Talk:tight

Past participle of tie

Apparently also a past participle of tie in Spenser. Equinox ◑ 15:54, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

"Unkind/unfair"?

Unkind?

I'm British,aged 41, degree-level education, and I've never heard of it meaning unkind/unfair, though I'm familiar with the "miserly" sense. Orlando098 (talk) 17:19, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Similar demographic, and haven't heard it either. I'll RFV it. Equinox ◑ 17:37, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I've heard it, but only in Liverpool. Is it a regional sense? Dbfirs 07:23, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I heard it for the first time recently in the British TV horror series called ‘Red Rose’, which is set in Bolton. I can’t remember the exact quote, episode or time stamp though and I don’t fancy rewatching the whole thing just to find when it’s said. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:11, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

RFV discussion: March–June 2014

This entry has survived Wiktionary's verification process.

Please do not re-nominate for verification without comprehensive reasons for doing so.

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tight

Per Talk:tight and two British speakers not knowing this supposed British slang, I am requesting proof of the "unfair, unkind" sense (not the same as the "miserly" sense, which is separate). Equinox ◑ 17:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the sense might be exclusive to Scouse, but Im struggling to find written evidence. It's not in "The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English"Google finds it for me now!. I could go to Liverpool and record regular usage, but finding written evidence isn't so easy. It's a comparatively recent addition to Scouse slang: tight-fisted = miserly -> mean -> unfair, unkind. Dbfirs 07:34, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

... later ... The best cite I can find is from a Brookside script, and it could be interpreted as just the tight-fisted / miserly / mean sense with only the implication of unfair. I haven't found any cites of the unkind usage, so perhaps it is not common enough to merit inclusion in Wiktionary yet. If we add mean to the miserly sense, then most written usages are covered, and so are the Scouse slang senses by extension of the word mean. Dbfirs 10:51, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

It's in at least the 2006 edition of the New Partridge, together with three citations. Sense 3. I'm familiar with it from the Wirral area too. A couple more cites, including one dating back to the 70s (note that Willy Russell is a Liverpool playwright - not sure about the origin of the other one):

• 1977, Willy Russell, Our Day Out, Act One, Scene One

Reilly: Ey, Miss, hang on, hang on... can we come with y', Miss? Can we?

Digga: Go on, Miss, don't be tight, let's come.

• 2011, Andrew Hicks, "Thai Girl: A story of the one who said 'no'", unnumbered page

"That's right ... so even when life's a grind, the Thais keep smiling. They think the farang are a miserable lot who have to get drunk to enjoy themselves."

"Dutch, that's tight mate, I mean what's wrong with getting pissed. When you're not working, you gotta have a good time," said Darren.

Smurrayinchester (talk) Today, 11:45 (UTC+1)

Thanks for finding those. It's difficult to know for sure how far the "unfair"/"unkind" sense is intended, but I think we can claim a separate regional sense. Dbfirs 20:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

• RFV passed: attesting quotations are in the entry. Or I hope that they are actually attesting; a native speaker could double-check. Above, Smurrayinchester and Dbfirs seem to endorse these quotations as attesting. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:43, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Etymology

Hey. If someone knows please add information why the form is tight and not *thight as expected. Scandinavian influence? Or whatever... Thanks!Kolmiel (talk) 22:45, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

February 2015 deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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tight

RFD sense: "(sport) Not conceding many goals."

This is just a combination of "6. Well-rehearsed and accurate in execution." and "7. Lacking holes; difficult to penetrate; waterproof." as applied to football. It also seems rather inaccurate - you can't describe a goalkeeper as "tight" no matter how few goals they concede. There was one citation, which I've moved to sense 7. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Delete per nom. Many of our sports senses are similar overspecializations of more general definitions and should be rooted out. DCDuring TALK 09:18, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

@DCDuring: Why? If a word means something even slightly different in sports than it does generally, it should get a second definition. Purplebackpack89 00:55, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Tight means something distinguishable in many contexts, but we do users (Remember them?) no service by recording every possible nuance. Our list of definitions quickly becomes useless for humans, however valuable it might be for machines attempting to "understand" human speech. DCDuring TALK 04:10, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"We do users no service by recording every possible nuance." I completely disagree with that. There is a great deal of use to be had in distinguishing between nuances. I cannot fathom how you and others have convinced yourselves that it is somehow more useful to users to have fewer definitions. Purplebackpack89 06:25, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

So users can quickly locate something close to what they want. Having "exactly" what they want but making it harder to find is no help. Think cognitive limitations and impatience. DCDuring TALK 14:29, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's a terrible excuse for not covering the language as well as we should. Our primary aim should be covering the language, not worrying about cognitive limitations. Generally speaking, you only have to read the first couple words of each entry anyways: once you pass the context part, it's clear whether or not you need to read on. Purplebackpack89 16:17, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

"...not covering the language as well as we should"? That begs the question of whether we should cover it that way. There are all kinds of semantic distinctions that could be made: eating an apple involves biting and chewing, eating soup involves drinking, eating many other things involves swallowing whole, eating things like shellfish involves eating only the edible part, while eating kumquats involves eating the entire thing. Creating senses for those would just add clutter without adding anything that people couldn't have easily figured out for themselves. Using categorical statements like that hurts your argument, especially when coupled with over-the-top absolute expressions (one of your most irritating affectations) such as "terrible excuse". I think that, at the very least, the sense in question needs rewording, since tight in sports can refer to preventing all sorts of things- not just goals. If we keep this, it should be a subsense of "Lacking holes; difficult to penetrate; waterproof", and have a definition along the lines of "not allowing opportunities for opponents". We might also consider how well "Lacking holes; difficult to penetrate; waterproof" covers the expession "a tight seal". Chuck Entz (talk) 20:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

In answer to should we, yes, I think we need to have more precise definitions. I'd also note that this discussion grew out of a desire to have different definitions for sports and non-sports context. Also, there is a second sports-related definition nobody's touching on...when I hear "tight" in sports, I assume people are talking about the score being close. Also, why are you knocking only me for painting with a broad brush, when this discussion started with DC positing that a whole bunch of sports-related definitions should be deleted? Purplebackpack89 21:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, you seem to be of the opinion that Wiktionary should be designed for you, with your God-like cognitive capabilities and unquestionable good taste. But given those capabilities you don't need a dictionary. DCDuring TALK 22:07, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

How about you spend less time personally attacking me by accusing me of having a God complex and more time explaining why having fewer definitions is a good idea? Purplebackpack89 22:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I said nothing of the kind. I was trying to bring you down to earth, to realize that the ordinary Wiktionary user, for whom we should be developing it, are closer to the average human than to the average Wiktionary contributor in terms of raw capability, education, and patience. DCDuring TALK 22:33, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

But being of a lower capability and education would favor having more definitions... And I do consider the ordinary user, whom I believe wants as many definitions as possible, and uses other online dictionaries rather than Wiktionary because they have more definitions than we do. Purplebackpack89 22:41, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I see this claim, again and again (not just from Purple): “users want _____” Do we have any hard data on any such statement? If so, where do we find it? Is it just a matter of combing through WT:Feedback? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:10, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

WMF seems to have many concerns with the means by which information is collected from users. Anything that smacks of tracking user behavior, which is very cheap to do, seems to be out of the question, partially on ideological grounds. Other cheap means of getting information are essentially anecdotal or suffer from selection bias of unknown nature and magnitude. Thus we are forced to rely on WMF's own efforts, which seem never to involve projects other than WP. Feedback is our best shot AFAICT, but it suffers from a selection bias. It might be possible to draw some inferences from the information available from site trackers such as ALEXA, which shows that worldwide Wiktionary users skew greatly toward those with "advanced" graduate degrees, compared to, say MWOnline. See Special:Statistics#See also. DCDuring TALK 23:35, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

There are some things that don't need a lot of data, like keeping rare, obsolete, archaic, and dated terms out of definitions, where an alternative exists (eg, subterraneous vs subterranean). What plausible definition of our user base could possible justify using such terms? We don't even try to exclude such terms systematically. DCDuring TALK 00:24, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Also, I regularly ask people about words, to find out whether they use them, have heard of them, have heard them used in certain ways, etc. My sample is the people in my neighborhood who walk dogs. They mostly have college degrees, but relatively few have advanced degrees. I recommend that all Wiktionary contributors get a dog and talk to the full range of people they meet while walking their dog. Those who live in university ghettos would have to take stronger measures for the same result. DCDuring TALK 00:34, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Let's get this right out of the way here. There is no conceivable way by which readers are harmed by our having properly labeled entries for rare or archaic terms, or even arguably SOP entries. People who never look them up will not see them, and therefore will not have any reaction to them at all. The real question is, what do people use dictionaries for? I would think that it is not controversial to say that the most common reason anyone would use a dictionary is if they come across a word in a book or other written work, and want to know something about that word - not necessarily the definition (although that will always be up there), but maybe the pronunciation, the etymology, the relationship it has to words with similar sounds or spellings. We offer features beyond those of the typical dictionary, like translations, citations, and even anagrams. I recall that we used to have some means to see which of our entries were being viewed by the most people. If we could get that back, it would be a great tool to see what readers were finding useful. bd2412 T 02:16, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Just for the record, "people who never look them up will not see them" is not true, because of anagrams, "random entry", predictive search, our pages being spidered by Google, etc. etc. Reminds me of the "if you don't like it, don't read it!" argument of the person who posts daily inflammatory comments on your favourite blog. Equinox ◑ 02:39, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Are we equating definitions with appropriate context tags with inflammatory blog posts? I am sure that the technology exists to leave archaic terms out of the process of creating anagrams. As for the rest, I concede that there is approximately a one in four million chance that a person clicking "random entry" will arrive at any particular entry, although it will actually probably be an Italian conjugation. Predictive search results only come up for those searching for words for which we have no entry, and will not be seen by people correctly typing in titles of existing entries. We can't control what people see on Google, but a Google search quickly turning up an archaic term on Wiktionary is probably a search for that archaic term. There is, after all, a degree to which people actually look for archaic stuff, and want to know its history of usage, etymology, and the like. bd2412 T 22:19, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree with BD. There's no harm in having more entries, more definitions, and more sections. Purplebackpack89 07:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

It's perfectly real, just I wouldn't word it this way. For example, not all sports have goals, in cricket and baseball it's runs, in tennis and badminton it's points. Given that it exists and I can't see a definition it's redundant to, I would absolutely keep it. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:26, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I would like to merge the two poker definitions, #17 and #18 as I write this. But I would prefer to nominate once this discussion is closed to avoid confusion! Renard Migrant (talk) 14:27, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I think you can go ahead and merge those. This discussion should not affect that. bd2412 T 12:10, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘@Purplebackpack89 yes something even slightly different in sports should get a second definition it is part of the jargon.

An obvious sense
If I am watching a game that I don't "know" and hear something I don't understand, I will pull out my phone and find out the meaning. I want to be guided to that meaning and not a cooking meaning or a barber meaning or such. A dictionary that provides an undifferentiated list fails me as the consumer.

@DCDuring, Eirikr yes, it means something distinguishable in many contexts The entry fails the consumer when it fails to show the consumer the term in the context the consumer wants. I agree with Purplebackpack89. Nuance is the meaning of communication. Two primitive humans grunting certainly wanted to understand the nuance of another grunt.

DCDuring is discussing metrics about user experience (cognitive limitations and impatience) without data. It is not objective without numbers. I can tell you, from experience, that there will be different metrics on various consumer platforms and metrics will change over time. And, you cannot plan for disruptive technological change. The argument is no more than subjective personal bias, which everyone has and varied. Using {{context}} provides the consumer with the cognitive hint at the appropriate sense.

@Chuck Entz your examples about eating are all about the same category of activity: eating. Your distinctions are relational. Jargon is part of the whole experience of sports. For me, just add clutter is a non-argument and variation of, as I wrote in Wiktionary:Requests for verification#pedophilia recently, a subjective preference for less clarity (diff) about exclusion of the attested criminal sense of pedophilia. Various senses add nuance and clarity. Complaining about style of communication does not affect what was said.

Chuck Entz, I agree that it could be reworded but only after these senses are attributed with quotes (WT:CFI). There is not enough attributions to know how to prune any senses.

Chuck Entz, @Smurrayinchester I think that walking into a pub, pointing at a TV, and asking if tight means waterproof would emote laughter. All these senses need quotations before reasonable discussion.

DCDuring: thumbs-up to walking dogs and talking to people.

@BD2412 I agree that consumers benefit from precise and accurate {{context}} and such. Wiktionary has great features but it lacks a standards based culture. Even this discussion quietly ignores WT:CFI. I think all terms and all senses belong in wiktionary. It is, ideally, the opposite of censorship found in list of Newspeak words in 1984. — This unsigned comment was added by BoBoMisiu (talk • contribs).

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 18:55, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

• Sweet!. As the creator, I wanted this sense to be kept. --Type56op9 (talk) 21:17, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

tight squeeze

It was a tight squeeze in the car --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:05, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

P. Sovjunk edits

Some of these appear legitimate, but IDK about some of them ChecksMix (talk) 19:58, 20 October 2023 (UTC)