Talk:keep your rosaries off my ovaries

This is cute but do we really need this? There are hundreds of slogans just on this issue alone, and I've never thought of them as dictionary entries. Dictionary entries should be for things that have meanings not obvious from their constituent parts. I'm sure there is a place somewhere for all of the slogans of both sides of the abortion debate, but I don't think a dictionary is a good choice. Lollipop (talk) 03:09, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

RFD discussion: August–December 2017

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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keep your rosaries off my ovaries

This entry is nothing more than the sum of its parts, not really a dictionary definition. Should be deleted. Lollipop (talk) 20:04, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

"Rosaries" meaning "religious intervention" isn't a normal sense. Equinox ◑ 20:13, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

It's simple metonymy, isn't it? --WikiTiki89 21:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Keep. It's not sum of parts, it's idiomatic. Neither rosaries or ovaries are used in the literal sense. Widespread long-term use.--Dmol (talk) 21:46, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Have you looked up metonymy? We've long held that metonomy still counts as SOP. --WikiTiki89 21:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Keep. If my English was poor and I had to explain this without context I would wonder if it might be referring to some odd tradition of some tribe to insert prayer beads in women's bodies. (people in China are huffing rhino horn because they think it cures fevers and rheumatism, would you really expect me to be surprised?) Please note I have never heard of this idiom before reading this RfD, so the meaning is not "obvious" to me. W3ird N3rd (talk) 23:29, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Keep. A novice wouldn’t recognise its meaning simply by looking at the parts’ definitions. It’s metaphorical. — (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 01:41, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

In light of recent comments, I’d like to stay neutral on this now. — (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 17:29, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I disagree that this is SoP, but I think we should delete since slogans are not in scope. - [The]DaveRoss 13:05, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we would regret establishing a policy of keeping political/popular slogans. We have recently deleted live free or die, which seems comparable. I hope we don't keep such expressions based on the POV expressed, whether that results from conscious or unconscious bias. DCDuring (talk) 13:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Exactly why would we regret that? I know your POV also from another discussion, you would absolutely hate to see Wiktionary become a (typically very expensive) multi-word dictionary. But regrets? Just because including more terms is something you don't want doesn't mean it will be regrettable. W3ird N3rd (talk) 16:58, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Delete per DCDuring and TheDaveRoss. If this were a normal idiom, I would vote to keep it, but slogans are a different story. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 17:40, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Keep. Clearly idiomatic. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:17, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull, Dmol, W3ird N3rd Your votes were based on the idea that this phrase is idiomatic. I would point out that merely being idiomatic is insufficient to keep a multi-word term. Slogans have not been considered within scope in the past, and I think that should remain the case. Proverbs are the closest thing which has been considered acceptable, and there is quite a leap from a proverb to a slogan. - [The]DaveRoss 12:42, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I never received your ping. It's not much of a leap. If a slogan gets enough usage it can become a saying. In Dutch there is a related saying baas in eigen buik (boss of your own belly) which also started out as a slogan. I'm a big believer of following rules. Unless I find them counterproductive in which case to hell with them. I believe it would be very valuable to have slogans and idioms on a wiki. So my question would be this: do slogans and idioms belong on another wiki project? Yes? In that case, move it there. (to my knowledge there no such wiki but correct me if I'm wrong) If not, we need to ask: should such a wiki be created while we allow them here until that wiki has been created and they can be moved there, or should we simply allow them here? Either way, removing them here is counterproductive so I'm not changing my vote. Simply saying "while valueable, it does not fit our scope, we will never change our scope because we simply won't, we will not have another project with such a scope, we will simply kill everything that's not in our scope" is nothing but pointless destruction. Don't expect me to take part in it because your rulebook says so. That's the worst argument imaginable and only ever leads to misery.

As a side note, apparently I wasn't the first one to think of prayer beads.. Addition: By the way, I may be in a somewhat grumpy mood right now so don't take anything I said personally. I stand by what I said, but it may have been worded harshly. W3ird N3rd (talk) 16:58, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Two things, this is a direct reference to prayer beads and female reproductive organs. They are exactly what you are supposed to think of when you hear this slogan. So that's not surprise. The other thing is that the purpose of Wiktionary isn't to make people happy, it's to provide definitions of words. --WikiTiki89 18:48, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I thought #2 and #3 (3 due to the example provided I guess) from rosary#English meant that rosaries are also religious thoughts and ideas and that's what this referred to. And your "Wiktionary isn't here to make people happy" argument is pretty weak too. The definition of Wiktionary is not to make people happy, just to provide definitions of words. And if that doesn't make people happy let's do it anyway. Don't bother with making people happy. Don't bother doing anything that might make sense. Don't bother trying to create something useful. Just do as you're told and don't question it. W3ird N3rd (talk) 20:00, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Slogans are phrases that take a large part of their meaning from their extra-linguistic context. Explaining what they mean requires going into encyclopedia territory. In fact, they often tend to be used, not to convey meaning, but to evoke that context. Also, they tend to be utterly meaningless outside of that context, and old ones like "Ma, ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha" are hard to understand without reading up on the politics and politicians of their eras. I think that including phrases simply because they're not explainable as the sum of their parts is a bad idea: any good poetry is full of passages that can't be explained by their literal meanings. Movies, TV shows, plays, etc. have lots of catch-phrases that people quote to evoke a scene, or the character/actor who says them. For instance, "What we've got here is failure to communicate" is quoted by lots of people, but you have to know about the scenes in Cool Hand Luke where it's used in order to understand why. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:54, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

It's generally not encyclopia territory. "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries" has no Wikipedia entry and if you create it it will probably be deleted. If you're saying "another wiki project needs to be started for these things" that's fine with me. But in the meantime we shouldn't destroy content in a way that makes it hard to recover. If you would merely suggest hiding it (is that even possible?) while waiting for such a project to be started I could accept that. If a general rule would be to move good but out-of-scope content to the talk page of that entry, that would make it more acceptable to delete the main page. I would still prefer to keep it as long as there is no other project that would be better suited for the entry, but I could live with it. But it shouldn't be just this page - it will need to be done for any content that isn't vandalism or gibberish.

I guess the real question is: why isn't there a project for idioms and slogans? Either simply nobody ever thought of it, or those that thought of it figured "well that'll fit in just fine on Wiktionary, why start a new project?". And it's probably not the former because I'm not that clever. So if you then start saying "let's be very strict about being nothing more than a dictionary because we are called wiktionary, even though there is no technical reason why we can't provide idioms and slogans as well" you create a vacuum. I hate vacuums. They suck. W3ird N3rd (talk) 20:00, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

There's also no place on Wiki for recipes, but that doesn't mean Wiktionary should host them. As for "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries", it's probably not notable enough by itself to have a WP entry, but the subject matter a Wiktionary entry would cover is certainly found at Wikipedia in articles that discuss birth control, abortion and the role of Roman Catholicism in politics. Our entry doesn't really do the slogan justice, anyway, because it misses out on the association in the popular mind of rosaries with Roman Catholicism specifically, and of Roman Catholicism with certain types of moralistic conservatism, and the complete disconnect between the spiritually-pure, sacred prayers of adoration connected with rosaries and the profane matter of sexuality, which adds a layer of incongruity (I doubt anyone would ever mention abortion while saying a rosary). Then there's the matter of Roman Catholicism being a minority religion in places like the US, and the stereotypes that go with that. I'm sure that there are other angles I'm missing, but you get my point. Oh, and in case you're wondering: I'm not Catholic. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:08, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

A wiki for recipes is not a bad idea actually. Or they might fit in on Wikipedia. The first reason not to have recipes on wiktionary would simply be because of conflicts: the name of a recipe can be identical to an existing word. This problem doesn't exist for slogans and idioms. Another reason is that the target audience for recipes is completely different from the target audience of Wiktionary. Again, the target audience for idioms and slogans is quite similar to the target audience for a dictionary. Yet another reason is that a recipe would come in a format different from the format used on Wiktionary: it would be a lengthy description with instructions and likely include many pictures. Once more, the description of an idiom or slogan is very similar to the description of a word. Finally, when a slogan is described here it can take advantage of the content already here: keep your rosaries off my ovaries. A recipe can't seriously take advantage of existing content here. I get your point, but a recipe is quite different from an idiom or slogan. W3ird N3rd (talk) 18:17, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

There are recipes on Wikibooks. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• Delete. Not dictionary material. Mihia (talk) 00:00, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
• Delete. Slogans are not dictionary material. Korn [kʰũːɘ̃n] (talk) 14:21, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Delete. General metonomy. Dokurrat (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Delete. Metonymy doesn't make something idiomatic. And slogans aren't words, just like pop culture references and other things like that. --WikiTiki89 18:52, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

• Delete - this is more appropriate for Wikiquote. We don't have freedom means choice or abortion kills children either, although both are arguably idiomatic (for encyclopedic reasons). bd2412 T 01:13, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
• Delete, per all above Leasnam (talk) 15:10, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
• Delete, not dictionary material. --Barytonesis (talk) 09:07, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

New definition

I added a new definition. This is really what I perceived the definition to be here rather than "just a slogan". Find uses of the phrase with this meaning: "Do not interfere with my reproductive rights." rather than "A campaign slogan meaning ..." and voilà! The term is no longer SOP. PseudoSkull (talk) 05:36, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Some figured it would be a big leap from a slogan to a proverb and I mentioned baas in eigen buik (a Dutch slogan with similar meaning that got so popular it's now a saying) to demonstrate the only difference is (in some cases) popularity. And I suspect "keep your rosaries off my ovaries" is popular enough to deserve a similar status. W3ird N3rd (talk) 18:17, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

It's incomplete. There is still an implication that the interference stems from religious belief. In other words, it should say "Do not impose your religious beliefs to interfere with my reproductive rights." I would still consider this merely a slogan, however. Such implications can be derived from many slogans - for example, "You can't top the copper top". bd2412 T 18:29, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. "copper top" is not here, but "coppertop" is. Which is somebody with ginger hair. The rest I know, so it says "You can't beat a person with ginger hair". Still no clue. My best bet is that the best girlfriend is supposedly a girlfriend with ginger hair, probably in the area of sexuality. (this is not my opinion, I'm just guessing what the slogan might mean) Why anyone would use this as a slogan is beyond me. I haven't looked it up with a search engine on purpose, so I have no idea how close I got.

On second thoughts, assuming you didn't misspell the slogan, it probably means some specific thing is the best when it has a copper top. Copper being an excellent and affordable heat conducting material, my bet is on heatsinks. I know heatsinks exist that have a small part copper that is in direct contact with the source of heat and the rest is made of a cheaper material like aluminium. This may have been a slogan from Zalman, Coolermaster or similar company.

It's not transparent indeed. I wonder what the actual meaning is. Guess I'll have to visit a search engine to find out, I wouldn't mind if Wiktionary could have told me. W3ird N3rd (talk) 06:20, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Most notably, it is the slogan for Duracell batteries, and is properly included on the Wikiquote page for well-attested advertising slogans. bd2412 T 16:02, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull I've changed the definition to "A request not to let religion be a guide when creating or advising laws regarding reproductive rights.". W3ird N3rd (talk) 07:33, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Keep. The phrase is not used in a literal sense, and therefore, is not a sum of parts. This deletion, if it proceeds, is not based on WT:CFI: the term is attested and is not a sum of parts. On the other hand, slogans are often non-literal and it is questionable to what extent they would flood Wiktionary. Having non-literal slogans would not necessarily be a bad thing, I think, but I am not sure. As for "slogans are not words", nor are proverbs, which we include. In any case, we have workers of the world, unite, a slogan. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, which I created - a decade ago - and probably would not today. By contrast, the comparably unintuitive I have a dream was deleted (see Talk:I have a dream). bd2412 T 16:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Delete. The various definitions seem too broad to me, as this is specifically directed against Roman Catholic opponents of abortion so the metonymy is very obvious. You wouldn't say this to an Evangelical or Muslim, much less to a Scientologist advocate of abortion. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 09:49, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Deleted. Consensus is clear even without my own participation in the discussion. bd2412 T 03:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)