growing feeling" the adjective. May I also say that even if this is deleted, there is nothing to stop another editor reinstating it, as the page will remain. DonnanZ (talk) 14:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Re "comparable": I never said it has to be comparable, I don't think anybody ever has said that all adjectives are comparable as that would be patently absurd. Nobody disputes that nominative is an adjective.

Re "nothing to stop another editor reinstating it": Wrong. I am stopping them. Re-adding RFD-deleted terms without consensus is not allowed. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 14:42, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that adminship has gone to this user's head. DonnanZ (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Doesn't change the fact you shouldn't touch those things until the debate is over. Vininn126 (talk) 19:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what you're talking about. The only edits I have made to growing are adding references. As a normal RFD notice says (but not in this case) "You may continue to edit this entry while the discussion proceeds." DonnanZ (talk) 20:32, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

No one said anything about comparability, and the the evidence of derived terms is not evidence that they are adjectives. It's simply an adverb + a participle, nothing more. Vininn126 (talk) 19:30, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Keep: I think it's well established that -ing can be used to create adjectives as well as the present participles of verbs; indeed, this is what etymology 3, sense 2 of our entry says: "Having a specified quality, characteristic, or nature; of the kind of". Moreover, all of the entries nominated above are marked as having an adjective sense by the OED, so I'd say the lemming principle applies. — SGconlaw (talk) 17:46, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes they can, which is exactly why we shouldn't record this information in every single -ing entry. To give another point of reference: Almost all German and Romanian adjectives can, without morphological alteration, also be used adverbially; would you be in favor of adding identical adverb senses to almost all Category:German adjectives and Category:Romanian adjectives? Note also that we have RFD-deleted #spiring, so keeping these nominations here is just making the dictionary internally inconsistent. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:53, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  I don’t know either German or Romanian so I can’t comment as to those languages. I also don’t know if it’s the case that in English every present participle of a verb can be used adjectivally. — SGconlaw (talk) 18:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  I would say that 99% of English participles can be used adjectivially - that's... more or less their job. Vininn126 (talk) 19:31, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  I oppose the inclusion of these "trivial part-of-speech conversions" that come with absolutely no semantic, orthographic nor phonetic change, for the reasons that 1. they bloat the dictionary immensely 2. the information presented therein is a general property of the language's grammar, not of the individual words 3. they make looking up interesting information harder (like, finding all non-trivial adjectives that are born out of present participles in the case of English) 4. the use of including them is extremely marginal (once you know the grammar rule that present participles can be used adjectivally, they all become self-evident). I don't think a very small percentage of outliers justifies the inclusion either; those should probably be put in a category rather (if they even exist, which remains to be seen in the case of English present participles). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 21:07, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

• Delete. This should IMO apply to all present participles that have no other adjectival sense than the predictable “that verbs”.  --Lambiam 12:44, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• In response to this discussion, I have now created Wiktionary:Votes/2022-01/Excluding trivial present participial adjectives. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:36, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That's a worrying development. Pending the outcome of that vote, any decision on these ones should be suspended. DonnanZ (talk) 14:25, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-kept: no consensus for deletion after over 6 months. Both parties' arguments have merits. (Not that it matters since I am only doing tallying.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:26, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

RFV discussion: September 2022–February 2023

The following information has failed Wiktionary's verification process (permalink).

Failure to be verified means that insufficient eligible citations of this usage have been found, and the entry therefore does not meet Wiktionary inclusion criteria at the present time. We have archived here the disputed information, the verification discussion, and any documentation gathered so far, pending further evidence.
Do not re-add this information to the article without also submitting proof that it meets Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion.

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growing

Rfv-sense adjective That grows. Can any citations be provided that clearly demonstrate adjectivality? Compare Talk:spiring. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:02, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

There are plenty of use examples for non-growing ... e.g. non-growing tumors, non-growing cells, non-growing companies. Unless those are somehow still verbs (I could be wrong), I would say that this should instantly pass on the basis that an adjective formed with non- cannot exist without its base form also being an adjective. —Soap— 19:29, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

To me, it seems like you're assuming the conclusion: your examples can equally (and, I would say, more easily, with Occam's razor suggesting we not posit that words have any more parts of speech than they can unambiguously be shown to have) be viewed as proving it possible for a non-foobar adjective to exist without foobar being an adjective. The same thing happens with e.g. unraining#Adjective skies, where there is no adjective *raining. - -sche (discuss) 19:37, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The Occam's razor makes it possible to declare all adjectival behaviors to be participial: participles, being amphibians, do behave as multiple parts of speech. Wiktionary:English adjectives does not show prefixing with non- as a test of adjectivity. Of course, "non-growing" is formed by treating "growing" as an adjective; the problem is that participle "growing" can behave like an adjective by definition. The question remains which adjectival behaviors are accounted for as participial and which as adjectival-beyond-participial, and why. I don't know of an external authoritative source explaining that. Wiktionary:English adjectives contains some tests of adjectivity but does not trace most of them to sources. In the meantime, “growing”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. shows adjectival definitions in M-W, Collins and Macmillan, and one can only wonder what their reasoning is. However, our definition is merely "That grows", whereas they have multiple senses and more refined definitions. I don't really know what to do here; I have more questions than answers. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:33, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

The tests that I believe are sufficient to distinguish "true" adjectives from present participles are:

1. Modification by adverbial very or too
2. Existence of comparative (-er) or superlative forms (-est)
3. Use after forms of become
4. Existence as adjective prior to use as another 'part of speech'.
5. Use with a sense not derived from a current meaning of the verb.

I would not be too surprised if there proved to be exceptions. DCDuring (talk) 14:17, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

RFV Failed Ioaxxere (talk) 22:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)