Talk:suggest
Latest comment: 4 years ago by Backinstadiums in topic when you mean that you advise them to do it
- Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.
Are we missing a "recommend" sense ("I suggest that you invite him; otherwise he'll be very hurt." "I suggest you eat the salmon. The beef is rotten."), or is that included in one of the sense we have?—msh210℠ 16:33, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
- I think our current sense #3 ("to ask for without demanding") is a special case of the sense you describe. (The overall sense seems to be something like "to recommend, propose, or bring up (an idea or course of action)" — though maybe they're actually three separate senses?) —RuakhTALK 19:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
- I teach this as different senses. I suggest we do something, is different from I suggest you do something. The first is "to ask for without demanding", while the second is "recommend". IMHO. -- Algrif 17:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- I agree that those are two senses, but don't draw the line at you vs. we. The examples I gave when starting this dicussion ("I suggest you eat the salmon" and the other) are recommendations, not requests.—msh210℠ 17:48, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- I teach this as different senses. I suggest we do something, is different from I suggest you do something. The first is "to ask for without demanding", while the second is "recommend". IMHO. -- Algrif 17:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't this another case of the context and "politeness" altering the interpretation? Do such cases really require a separate sense? If every case of irony, politeness, understatement, etc. required a sense line, there's hardly a word that would escape being multi-screen. I suppose that the RfV process would keep the entries from becoming overlong, but at the expense of clogging the RfV process for a while. DCDuring TALK 18:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- Just to clarify, do you mean, "The sense we should have is 'recommend', and the 'request' sense is just a special use of the 'recommend' sense, where one says 'suggest'/'recommend' as a polite euphemism for 'request'."? I, for one, am okay with that.—msh210℠ 18:08, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- Isn't this another case of the context and "politeness" altering the interpretation? Do such cases really require a separate sense? If every case of irony, politeness, understatement, etc. required a sense line, there's hardly a word that would escape being multi-screen. I suppose that the RfV process would keep the entries from becoming overlong, but at the expense of clogging the RfV process for a while. DCDuring TALK 18:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
- Well, to me suggest might mean "propose" or "offer as a possibility". If a waiter "suggests" something, we wonder exactly what's motivating the suggestion, but he is displaying "politeness" by advancing it as a modest suggestion. I think we have to stop usually at the surface meaning ("propose") instead of going to the interpretation as "recommendation". After all, if one's boss "suggests" that one put in a little extra effort on a specific project, that is virtually an order, but we would not add "order" as a sense, would we? Admittedly the case at hand is much less clear-cut than the "order" instance, but it certainly ventures into being very situational. DCDuring TALK 18:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
when you mean that you advise them to do it edit
Don't ‘suggest someone to do something’ when you mean that you advise them to do it. You suggest that someone does something. If you say to someone ‘I advise you to...’, you are telling them that you think they should do it https://www.wordreference.com/EnglishUsage/suggest https://www.wordreference.com/EnglishUsage/advises
Then, is the structure suggest somebody to do something O.K. with a meaning different from when you mean that you advise them to do it? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:48, 27 December 2019 (UTC)