Talk:-side

Deletion discussion

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-side

There is nothing about this that would say that this is a suffix rather than (deprecated template usage) side in combination. DCDuring TALK 11:13, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

For cogent arguments on the other side of this point, see Category_talk:English_words_suffixed_with_-side. DCDuring TALK 12:27, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Fix and keep: Words like stateside, poolside... Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 13:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

What definition of side would this be? Do we have it? Should we have it? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:16, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I doubt that it is just one sense, but MWOnline has "an area next to something — usually used in combination <a poolside interview>". (deprecated template usage) Stateside seems to involve a sense closer to MW's senses of either "a position that is opposite to or contrasted with another" or and extension of "a place, space, or direction with respect to a center or to a line of division (as of an aisle, river, or street)" to 'area of division' to allow an ocean to fit more comfortably to explain its origins. Of course, there is no reason why a current definition of need have an exact fit with each current meaning, just as (deprecated template usage) -le does not have an adequate sense to explain the current meaning of (deprecated template usage) hustle.

I think our closest sense is "A region in a specified position with respect to something." but the reader would have to realize that the something can be defined by context, as in stateside. We are not too consistent as to whether we rely on context to make up for deficiency in our definitions or forbid using context because doing so would deny lexicographic legitimacy to some content. DCDuring TALK 18:27, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. bd2412 T 20:23, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

RFV discussion: June–July 2016

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-side

I'm not sure that this is a genuine suffix. DonnanZ (talk) 10:03, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Any word made up from side is normally splittable, whether it's the first part of the word, or the last part. This is unlike a true suffix or prefix. DonnanZ (talk) 10:35, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Donnanz By "splittable", do you mean that all words ending -side are compounds? I think this should probably be at RFD, rather than RFV, since it's a debate about the grammar of the word. Anyway, "side" is not an adverb, so in a phrase like "He went airside", it clearly can't be split like *"He went air side". -side behaves like a classic suffix: it has predictable behaviour, it can change the part of speech of a word, it is productive (there are relatively recent coinages like planetside and spaceside), and the resulting words do not always make sense as a literal sum of parts (neither planets nor fires literally have "sides"). Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:26, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I RFVed this as we need to find out whether reputable dictionaries recognise it as a suffix, Oxford for one doesn't. Wiktionary shouldn't always be a renegade.

I repeat the assertion that every word including side is splittable, separable, or divisible, whether this normally happens or not; in fact there are many terms which normally aren't combined, such as credit side and debit side. Words such as hillside also have a different form (sidehill); fireside, by the side of the fire; airside is actually listed as a noun by Oxford, not as an adverb. Place names such as Humberside are also separable (the side of the Humber). I could go on and on, but I won't. DonnanZ (talk) 12:27, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

"sidehill" is dialectal and not a generalizable pattern ("sidefire" seems to mean something totally from "fireside", and an airport worker would be totally baffled by "sideair"); "by the side of the fire" is a circumlocution and again not generalizable (*"by the side of the air"?); regardless of what Oxford says, airside clearly behaves like an adjective and an adverb, and Chambers and the OED have it as both; you can't take proper nouns apart (Newtown isn't just a new town) and at any rate, it's not just [river]+side: the River Mersey flows through Warrington, but Warrington is not part of Merseyside while Southport is despite not being on the side of the Mersey. Smurrayinchester (talk) 14:26, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I have checked Cambridge, Chambers, Collins and Oxford, and they all redirect you to side when searching for -side. Of the points you raised, airside is a strange one: it doesn't mean on the side where the air is, but the side where the aircraft are. Apparently the antonym is landside, but I've never heard it used. Newtown is a very unimaginative name, did it never occur to people that it would ever get old? But it may be newer than some other town. The term Merseyside may have been in use before the local authority was formed, I don't know. But there is not much sense in having some terms listed under -side and others listed as hyponyms [1]. It's all very confusing at present. DonnanZ (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

As Smurrayinchester says, this is productive and changes the part of speech of the word it applies to, e.g. "I'm going planetside tomorrow" (although our definition is currently inadequate) is grammatically like "I'm going down tomorrow" and can't be replaced with "I'm going planet tomorrow", "I'm going side of planet tomorrow". Some of the things currently listed as using "-side" may in fact be noun + noun compounds using "-side", but some do seem to be using a suffix "-side".
Unfortunately, the only books I can find that mention a suffix -side mention it in Asian varieties of English only: J. Raimund Pfarrkirchner, A Natural Fortress →ISBN, page 81, describing a Sherpa who says things like "It is down-side from Lukla", says: "It became common to hear, as did the use of an adjective or noun plus the suffix '-side' to denote relative location." And Stephen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, Darrell T. Tryon, Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific →ISBN, writes: "Two other CPE [Chinese Pidgin English] features, not in the table, which were probably introduced by Chinese immigrants are look-see (from 1924) and the suffix -side as in topside (from 1934)." A number of other references mention a suffix -side used in forming the names of sugars, which however seems to be a misunderstanding (glucoside is glucos(e) + -ide).
- -sche (discuss) 17:38, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

• Keep - voting despite this being RFV since the nomination is not RFV-ish. As for "I RFVed this as we need to find out whether reputable dictionaries recognise it as a suffix": Please read WT:CFI, in particular WT:ATTEST. RFV has nothing to do with "reputable ditionaries". In RFV, we don't rely on dictionaries, reputable or otherwise. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:09, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Sense 2 is cited, in that stateside, planetside, dirtside and spaceside are attested and "side" cannot be a noun in those constructions, so they must attest something like this suffix. Sense 1 is debatable; one can say "a fireside chat" as well as "a fire-side chat" as well as e.g. "a road-surface covering", where the second element is a noun but the end result is or functions as an adjective, so it seems unclear if citations of the usexes given actually use the suffix or not. Senses 3 and 4 are even more debatable. Is there a way to tell the suffix apart from the noun in senses 1, 3 and 4? If not, is this perhaps an RFD issue more than an RFV one? - -sche (discuss) 07:47, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I remain unconvinced. DonnanZ (talk) 11:05, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

The entry does not even have the PoS-changing adverb sense.

In all three of the senses in which -side supposedly produces an adjective, it is easy to argue that it usually produces a noun that can be used attributively, which eliminates those as valid senses.

How would the PoS-change argument apply to sidesaddle? Should we have an entry for -saddle? DCDuring TALK 13:19, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

It's sense 2: "Forms adjectives and adverbs describing position in relation to a dividing line or other separation." I've made the examples more explicit about this. As for -saddle, it's not productive - there are no other similar words, so sidesaddle is a one off oddity. If there was a whole load of adverbs denoting various riding styles, all ending -saddle, and ideally if it also allowed the production of readily-understood nonce words, then we could consider it as a suffix. Smurrayinchester (talk)

What needs doing for this to pass RFV? Three citations for every sense? Trivial but tedious. Equinox ◑ 08:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Each sense is attested (and thus now RFV-passed), in that sufficiently many attested words using it are mentioned above. The question, AFAICT, is over whether senses 1, 3 and 4 belong at -side or at side, which — because citations would be identical in either case, and hence citations cannot answer the question — is an RFD question. - -sche (discuss) 23:48, 9 July 2016 (UTC)