Talk:soft underbelly

RFD discussion: May–August 2016

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soft underbelly

I restored this; it was deleted in September 2008, seemingly speedy deleted. I find attestations like this:

• "Exploring the soft underbelly of adaptation decisions and actions ..."
• "... effort to slit the soft underbelly of Europe ..."
• 'The Caribbean was America's “soft underbelly” near its strategic Panama Canal sea link.'
• "This issue is the soft underbelly of the adoption industry in America."
• "It is the soft underbelly and Achilles' heel of FOREX."
• "These examples reveal the soft underbelly of global health regimes ..."
• "In the American historical context, the fear is embedded in the soft underbelly of the isolationist movement during the thirties."
• "Critics of climate change research assert that uncertainty about variability is the soft underbelly of the consensus warnings of the scientific world ..."

If it is sum of parts, then of which parts? Is definition in underbelly missing, then? And even if we add definition to underbelly, should this be kept as a set phrase? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:00, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

• Keep as a set phrase, based on underbelly,(soft underbelly*5) at Google Ngram Viewer. That said, OneLook dictionaries do have a similar sense in "underbelly", per “underbelly”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:22, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

• Delete and improve underbelly. "Dark underbelly" is also pretty common. Ƿidsiþ 08:37, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

If a word is used in a metaphorical sense, the adjectives and subclauses suited to the literal sense can still be used with it: e.g. a pit of despair (not a literal hole in the ground) might be dark, bleak, etc. simply by way of extending the metaphor. That would still not recommend entries for dark pit or bleak pit. So delete this. Equinox ◑ 14:08, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

• Keep this idiomatic sentence exists in English and its literal translation in French. I had heard that it came from the Siegfried legend as I've mentioned it in the article, but I can't find any serious reference for that today. JackPotte (talk) 14:16, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
• Delete Soft is not essential, just commonly collocated with underbelly. Improve [[underbelly]] per Widsith. DCDuring TALK 14:38, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

  Would the "commonly collocated" part recommend a redirect? I mean, actually very commonly in this case, isn't it? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:47, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

• There's a space in it, so someone who can't find "soft underbelly" will look up the two words separately anyway. They don't need a redirect to tell them what to try, and gain nothing much by being redirected to one of the two words from the composite phrase. Equinox ◑ 09:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

  A redirect implies this: we know that this is a lexical unit and here's where you can find out about it; the lack of a dedicated entry is not our omission but an intent. A redirect is user friendly: instead of implying "I won't help you, figure it out for yourself", it implies "here's where you can find the information you are looking for". Sure, too many redirects would seem to be a poor idea, like redirecting brown leaf to leaf, but for very common collocations, not so. This is very common per the ratio of only 5 in "underbelly,(soft underbelly*5)" for Google Ngram Viewer. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:24, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 15:59, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Etymology

Hello, the etymology mentioned in the article is fancy. This recent expression (40’s) comes from the famous - but alleged - phrase of Winston Churchill during the second world war : « soft underbelly of Europe » . See Were « Soft Underbelly » and « Fortress Europe » Churchill phrases ?, The Churchill Project.

Churchill's metaphor is widely used in french (« ventre mou », I've just completed the article), with the same meaning and also a second one (semantic shift).