Talk:colonial
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The first two noun senses
- A person, territory or period that is or was formerly controlled by an outside state.
- A person from a country that controls or controlled another.
The first seems to be trying to define colony and/or an adjective sense. With the second I'm familiar with the the opposite sense, "person from a country that is or was controlled by another" (which I've just added), but not with this usage. Thryduulf 11:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
- The control issue seems like a red herring or, at least, a complication to be avoided. I think a "colonial" (person) is just an inhabitant of a colony. A colonist I think of as the first generation of colonials (not born in the colony). I don't think of "colonial" as including the native peoples, though interbreeding and assimilation create gray areas. There are also "colonials" that are objects by, for, or in the style of the "colonials" (people). — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).
- There is though usage, not unlikely UK only, of modern Australians, Americans and Canadians as "colonials" - search bgc and ggc for "bloody colonials" (exclude "buffy" on the latter as there are lots of quotes of a w:Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode). Thryduulf 21:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't that one of those put-downs that depends for its humorous or other effect on being counter-factual? I am personally disinclined to credit humor, irony, insults, and poetry in trying to get at basic meaning. And can we really capture those kinds of twists of the basic meanings? DCDuring TALK 21:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
- Re: "A colonist I think of as the first generation of colonials (not born in the colony)": I don't know, my grade-school history textbooks used (deprecated template usage) colonists to mean “Americans” up till the Revolutionary War. w:American Revolutionary War does the same. —RuakhTALK 00:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
- I wasn't very precise in my statement. Though my narrow sense may be one possible extra sense for colonist (and correspondingly for colonial), they are much more commonly just synonyms, I think. DCDuring TALK 14:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
- I was not able to find any support for either sense, checking available dictionaries and trying various searches on b.g.c. I suspect the author was simply confused. -- Visviva 13:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
RFV failed, senses removed. —RuakhTALK 22:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)