Talk:cookie-cutter

Brackets and other changes

@Per utramque cavernam: I disgaree with your adding of brackets, starting the def with lowercase, and more. The original was perfectly good; you are making it worse, IMHO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:59, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: Sorry, I didn't mean to do that (i.e. readding the brackets, removing the "Further reading" header and removing the cap off "of"). I started from an old revision, and forgot to redo some of your changes (notice that I did not re-add the near-synonyms you removed, and did not reswitch "Looking" to "looking"). --Per utramque cavernam 14:14, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Although I'm not sure I agree with the removal of one-size-fits-all. I don't think it'd be out of place in a "synonyms" section. "a cookie-cutter solution" = "a one-size-fits-all solution"; "a cookie-cutter approach" = "a one-size-fits all approach". There's definitely some overlap. --Per utramque cavernam 17:10, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

one-size-fits-all is not an exact synonym, and therefore, it should not be used on the definition line as if it were. I tend to think it does not belong to Synonyms either. It could be okay for See also, but I am not sure. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:13, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Etymology

The ety now says "Originally the attributive form of the noun cookie cutter (and hence used only in attributive position, from the 1920s). Later reinterpreted as an adjective, and used freely in predicate position (from the 1990s)."

Needless to say, it is unsourced. It also appears to be an invention; an attributive use of a noun is an adjectival use; the hyphen reinforces the adjectivity. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:15, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's unsourced (although the dates are supported by quotes). Your second sentence is unsubstantiated; what proof do you have that "an attributive use of a noun is an adjectival use"? --Per utramque cavernam 14:52, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

That's obvious. The part of speech classification is one about the syntactic role of an item in sentence. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:10, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Usage note

I find the following usage note inappropriate unless sourced: "Some speakers avoid using this in the predicate position." Mere witness by one or two editors seems insufficient, although I admit that it makes the statement automatically true as long as "some speakers" means "more than one speaker". This opens a can of worms of prescriptivism guised as description of speaker behavior, based on self-reports of editors. Let us note that online dictionaries do not have such a note, it seems; see OneLook. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:23, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

RFV discussion: April–May 2018

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

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.

---

cookie-cutter

Rfv-sense "Of or pertaining to cookie cutters." I don't know what word to use to check that. "tool"? "utensil"? --Per utramque cavernam 14:59, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand your question. Can you elaborate? — SGconlaw (talk) 15:16, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: Sorry. In short, you can forget that part of the sentence; what I meant is that I haven't found good keywords to look efficiently for literal uses. --Per utramque cavernam 15:21, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I guess I would call it a kitchen utensil. You might also try pairing the term with words commonly associated with baking, like dough, flour and recipe. — SGconlaw (talk) 15:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it exists. I looked through everything that came up on Google books with the search "cookie-cutter" subject:"Baking" and I couldn't find a single adjectival use. – Gormflaith (talk) 20:10, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

By searching on "cookie-cutter collection", I found quite a few, so I guess you can call this cited (I also threw in a cookie-cutter drawer, just for variety), but it's really only an attributive use of the noun. Kiwima (talk) 20:28, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Kiwima: Does this imply that cookie-cutter is the only way you can use this attributively though? I feel like it's about 50/50 from looking at "collection" and "drawer". Maybe [Alternative form of cookie cutter, primarily used attributively] ? We have two cites of cookie-cutter (noun) not being used attributively as well. (Also what is going on at the WT:GL def of attributive?) – Gormflaith (talk) 22:15, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

The sense now entered is "(primarily used attributively) Alternative form of cookie cutter". My position is that "If you have a large cookie-cutter collection" does not attest the noun since it does not disclose a noun syntactic role. What would attest a noun sense would be use with an indefinite article, or a plural or use in the subject position in the sentence. This can be best seen by replacing the item with X. If we have "If you have a large X collection", we cannot possibly know X is a noun. By contrast, if we have "There were three Xes in the room", we know X is a noun; if we have "X is Y", X usually would be a noun. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not at all convinced that having a noun determine another noun turns it automagically into an adjective (although I'm aware of the process of conversion). But if it is true, it means we can and should create adjective sections on thousands (possibly tens of thousands?) of noun entries. Are you fine with that? --Per utramque cavernam 11:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Not really, that's not what it means: The lexicographical practice is to exclude adjectival sections for nouns since that's implied and automatic. Note that cookie-cutter is different in form from the noun cookie cutter. The point is, if a form is only attested in attributive position, is it improper to report it as a noun. Currrently, cookie-cutter is only attested in attributive position, unlike cookie cutter. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:56, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

"The lexicographical practice is to exclude adjectival sections for nouns since that's implied and automatic." Is it our practice, or all dictionaries' practice? --Per utramque cavernam 12:06, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

A "cookie cutter-collection" would be a cutter collection for cookies, making "cookie cutter collection" theoretically ambiguous, so the prescriptive rule is to always hyphenate phrases like cookie cutter when used attributively, so saying that "cookie-cutter" is different because it's always hyphenated is like saying that words at the beginnings of sentences are different because they're always capitalized. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:01, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I don't see why a spelling device should warrant a difference of treatment (between single-word and multi-word nouns, that is). --Per utramque cavernam 16:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't see the analogy, and we do make the difference: we do enter apple-tree as a separate spelling, but not Apple (in the fruit sense) or Apple-tree. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Please prove that "The lexicographical practice is to exclude adjectival sections for nouns since that's implied and automatic" (I'm aware of no such rule being applied in Wiktionary), and please give some sources that clearly treat attributive nouns as adjectives, because I don't buy it. --Per utramque cavernam 17:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

You have asked "Are you fine with that?" and I gave you a meaningful answer. I don't have a source to support my analysis, while you did give us M-W[1] to support your analysis. I am applying a duck test or some kind of behaviorism: what behaves like an adjective is an adjective, and attributive positions are adjectival positions, including those where lumbar is used. Even M-W has to admit that what they rank as nouns "learned to multitask" and they introduce their answer with "In each of these, the italicized word is defined in dictionaries only as a noun, but there it is, modifying another noun. Which is what adjectives do, right?". I do agree with M-W that it makes no sense to add adjectival sections to all nouns ever used attributively. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

And besides, MW says that "Attributive nouns do some of the same work that adjectives do, but that doesn't mean they're not nouns. Think of them as nouns that learned how to multitask."

Also, I'd say there's a difference between a hard conversion (example: impact, from noun to verb; it really takes the morphological markers of a verb: -ing form, -ed in the past, -s for the third person singular) and a soft conversion (noun to attributive noun: it behaves somewhat like an adjective, but it doesn't become an adjective).

Moreover, that means you would put blanket and cookie-cutter on the same footing, which doesn't make sense: cookie-cutter is significantly more adjectival than blanket (it has a comparative form // can be used predicatively), and you would have us obliterate that distinction. --Per utramque cavernam 16:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Equally, M-W could say that paper (verb) is a noun that learned how to multitask, and that it is still a noun; and since it learned how to multitask, it also learned how to inflect (papered). --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

If we can find one more citation where this is clearly a noun (two are on the citations page: both non-attributive, one plural), then this will be unambiguously attested as a (form/spelling of the) noun. It'd be misleading not to mention that this hyphenated form of the noun is chiefly used attributively.
As for what part-of-speech "cookie-cutter" has in a "cookie-cutter collection" that is a collection of cookie cutters: it would seem to have to be using the noun attributively, not using an adjective, because no relevant adjective sense is attested / meets tests of adjectivity; I see no examples of people saying *"the next kitchen tool I'll use is blue, cookie-cutter and flexible" to indicate a flexible blue cookie cutter (whereas, you could say "this next molecule we'll examine is large and hydrophile#Adjective" to indicate a large hydrophile#Noun).
An adjective sense "looking identical" is attested, but clearly isn't being used there. "A cookie-cutter collection of houses" that is a collection of identical houses, OTOH, is a different story. - -sche (discuss) 16:18, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Adjectivity is semi-decidable, and so is nounhood. Attributive positions are no less adjectival than predicative positions; e.g. lumbar is an adjective, although it appears to be attested predominantly in attributive positions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I added some more non-attributive citations. IMO, the existence of cookie-cutter as a noun is confirmed. I think that resolves this RFV(?), since the remaining dispute (over whether or not nouns used attributively are nouns) seems like a general question. (And the existence of cookie-cutter as an adjective is also confirmed, again without recourse to the disputed attributive-position citations, so the RFD also seems like it can be closed.) - -sche (discuss) 17:02, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I added some too. I'd definitely say the noun is attested. – Gormflaith (talk) 17:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I'd say both the RFV and RFD can be closed, but I think the real question still isn't solved. And for that particular entry, it means we disagree whether the literal attributive uses (for instance the 1986 quote: "If you have a large cookie-cutter collection") should remain under the "Noun" header (my preferred option), or be moved to the "Adjective" header again (DP's option). --Per utramque cavernam 17:12, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

The attributive uses such as "large cookie-cutter collection" can stay in the noun section since they are now identical in form with the noun. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:40, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you; in Citations:cookie-cutter, "cut it with a cookie-cutter", "with a cookie-cutter as large as the top" and "even use a cookie-cutter" attest a countable noun" => noun attested. The def "Alternative form of cookie cutter" should remain in Noun section as attested. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 05:37, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

RFD discussion: April–May 2018

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

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.

---

cookie-cutter

This is not an adjective (compare cookie-cuttery, [2]), but an attributive use of the noun cookie cutter (the exact same deal as with blanket, see above); we should format it as the entry for shoulder-blade, or, if we don't want that kind of entries, delete it entirely (see transitive-verb). --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 08:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

It's not a term I'm familiar with as an adjective, but I would say keep. Would you RFD off-the-shoulder or well-defined (attributive adjective of well defined) for the same reason? DonnanZ (talk) 09:33, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

If it is deleted entirely, we need a "sometimes attributive" gloss on cookie cutter at least: this word is often used in an adjectival position whereas many other nouns are not. Equinox ◑ 09:40, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

If it's deleted entirely we should add its idiomatic sense to cookie cutter anyway. I actually think we should keep it, convert it to a noun, convert its first sense to {{&lit}} and add {{lb|en|attributive}} in front of its second sense. That would actually be a useful "noun in attributive use" entry, compared to transitive-verb which is useless as it has no specialised use. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 10:24, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I think I found some good cites uses of it being used predicatively. If these are okay then keep as an adjective – Gormflaith (talk) 00:36, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I couldn't think of a better way to list these

• 2004, Gardner, Lisa. The Other Daughter. Page 214.

  "Everything we do is planned and predictable. In the end, medicine is much more cookie-cutter than doctors care to admit, and we can exploit that."

• 2006, Wesson, Paul and Paul Halpern. Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos. Page 195

  Yet nature's artisan seems to have crafted untold quantities of protons (and other elementary particles) with identical rest masses. They are infinitely more “cookie cutter” than anything in a cookie manufacturer's wildest dreams.

• 2007, D'Souza, Michael. ‘Growing up, I stuck out like a sore thumb’ in The Financial Times.

  I wanted to find somewhere to live that was unique because everything is very cookie-cutter if you go down most residential streets of Victorian terraces.

• 2008, Cargill, Robert C. On DVD: Picture This! Is So Cookie-Cutter It Hurts
• 2008, Symmonds, Nick. Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft .NET. Page 144.

  This is so cookie-cutter that you should have no errors. You have yet to type any code!

• 2012, Fisher, Kenneth L. Plan Your Prosperity: The Only Retirement Guide You'll Ever Need, Starting Now–Whether You're 22, 52 or 82. Page 52.

  One input and only one input matters–your birth year. You can't get much more cookie-cutter than that.

• 2013, Berner, Maddy. Does Arlington's Dating Scene Need More Variety? in ARLnow.

  “I think Arlington is very cookie cutter,” she said. “I think you find that the same type of people have the same type of conversations with people over and over again.”

• 2013, Berry, Nina. Othersphere. Page 57.

  The trees were smaller, the houses newer, and thus even more cookie-cutter than I was used to.

• 2014, Blitzer, Carol. No cookie-cutter homes here in Palo Alto Weekly.

  "This was an opportunity to imagine something different," Spiegel said. "It's all about patterns of living. The way people are building houses is so cookie-cutter."

• 2018, Phillips, Christopher. A Child at Heart: Unlocking Your Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason at Every Age and Stage of Life. Page 138.

  He was sad the most everything done by tailors these days is so cookie-cutter, like it all came off the assembly line.

@Gormflaith: Yes, I think these are good. Shouldn't we label it as {{lb|en|nonstandard}} though? It seems clumsy to me, and I'd definitely avoid that type of construction myself and use cookie-cuttery instead, but I'm no native speaker. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 20:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: I actually think it sounds good, as a native AmE speaker, and "cookie-cuttery" sounds a bit awkward (a place where cookie cutters are made? lol). If any other native speakers could weigh in that would be great – Gormflaith (talk) 21:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@Gormflaith: I agree (also a native AmE speaker) that "cookie-cuttery" sounds like a strangely delightful place, and sounds very awkward as an adjective. That said, I would never use "cookie-cutter" as a predicate adjective--it sounds at the least very nonstandard, like saying something like "That statement is very blanket." (2014 doge anyone? Wow. Much adjective.) In any case, I would probably use "cookie-cutterish" most naturally. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 22:37, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, exactly, thanks. I guess I'm wrong about cookie-cuttery, but my point is that I'd want to properly adjectivise cookie-cutter with a suffix, as you did in cookie-cutterish. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 22:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: I wouldn't say 'wrong', as cookie-cutter +‎ -y would be in the vein of adding -y to nouns colloquially whenever an adjective is desired (like -ish, -esque and -like, as I mentioned below. It just also sounds like -ery, which gives it the comic effect Gormflaith and I mentioned. :-] --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 00:07, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@SanctMinimalicen: @Per utramque cavernam: Hmmm... I still think cookie-cutter is what I'd use most naturally. I tried to see if it was dialectal but no dice; the authors are from all over. Also, cookie-cutterish seems unattestable, whereas predicative cookie-cutter is clearly attestable (though this doesn't really prove standard-ness). I'm a-ok with a slapping a {{lb|en|nonstandard}} on there if that's the general consensus, but imo it's a standard construction. – Gormflaith (talk) 23:15, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Nvm, cookie-cutterish seems to be attestable. But using "is so X", "is very X", and "more X than" for my Google Books searhces, cookie-cutter is clearly more common as a predicate adj.– Gormflaith (talk) 23:20, 22 April 2018 (UTC) (@SanctMinimalicen: I think you accidentally deleted my comment, I've added it back :-) – Gormflaith (talk) 23:31, 22 April 2018 (UTC))

Oops, sorry! My computer went weird when I submitted that last comment (double submitted, page load problem), and somewhere in there I must have accidentally done that. '^^ --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 00:00, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: @Gormflaith: Yeah, "cookie-cutterish" is definitely non-attestable perhaps best seen as non-standard--more like a cookie-cutter +‎ -ish nonce word, in the way that -ish, -like and -esque are slapped on colloquially whenever convenient. I'm fine leaving the entry, with or without the 'nonstandard' label given the evidence put forth, but my subjective "feeling" as a speaker is that there is no truly standard predicate form. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 23:24, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@Gormflaith, SanctMinimalicen: What do you think of the current state of the entry? I've tried to be accurate as possible (at the cost of some redundancy, unfortunately).

I think the only truly adjectival use of the word is when it's in predicate position. In "a cookie-cutter solution", it could theoretically be either, but imo it's etymologically and grammatically better to treat it as a noun in attributive form rather than an adjective. Hence I've added a noun section, and moved the old usexes there; for the adjective section, I've kept only the quotations Gormflaith has provided.

Please reword the definitions, labels and usage notes as you see fit.--Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

By the way, I think we should give blanket the same treatment; there's apparently some truly adjectival use too (as demonstrated by the existence of blanketly), but as here, I think it's a recent and somewhat nonstandard/ungrammatical development (I don't have access to the full quote, but I bet that's what this columnist says here: blanketly itself is nonstandard). Historically I'm pretty sure it was a noun in attributive position before being reinterpreted as an adjective, and our entry should reflect that. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:38, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: It looks great! Thank you. :-) And I agree with keeping the attributive as a noun, it'd be hard to explain nicely and might be confusing to readers. As for the blanket entry, something similar to cookie-cutter sounds great. (Though for some reason *"That's very blanket" doesn't work for me.) – Gormflaith (talk) 11:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Gormflaith: That's interesting, and we'd have to reflect that too. I guess it means that cookie-cutter is further down the path of adjectivisation than blanket, which is still very "nounish".

What proof of adjectivisation do we have for blanket, apart from blanketly? I can find occurrences of "very blanket answer" on Google, but that's not durably archived. Oh, I can find a few occurrences of "is so blanket" on GB. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 12:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@Per utramque cavernam: @Gormflaith: I think the entry looks good--thanks for doing that! I fully agree with the move to attributive noun and the reasoning you gave therefor. I think that blanket can be treated the same way, though I think it substantially more "nounish", as you said, than "cookie-cutter". (Also, cf the discussion about blanket higher on the deletion page. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 12:41, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• I oppose calling this sense a noun used attributively. Partly because of the cites Gormflaith lists above, which are clearly adjectival, and partly because the noun cookie cutter doesn't have the relevant meaning. The noun really only means the object used to cut cookie dough; only the adjective has the figurative "one-size-fits-all" sense. Please change it back to ===Adjective===. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 13:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
  • @Mahagaja: I disagree with that. Going by our current quotes, the attributive position clearly antedates the predicative one (which, as I said above, is the only real proof of adjectival use): a quote from 1927, a quote from 1933, a quote from 1969, a quote from 1981. To me, it's a pretty clear clue (not a proof, but a clue) that cookie-cutter is of nominal origin. Now, why is that sense only found there: it doesn't seem surprising to me that the attributive form acquired a specialised metaphoric meaning. I'm speaking of etymology, but even synchronically, does there need to be a strict equivalence of meaning between a noun and its attributive form?

  Plus moving back that sense to the adjective POS doesn't solve anything; you still have to explain where it comes from.

  blanket has the same problem: the noun noun doesn't have the attributive noun's sense. Would you argue too that that alone justifies having an adjective section, even though that assumption is weak on syntactic grounds? --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 14:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

  The difference between cookie-cutter and blanket is that cookie-cutter does have predicative use and can be modified by adverbs that don't modify attributive nouns, while blanket isn't used that way (or are there cites for things like "this solution is more blanket than that one"?) I see that cookie-cutter now has both: Etymology 1 is a noun and Etymology 2 is an adjective (which is labeled "nonstandard", a label I'd like to see evidence for). I guess that's a compromise I can live with, but it still seems a little silly to me to have sense 2 of the noun labeled "attributive" and then have the exact same sense further down the page listed as an adjective under Etymology 2. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 14:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, but I did write above that I "tried to be accurate as possible (at the cost of some redundancy, unfortunately)." I guess it boils down to whether we want to be practical, in which case we could scrap the second attributive sense, or we want a complete and historically accurate description of the word.

  As for the nonstandard label, we discussed that as well. cookie-cutter in attributive position sounds fine; cookie-cutter in predicative position rubs me and SanctMinimalicen the wrong way, and sounds slightly ungrammatical; we intuitively want to add an adjectival suffix to achieve grammaticality. Gormflaith disagrees with that though. Again, I'm not a native speaker so I defer to y'all on that point. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 14:58, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

  I don't know what variety of English SanctMinimalicen speaks natively, but Gormflaith and I are both Americans and it sounds natural without a suffix to us. I can understand that it might sound odd to someone in whose preferred variety of English even a literal cookie cutter is called a biscuit cutter. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 15:44, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

  @Mahagaja I think the current version should content everyone. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 17:08, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

  @Per utramque cavernam: Looks good to me--thanks for leading the fixes again!

Also, for the record, I am a native American English speaker as well, as I mentioned above. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 23:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't not look good to me, and I basically restored the original. Let's not make things up. See also my notes below. --Dan Polansky (talk) 04:55, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• Restore the adjective-only revision of the entry: this revision; remove the noun entry. There is no fundamental distinction between adjectival use and attributive-noun use; there is no justification for having both noun and adjective sections in one entry. Remove the speculative usage note about cookie-cutterish: let's not make things up. cookie-cutter,cookie-cutterish at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.: no enough hits of cookie-cutterish to make it into GNV. --Dan Polansky (talk) 04:04, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

  Lemmings: M-W[3]: adjective; AHD[4]: adjective; Collins[5]: noun and adjective, where an example for adjective is "a row of cookie-cutter houses"; Macmillan[6]: adjective. --Dan Polansky (talk) 04:46, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Some of the citations in the entry now seem clearly adjectival ("very cookie-cutter", etc), so keep. However, I've also found one citation so far of the plural, which is clearly nounal. If there are more unambiguously nounal citations, then this needs a noun section (as an alternative form)... and the question of where to put the "attributive" citations that could be either nounal or adjectival gets tricky... - -sche (discuss) 08:11, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Now the nominal (or nounal) quotation is a different story: it is for a noun as "alternative form of cookie cutter" rather than the pseudo-noun of "attributive use of cookie cutter". Such noun would be fine --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:04, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• Do what the f*ck you want. Here's the revision I considered could satisfy everybody (even Mahagaja, as I removed the redundant sense).

Dan Polansky took it upon himself to destroy that work, arguing that "There is no fundamental distinction between adjectival use and attributive-noun use; there is no justification for having both noun and adjective sections in one entry"; thereby, he apparently dismisses all of the discussion above. He also does some cherry-picking to justify his action: SanctMinimalicen has repeated twice he's a native speaker, but apparently that doesn't count.

While I agree that that part about cookie-cutterish had to be removed as too speculative, I'm pissed off by his unsubstantiated removal of useful etymological and syntactic information. --Per utramque cavernam 08:54, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

If a supermajority agrees with your revision, it can be restored: it is in the revision history. Otherwise, it is status quo ante; now it's you and perhaps SanctMinimalicen in favor of your revision. I understand that you are annoyed, but I am no less annoyed by what you did to the entry, including making things up. I find your revision bizzare, but others may differ. Again, there is no fundamental distinction between an adjective and a noun used attributively; we do without dedicated adjective sections for nouns since they are implied. ---Dan Polansky (talk) 09:01, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

There were two etymology sections, 1 and 2. That is as wrong as it can get: we do not separate "paper" (noun), "paper" (adjective) and "paper" (verb) as multiple etymologies. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm now starting to question whether you've read the discussion at all. SanctMinimalicen is, as far as I can see, in favour of it (not "perhaps"); Gormflaith explicitly agreed to having the POS split (the entry was in this state); Mahagaja stated he could "live with it". As far as I'm concerned, nobody apart from you has expressed a clear opposition to having this split. They might not be as enthusiastic or interested as I am in having it, but that's neither here nor there. And if they have changed their mind, they're free to say it.

You keep repeating that "there is no fundamental distinction between an adjective and a noun used attributively", but I still haven't seen you made a compelling argument to support that. You're saying that "there is no ultimate test of adjectivity in English", that " In Czech, the situation is very different: there, adjectivity is seen from the surface morphology", and that "in English, adjectivity is more difficult to recognize." Well, what's your point? Does that mean adjectivity is impossible to recognise in English? If yes, we might just merge all our noun/adjective POS.

As for "making things up": I didn't pull anything out of my ass; (re?)read the discussion above to see why things were set up this way.

About paper: it wouldn't be technically wrong to split the etymologies; the adjective (again, I'd like to see some evidence of predicative use) and verb are conversions of the noun, and the noun alone is borrowed from another language. As it appears from this conversation, we don't want to that, but that doesn't make it wrong. --Per utramque cavernam 10:40, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I am afraid I read the discussion too hastily, and I acknowledge that SanctMinimalicen and Gormflaith want your revision, but there is no reason Mahagaja needs to live with an entry that emphasizes trivial distinction of etymology. As for blanket, some of the people who support the artificial split consider it to be nouny, yet “blanket”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. dictionaries treat it mostly as adjective, as they should, IMHO. That is as for reference; as for evidence, that's not going to be that easy since the matter requires analysis; I analyze attributive uses as adjectival, and I emphasize that many adjectives are non-comparable; for blanket, my analysis is supported by “blanket”, in OneLook Dictionary Search. dictionaries, it seems, including M-W[7], word 3. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Above, you write: "attributive position clearly antedates the predicative one (which, as I said above, is the only real proof of adjectival use):" and yet, Merriam-Webster seem to disagree with you on "blanket". Do you perhaps have an academic reference supporting the quoted only-real-proof hypothesis? Is Czech lumbální to be ranked as noun because of lack of predicative use, as it seems? Can you find predicative uses of the English adjective lumbar? --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:18, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: That was unclear, but what I meant is that predicative use is "the only real proof of adjectival use in this case". But even that's too strong, so scrap that statement and let me start from scratch.

I wouldn't argue that lumbální is a noun, because it has the morphological marker of an adjective, it behaves like an adjective (i.e. needs a noun and agrees with it in number, gender and case). Similarly, there are morphological markers of adjectivity in English: the suffixes -ish, -y, -ar among others. For such words, the "predicative use test" doesn't matter; their morphology (and agreement with a noun in the case of Czech) are a sufficient condition for adjectivity. Not used predicatively? Well, no matter.

When no such markers are present, however, we have to resort to other means: syntax (comparability, predicative use), etymology, etc.

Moreover, I'm not saying that cookie-cutter in attributive position is never adjectival: it certainly is here, because of the adverb very. What I'm arguing is that attributive use alone (without an adverb) is not proof enough that something is an adjective, and you have to complement it with other tests to confirm or infirm adjectivity.

I must say I'm not sure why the burden of proof is exclusively on me. What makes you say blanket is an adjective, apart from "other dictionaries say so" and your insistence that "an attributive use of a noun is an adjectival use"? What proof do you have for that last statement? --Per utramque cavernam 14:45, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Irrespective of the "conformist person" (or what not) sense, I really think we should ditch the "&lit" adjective (as in "a cookie-cutter handle"). Silly. Or if we absolutely must keep it for reasons I cannot comprehend, then move it under the real meaningful sense. &lits must be demoted wherever possible. Equinox ◑ 11:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

The thing is, #All English attributive forms (with hyphens) of noun phrases discussion did not lead to removal of the likes of rugby-boot. And having that trivial sense in an adjective section makes it less promoted, I think, than having a separate part of speech section for it. In my view, rugby-boot should be marked as an adjective unless plural can be attested to show it is a noun. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:06, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Is the literal sense even attestable? --Per utramque cavernam 14:45, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

On another note, the usage note that says "Some speakers still see it as an attributive form of the noun cookie cutter; therefore, they do not use it in predicate position" is original research of the wrong kind, and I would like to see it removed. We have two native speakers in this discussion who find the predicative use fine; it should not suffice that one another native speaker in the discussion feels it is less okay. The principle that a single post to RFDE leads to "sometimes proscribed" and such would lead to pretty dire consequences. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:08, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

I've reworded it: "Some speakers avoid using it in predicate position." Unless it's shown that SanctMinimalicen's view point is very minoritary (2 to 1 is not sufficiently representative), I'm opposed to the removal of this note. If a certain percentage of speakers avoid an usage, I don't see a good reason not to mention it. --Per utramque cavernam 16:06, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

In case it's not clear: this is not a RFD matter anymore, as it's been satisfactorily shown that cookie-cutter can be an adjective. What I'm arguing is that it originally wasn't. --Per utramque cavernam 14:45, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

• RFD kept per consensus above: even nominator seems to agree with the current entry, which has a noun section and an adjective section. I have no objections to the noun section now that its is attested as a noun, with indefinite article. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:59, 8 May 2018 (UTC)