Talk:breast man

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breast man

SOP from a sense of "man"; a man who likes "foo" is a "foo man" - in this case the breasts of women or chickens. Also nominating tits man, ass man, arse man, butt man, and two senses of leg man. This collocation could, of course, apply to any body part and any food or subdivision thereof. One could be an elbow man, a toe man, a neck man, a steak man, a hot dog man, a potato man, etc. bd2412 T 15:17, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

• I can't see that definition ("foo man") in our entry for (deprecated template usage) man. SemperBlotto 15:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
  • True, but that just means the sense is missing, not that all of these terms are not SOP. bd2412 T 15:29, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh it goes further than that, I'm a Formula 1 man myself. Delete all and and some sort to man, and I suppose to woman, gal, lady etc. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

If this is obvious, would anyone care to articulate the principle involved? It can't just involve the idea that any [noun phrase] + "man" is to be read "man who has a preference for [noun phrase]". Is the mere existence of a sense such as the following, from MWOnline, sufficient: "one extremely fond of or devoted to something specified <strictly a vanilla ice cream man>"? — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at July 31 2010.

That pretty much sums it up, although I would tweak it a bit and say that it is "one extremely fond of or devoted to a specified type within the category of things to which that type belongs". Someone who is a "vanilla ice cream man" is excluded from being a "chocolate ice cream man" but not from being a "wing man" when it comes to chicken parts, a "shoulder man" when it comes to attraction to body parts, or a "soccer man" when it comes to professional sports. bd2412 T 16:56, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Has to be a male person (usually an adult male). The feminine equivalent would be woman, quite often gal in informal contexts. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:02, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Delete this and its counterparts, listed below, and add the sense to man if no one has yet (I haven't checked).​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and added the sense in the language I proposed above. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:02, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems to achieve a kind of precision without communication to normal folk. The mention of types and categories brought Bertrand Russell's early works to mind.

Is the specification necessary? Any preference is relative to something else, so it is trivially true that one can define a category such that the definition is valid, but that makes it vacuous. Are you saying that this is only used in discourse to contrast with some other stated, assumed, previous, or previously known preference? Or, do you mean to restrict "category" to only natural category (whatever that is when it's at home)? DCDuring TALK 17:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that's part of the definition of the word as it is being used here. If I were to say "some people prefer Mozart, but me, I'm a breast man", that would be nonsensical, since there's nothing about being a breast man that keeps one from preferring Mozart to other composers. Maybe there's a simpler way to define it. bd2412 T 17:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The nonsense in your example remaind in equal measure if one dispenses with "man": "Some people prefer Mozart, but me, I prefer breasts." DCDuring TALK 17:59, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't work, though, if I said "some people prefer Mozart, but me, I'm a breast". The word "man" has significance in that phrasing, since it carries the meaning of "one who prefers". bd2412 T 22:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand your point or even what the subject of the first sentence is. In any event, it is the very nature of discourse that one avoid disjunctiveness, eg, changing the subject from music to, umm, food. It seems to me that disjunctiveness is the source of the "nonsense" in your example. Perhaps you can produce an example whose nonsensicality derives not from disjunctiveness, but from the error in the MWOnine definition above, which seemed adequate to me, though not fully substitutable.

Your definition, as worded, has some defects: 1., it is hard to understand, 2., it fails to indicate that what is referred to in "type" need to be specified in the construction, 3., it fails to indicate that what is referred to in "category" is not to be specified in the construction, and, 4., it is not substitutable, nor is it worded as a functional definition. DCDuring TALK 23:43, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank God this is a wiki, then, and someone with better definition-writing skills can come along and fix it. bd2412 T 00:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

While I agree somewhat with the reasoning for deletion, I'm not sure the reasoning is as sound as it seems. Consider "pizza man" (man who delivers pizza"; "garbage man/dustman" (man who removes garbage/trash); "yes man" (man who says "yes" sycophantically); "head man" (man who functions as the head of a group). A "breast man" is not someone who delivers, removes, says, functions as, or even simply "prefers" breasts, but is someone prefentially aroused sexually by interaction with female breasts. --EncycloPetey 04:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

"Pizza man", "flag man", "guitar man", et al are accommodated by a different sense of man, added just previously. Take a look.

I don't think that sexual preferences are sufficiently different in kind to warrant distinctive treatment on this set of words, when the syntax and semantics of the use of "man" coincide with its use for other kinds of preference. I don't think we would want to distinguish other kinds of preferences either, say, for Linux vs. Windows, vanilla vs chocolate, or paper vs plastic (at grocery checkout in US). DCDuring TALK 10:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes man seems distinctive. I'm not sure that there are enough analogs to warrant a distinctive sense of "man". OTON, there may be other ways in which "man" is used in productive combination with other words that would warrant a different sense.

I wonder whether it would serve someone learning English to redirect them (when they are looking up "breast man" et al) to the entry for "man". It would be nice if, when doing so, we could highlight the applicable sense of "man" instead of having to rely on the learner's motivation and skill in using Wiktionary as a learning resource. 10:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you proposing that just for the entries nominated for deletion here, or for all possible collocations? I can see further complications arising from that. After all, a plastic surgeon who specializes in enlargement of a certain body part might well be known as a "[foo bady part] man"; and there are some collocations which provide similar opportunities for common constructions, such as ice cream man and pizza man. bd2412 T 18:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

In these cases, I think a general sense covers it and a collocation line for "person with a specified preference" might look like"

• (person with specified preference): ladies man?, leg man, breast man, meat man, team man, beer man, meat-and-potatoes man

The examples I took are more or less the top collocations in this sense from COCA. DCDuring TALK 19:00, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I would say lady's man is unrelated, as it refers to a man who has a way with ladies, as opposed to one who merely has a preference for them, or a specialty in them. bd2412 T 01:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Neither that spelling nor ladies' man was high on the list at COCA. I think that we may be on the point of noting a divergence in meaning between the possessive spellings and ladies man. DCDuring TALK 02:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I think we should delete all of the "breast man", "butt man", etc entries — where "man", as articulated above, adds the meaning "man who prefers" — because seemingly anything can be preferred (again, as articulated above). Consider: "When they gather with their friends to watch a football game, some guys prefer to eat chicken wings, but me, I'm a pizza man." Although unattested, even this is intelligible: "Some guys like to go rooting through other people's recycle bins after the holidays, but me, I'm a garbage man." = "I prefer to go rooting through people's garbage, instead of their recycling". However, we do and should have an entry for "garbage man" in the sense "a man who is employed to pick up (and dispose of) garbage", per the tennis-player test if nothing else; the same goes for "pizza man" in the sense "one who delivers pizza". — Beobach 19:50, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see anyone actually saying to keep, and any concerns about deleting (except Wnt's, below, about ass man) seem to have been alleviated by arguments, so I've deleted the entries.​—msh210℠ (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

tits man

See breast man, above. bd2412 T 15:18, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

butt man

See breast man, above. bd2412 T 15:18, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

leg man

See breast man, above. bd2412 T 15:19, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

ass man

See breast man, above. bd2412 T 15:19, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You know, if you don't define this, a non-native speaker might interpret it altogether the wrong way. ;) Wnt 04:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

arse man

See breast man, above. bd2412 T 15:20, 31 July 2010 (UTC)