Wiktionary:Votes/2012-05/Emending the bank parking lot example

Emending the bank parking lot example edit

One of the paragraphs of the #Idiomaticity section of the current CFI reads:

This rule must be applied carefully and is somewhat subjective. For example, bank has several senses and parking lot has an idiomatic sense of "large traffic jam". However bank parking lot can't possibly mean "to put a large traffic jam in a financial institution". With such clearly wrong interpretations weeded out, the remaining choices are "place to park cars for any of several kinds of business" or "place to park cars by, for or on a river bank or similar (as opposed to, say, the hill parking lot)." The whole phrase could plausibly mean either, depending on context (though the first is likely far more common), and so the phrase is not idiomatic.

Voting on: changing it to:

This rule must be applied carefully and is somewhat subjective. For example, bank has several senses and parking lot has an idiomatic sense of "large traffic jam". However bank parking lot can't possibly mean "to put a large traffic jam in a financial institution". With such clearly wrong interpretations weeded out, the remaining choices are "a place to park cars for any of several kinds of business" or "a place to park cars by, for or on a river bank or similar (as opposed to, say, the hill parking lot)." The whole phrase bank parking lot can be found in actual use with either of the meanings it can reasonably have, depending on context (though the first is likely far more common), and so the phrase is not idiomatic.

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