Talk:hot as fire

RFD discussion: January–March 2018

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hot as fire

This simile is so straightforward (and weak) that I don't see how it could be considered idiomatic. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 23:20, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

edit: I'm still voting for its deletion, but the question of SOPness or non-SOPness is irrelevant to me: my issue is that it's not a set phrase, a lexicalised unit. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:37, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam Borderline case, surely, but it can be interpreted like this. Maybe a room is extremely hot, and someone says it's "hot as fire", but it's not actually as hot as fire, but it was only an exaggeration. A similar example would be cold as ice. Abstain for now. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:48, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• Delete. It's not even a fixed expression. The fixed expressions are hot as hell and hot as Hades. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 08:22, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
  • @Mahagaja: hot as hell went through RFD as well, btw. I'm still wondering whether as hell was extracted from it. If yes, hot as hell is definitely idiomatic, at least historically (in contemporary English though, is it really felt like a true simile and not as the sum of hot + as hell?). --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 00:41, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

User created a fair amount of crap (Special:DeletedContributions/Jooge). We have cold as ice and that also seems straightforward (ice is colder than most things a human being is gonna deal with day to day). However I find it hard to say exactly why this should be deleted. It is obvious but so are some proverbs. Equinox ◑ 08:26, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

• Keep. It's the same as cold as ice, white as snow, black as night etc. If this is deleted, those should be deleted too. RightGot (talk) 02:17, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
  • @RightGot: How is it the same? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 17:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
    • @RightGot: You do realise how annoying it can be to have someone who's never contributed here, bump in and vote without providing any semblance of argument, I hope? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 22:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
• Delete. Meaning is obvious from its parts + not strongly a set phrase. Mihia (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
• Delete. It's bupkis, for God's sake. -- · (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
• After giving it some thought, I want to point out to everyone very clearly that this is not, technically speaking, a sum of its parts. Something that is "hot as fire" is, more often than not, not literally as hot as fire, so you can't interpret its meaning by looking at it literally, thus making it idiomatic. I encourage everyone to rethink the consensus here. I believe this consensus is very seriously going against our rules about idiomaticity. Therefore, keep. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:37, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think this really matters, even if true (which I find a bit hard to judge since I don't really recognise "hot as fire" as a set expression). It is a regular feature of the English language to exaggerate in the "as ~ as ~" pattern. Mihia (talk) 02:49, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I think I could cite "rich as God" in describing a human. "Heavy as lead" is, or at least was, a standard expression, not usually applying to things with a density of 11 g/cm^3 (I suppose you can argue that the weight of lead is undefined without a quantity, making it pedantically even less SoP.) ("high enough to touch the sun.", etc.) With a little patience, I think you can find any number of such examples. And they're not lexicographically interesting; I could write "the day was as hot as the heart of Polaris" in a science fiction novel, and I don't think my readers would have any problem understanding.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I wish we stopped throwing this concept of "SOPness" left and right; I don't think every case can and should be judged in that light. It's easy to carry it too far, to overthink: you'll start seeing non-SOPness everywhere (often for extra-linguistic reasons) and will soon be thinking everything should be kept; or you'll go down the other route, and want to delete things that are really lexicalised.

"you can't interpret its meaning by looking at it literally, thus making it idiomatic" is very wrong; there are plenty of linguistic "things" you can't look at literally; that doesn't necessarily make them idiomatic and lexical. I think figurativeness is not a sufficient (nor a necessary) condition for idiomaticity.

To me, the real questions are: is it a solid lexical unit? Are these words strongly associated in the mind of speakers? Is that a fixed/set string of words? Does it have a special "slot" allocated to it in the lexicon?

"hot as fire" simply evokes nothing special. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:23, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Why is it our job to figure out what "evokes something special"? Ever heard of one man's trash is another man's treasure? The whole "special" thing also makes useless our point to remain neutral in our writing. And if we really want to change rules about what should and shouldn't be deleted, as far as similes go, it should be explained in WT:CFI. And that really calls for a WT:BP discussion. PseudoSkull (talk) 14:45, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe that was badly worded. I'm not speaking of some emotional criterion, and saying that we should reject words that we find boring or nondescript, or that are not to our taste. When I'm writing "evoke something special", I mean that on a cognitive level: does it feel like a somewhat random string of words, or does it jump to our brain as a strong lexical unit? "it's hot as hell in here!" sounds instantaneously like idiomatic English to me, while "it's hot as fire in here!" does nothing of the sort; if anything, it sounds a bit clumsy. It's not even that I find it "ugly", displeasing or "bad", it's just that it doesn't really work. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 23:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam We need figurative entries to stay here if they are attested by the 3 cites rule. Figurative strings of words are exceedingly important for a dictionary because they cannot be deduced simply by looking at the definition of term 1 + term 2 + term 3, but can only be deduced by looking at all three as a unit. It doesn't matter that it's pleasing to the general mind. No; if it is used in 3 durable citations or more, it is a set enough phrase for us to include it, 'nuff said. In fact, that's the entire point of the 3 citations rule; is to make sure that the phrase is used enough to be considered a lexical unit. If hot as fire was only used in 1 Usenet post, that wouldn't be sufficient, but the term has extensive usage in all sorts of places according to my searches. Your definition of a solid lexical unit does not align properly with Wiktionary's definition of a solid lexical unit, and thus, even though the phrase is still "ugly", it should still be kept to inform readers. Like I said last night on Dan Polansky's talk page; Wiktionary isn't about what's pleasing to the eye, but the primary goal is to be informative. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:37, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Delete, it doesn't seem to be a set phrase but rather a SOPpy simile, with routine use of exaggeration. - -sche (discuss) 16:44, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

SOPpy or sloppy? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 23:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Keep: I think it is a set phrase/conventional simile - though a relatively obvious one. It is listed in "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries: And Other Delicious Sayings" (1997) and other books on English. John Cross (talk) 22:40, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Keep conventional similes so that non-native speakers know they are actually used, and find fitting translations (none entered yet). The Czech word-for-word translation *horký jako oheň is not used. hot as fire, cold as ice, thick as a brick at Google Ngram Viewer. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:24, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Some more Ngrams: hot as fire, hot as hell, hot as Hades at Google Ngram Viewer. There, hot as fire was the frequency leader until about 1930. On another note, to correct myself, I do find some uses of google books:"horký jako oheň", not too many. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:41, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I find that Czech point (pun unintended) fairly irrelevant. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 17:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Keep I think that Per utramque cavernam's comparison of "hot as hell" and "hot as fire" is misleading. Of course that "it is hot as fire in here" does not sound well, because this simile seems to be more often used with different things than places, eg. the breath was as hot as fire. Hot as fire seems to be a solid lexical unit with idiomatic meaning. There are thousands of hot things like a switched-on cooker, freshly fried chips, feverish body, and so on, but only a few of them form stabilized similes and as such should be kept. Btw: various printed phrasebooks accept this simile as a lexical unit too, e. g. here, here or here. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 01:33, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: The entry needs to reflect that difference in usage then. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 16:14, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: I added an example. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

• RFD kept: no consensus for deletion; 5 keeps, 6 deletes (incl. Equinox). --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)