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.

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ticulatedspline 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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 and would fail the substitution test.

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gligierko 2 days ago | parent [-]

I removed that sentence/claim, I see the point that "boiling" and "raging" was a bad example.

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ticulatedspline 2 days ago | parent [-]

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 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		"Simmering H20", for all that simmering isn't quite the same as boiling, is pretty clearly more or less identical to boiling water.

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dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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michaeld123 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fair point. I just rewrote the intro w/ the naming-function argument first.

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butvacuum 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

'hot dog' belongs in a thesaurus, not a dictionary. It's just a type of sausage.

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vidarh 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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krisoft 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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.

	▲	vidarh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Personally think a bratwurst is borderline, in that it is "close enough" that I can see someone calling a bratwurst in a bread a hot dog, and I wouldn't react if a shop listed them as a type of hot dog on a menu. But, yeah, some places "hot dog" also carries a connotation of potentially using lower quality sausages, so I can also totally see a bratwurst vendor taking offense...

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Wobbles42 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A dictionary is an enumeration of words. A thesaurus is a mapping between existing words.

Every word in a thesaurus belongs in a dictionary.

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alecbz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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dec0dedab0de 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s a type of sausage, but they are definitely not synonymous. At least not in American English.

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smt88 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.