Timeline for To what degree is 'muchly' obsolete?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
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| Sep 16, 2015 at 20:17 | comment | added | JEL | @Robusto, I doubt this example will make anything more clear, but the OED sense of 'all fours' refering to the card game states this: "Now chiefly Caribbean (in Trinidadian and Tobagan use)." Yet that sense of 'all fours' is not considered obsolete. The question for me becomes one of how (other than by editorial fiat) a stage (degree) in the process of obsolescence is isolated lexically as "obsolete". | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 18:13 | comment | added | JEL | @Robusto, I think you're getting at a difference in kind or type rather than degree. The water is clouded by other definitional differences, among lexical, precising, intensional, extensional, ostensive et al. definitions. I was troubled giving my answer, and my responses to your comments, by this: how can a dictionary call 'obsolete' any word still used (e.g., used in dictionaries as a lemma). The balm for my trouble was that dictionary definitions are lexical, and constrained by mundane temporality. The type of 'obsolete' you ask about is local, but English in use is the lexical domain. | |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 10:58 | comment | added | Robusto | @JEL: What if a thing is obsolete in England, say, but not in Ireland? It is both obsolete and not obsolete. Yet it is less obsolete than a thing that is obsolete in both countries. | |
| Sep 15, 2015 at 7:23 | history | edited | JEL | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited to conform with edits in the question
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| Sep 15, 2015 at 7:04 | comment | added | JEL | @Robusto, the OP didn't ask about 'obsoleteness', but even if it had, the 'state or condition of being' (obsoleteness) 'no longer used' (obsolete) doesn't admit degrees. I take 'degree' as used in the title of the OP to mean 'a step or stage in a process'. The process is 'obsolescence'. Of course, if you're asking something like "why shouldn't" we speak as indefinitely as we please when defining words, that's another story, and probably a long fruitless story. To make the story short: you should speak as loosely as you please, and I, as loosely as I must. | |
| Sep 14, 2015 at 15:12 | vote | accept | Please stop being evil | ||
| Sep 14, 2015 at 12:50 | comment | added | alephzero | There are certainly degrees of obsolescence. I'm not sure about degrees of obsoleteness. | |
| Sep 14, 2015 at 10:51 | comment | added | Robusto | Why shouldn't there be degrees of obsoleteness? | |
| Sep 14, 2015 at 8:01 | history | edited | JEL | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added quote marks
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| Sep 14, 2015 at 7:47 | history | answered | JEL | CC BY-SA 3.0 |