Talk:far

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Adj. sense:

Widely different in nature or quality; opposite in character.

2009, Graham Huggan, Ian Law, Racism Postcolonialism Europe, page 1:

Tsiolkas's Europe, as voraciously predatory as his own undead protagonist, is a far cry from the fount of idealistic humanism dreamed up by generations of both pre- and post-Enlightenment politicians and philosophers, a Europe defined by its durable capacity for civility in an otherwise barbarous world.

The one example that is given seems bogus, not just because "far cry" is an idiomatic expression, but also because the origin of it, or literal meaning, has nothing to do with a "cry" that is "Widely different in nature or quality" or "opposite in character". Are there genuine examples where "far" means this? Mihia (talk) 21:00, 3 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

I can't think of anything with far off the top of my head, but there may be some. What comes to mind is phrases with the superlative like "the farthest emotion from my mind" or "the farthest color from purple is yellow". -Mike (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

If you have a point on the rim of a wheel, the point that is farthest from it (in distance) is the opposite point. If that wheel is the representation of a space of qualities, such as the colour wheel, that opposite point will often be as different in quality as possible. I still interpret this as the first listed sense, “distant; remote in space”.  --Lambiam 09:39, 6 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

It is interesting that you say that because Merriam-Webster groups the space, time, and "quality or relationship" together as closely related senses. However I still see a difference in quality as being different than a difference in spacial location. One could say that the difference in quality of color is a figurative use of the spacial difference because the color wheel only exists in our minds and doesn't actually exist in space (unless one constructs such a physical wheel and is displaying it). Whether to combine them comes down to preference I suppose. A single definition could just be "remote in space, time, quality, or relationship". However, keeping them separate might make it easier if one wanted to construct lists of synonyms, antonyms, and such. -Mike (talk) 17:12, 6 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

You could be right that this definition should be along the lines of "distant/remote in degree/quality/nature", rather than the wording that we presently have. furthest has a combined definition: "Most distant in time, space or degree". I suppose that if we replicated this at far then we could perhaps fudge the issue of not having a specific example for "degree/quality/nature". One problem with this approach, though, is that the existing translations at far are specific for "remote in space" and "remote in time". (Whether they really need to be, I'm not sure, and, generally speaking, I suppose it is a case of the tail wagging the dog if translations prevent us from perfecting English definitions.) There are, I think, examples of the "distant/remote in degree/quality/nature" sense that involve the phrase "far from", e.g. "his views are far from mine", and I suppose, at a stretch, we could say that "yellow is far from purple" in a "quality" sense. However, the problem here is that I am unsure what part of speech "far" is in that phrase. It seems to me that it could be an adverb. See Wiktionary:Tea_room#far_(2). If we can verify that it is an adjective then "far from" examples might do, or if we can come up with a good example along the lines of "he has far views" or "yellow is the far colour" (neither of which seem to me to work properly, other than, in the latter case, literally spatially), where "far" is more clearly an adjective, then so much the better. Mihia (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

cited Kiwima (talk) 22:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm afraid I don't agree that the new citations support the challenged sense. The phrase "far difference/remove", as used therein, does not mean a difference or remove that is "widely different in nature or quality" or "opposite in character", as it would need to. It is the things being compared that are widely different. Mihia (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

RFV-resolved. I have tweaked the definition to take into account @Mihia's comments. Kiwima (talk) 22:59, 28 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Kiwima: Thanks for looking at this again. I have moved the "far cry" example because by origin it doesn't mean "an extreme cry" but in fact a "long-distance cry". Mihia (talk) 20:37, 2 June 2020 (UTC)Reply