Talk:play the gender card

RFD

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play the gender card

play the race card

These should be redirected to gender card and race card, respectively. There are other verbs that could be used, which is just to say that this is not idiomatic, but merely the most common collocation. That means it deserves redirection, not lemmatisation. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:22, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

That seems to make sense, but... does anybody do anything with the "race card" (probably the original form) other than "playing" it? P Aculeius (talk) 15:28, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Users trying to determine the meaning of the idiom could probably be served by either redirects to perfected NP entries or by keeping these predicate entries.

We have a harder time trying to help users who were trying to decode other uses of the playing-card metaphor: "the China card", "the fear card", "the sympathy card", "the victim card", "the ethnic card", "the racial card", etc. All of these are used near forms of the verbs play, use, and others in COCA. I don't think entries for play the card or play the something card will seem like good entries for anyone looking up the expressions.

IMO the most important question is whether the card-game metaphor is usefully presented by any dictionary or encyclopedia entry. I think that in virtually all cases the meaning in contextn of the metaphor is fairly obvious to any likely reader of a text in which the expression metaphor is deployed. DCDuring TALK 16:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see you are playing the likely reader card here. In the case of other snowclones we have entries for the most common versions, is there a reason why that shouldn't be the case here? In my experience the idiom is play the X card where X card is non-idiomatic outside of the phrase. - TheDaveRoss 17:54, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I wish I/we had "likely reader" facts instead of a mere "card". Snowclones are fun for us, but we have never figured out how to make most of them plausibly usable for normal users. Metaphors have a structure that in general is different from that of snowclones or idiomatic expressions. Typical examples are "life is a card game", "life is a game", "life is a game of chance", "love is a battlefield". "the world is a stage". Our entries barely begin to capture the variety of expression that such metaphors allow. DCDuring TALK 19:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

IMO, any argument that hinges on the claim that something is "fairly obvious to any likely reader", particularly one without any stats to back it up, is inherently a weak one. I'm inclined to agree with Dave and Aculeius that playing the race card is far-and-away the most common usage and therefore should be kept. BTW, shortly after weighing in, I intend to create gender card. Purplebackpack89 20:13, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Even on the most obvious things relating to the desired characteristics of landing pages, we fail to use standard practices. We don't use best practices for lexicography other than copying what can be legally copied. I sincerely doubt that the availability of statistics on user behavior would make the slightest difference: we would continue to run the show for our own amusement. DCDuring TALK 21:58, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. I entered "play the * card" into Google, and it gave me a dictionary entry for "play the —— card"; interesting. dictionary.cambridge.org has "play the race card"[1]. play the gender card,play the race card at Google Ngram Viewer. I think we should better give the reader a couple of most common instantiations of a snowclone rather than a sort of a formula for the snowclone. I expect that the readers are better at extrapolating from examples than using formulas. And the examples are the thing attested. As for lemmings, "play the race card" is in Collins[2] and dictionary.cambridge.org[3]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 22:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I am not bothered if these are deleted, but we should at least have a usage note at race card etc. stating that the usual verb is "play" (because of the card-game metaphor). It's not the only verb. Equinox ◑ 00:05, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

So what are the other verbs? I'd like to check Google Ngram Viewer for frequency. --Dan Polansky (talk) 00:09, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Just a quick skim on Google Books: "the perpetrator is accused of using the race card"; "a liberal throws down the race card"; and (doing things other than playing it) "growing pressures to put down [i.e. cease playing] the race card"; "she dismissed the gender card". Equinox ◑ 00:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Based on this, I looked at played the race card, used the race card, dismissed the race card, put down the race card, play the race card, use the race card, dismiss the race card, throw down the race card, throws down the race card at Google Ngram Viewer. Seeing that "play" is very predominant, I would be unhappy to see the combinations with "play" deleted from the dictionary. Hard redirects would be the very minimum, but my preferred option is to keep the nominated entries full blown. --Dan Polansky (talk) 00:22, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind keeping when one collocation is by far the most common, which seems to be the case here. A couple of attestations for 'use the race card' don't make 'play the race card' unidiomatic. Renard Migrant (talk) 00:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem I see is not with the word play, but with the fact that any "card" can be used in this phrase: "the race card", "the gender card", "that card", "the sympathy card", "the black card", "the kid card", "the Nazi card", "the victim card", "the veteran card", and the newly re-defined "the Trump card". An interesting thing to note is that Google's automatic dictionary (I'm not sure what source dictionary it uses) shows the entry for "play the —— card" when you search for "play the race card" and calls it a "phrase of card". --WikiTiki89 00:30, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

• I had thought of that, too. But I see no way round that. Even if we added a sense to card that's 'only used in combination with another noun' I can't see race card, gender card (and so on) being deleted by majority consensus. Renard Migrant (talk) 00:33, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I would like to play the mental health card. But I can't. Obviously. We need to play with a full deck, to be one card shy of a full deck, let alone two, smacks of full-deckism. If we try to delete every harmless snowperson clone another fool card will be along shortly; probably at the same time every year, to keep building them up again. --Riverstogo (talk) 21:37, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but nothing you say makes any sense to me. --WikiTiki89 22:28, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

I get the feeling that sentence is either a) intentionally nonsensical, or b) Wonderfool complaining that people don't like him. Purplebackpack89 16:55, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

@Renard Migrant, race card is a figure of speech and therefore would pass CFI. Also, the "price" of getting play the race card deleted is keeping race card. Purplebackpack89 16:55, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

• RFD kept as no consensus for deletion, after more than 2 months have elapsed; no boldface delete posted other than the implied one in the nomination. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:24, 12 March 2016 (UTC)