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.