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Keep. Set, idiomatic phrase. "Pack" has many meanings and that makes it even more ambiguous. Moreover, it has a second (slang) meaning not listed: to appear to have a bulging crotch. ---> Tooironic13:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I'd really like it if folks brought more than their narrow experience base to these discussions. We have numerous corpora and criteria to use for determining whether a term is a set phrase. Claiming without a shred of evidence that this is a set phrase when some particular alternative words have been pointed out as valid substitutes reduces this process to mere voting and makes me wonder whether participants are using anything other than whimsy. I had thought that lexicography had progressed beyond armchair introspection.
We have also already discredited the preposterous argument advanced by those who should know better without support of any kind that polysemy of any term in a collocation makes it worth including. Without qualification that argument would mean that the more we refine our definitions, the more collocations we would automatically include. I'm tired of doing citation work against preposterous claims of idiomaticity when mere unsubstantiated assertions seem to be accepted. DCDuringTALK14:32, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
1. What are these "corpora and criteria" that can determine whether something is or isn't a set phrase? Enlighten me! 2. The "preposterous argument" that polysemy makes something worth including is, however silly, explicitly allowed for in the CFI. Ƿidsiþ14:41, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
See Wiktionary:English set phrases for a discussion of operational definitions of "set phrase", ie, suggesting criteria.
We don't keep set phrases that aren't idiomatic. Lmaltier has always argued keeping set phrases no matter what they mean. I've always counter-argued that if we keep them, we can skip the definition as there's no need for one. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Again though, I think we disagree on what (deprecated template usage)idiomatic means. But look Martin, a dictionary isn't just there to explain what a word means, it's there to record that a word exists. Consider (deprecated template usage)duvet cover above, its meaning is very obvious, but it's not obvious that we would say "duvet cover" and "pillow case" but not "duvet case" or "pillow cover". These common collocations have transparent meanings but their existence is not predictable. That is part of what a dictionary does, and that's part of what "idiomatic" means. I don't know how this should be codified in the CFI, but it should be. Ƿidsiþ18:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Re 2, see the "bank parking lot" example in the CFI. There is polysemy, but because there is use of the phrase, albeit rare, with both of the feasible meanings, the word is deemed not inclusible.—msh210℠15:21, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Not necessarily. Bank parking lot is inadmissible because all feasible senses actually exist. We have to ask whether all feasible senses of this actually exist. (I'd guess so.) What's feasible is subjective. I, for one, think that it's feasible to say pack heat for pack (to put in a suitcase or the like) + heat (hotness), to mean "put a source of heat in a bag, as to take on a camping trip". If we agree that that's feasible, and if we find that it's never used that way, then I suppose the CFi would have us keep this entry.—msh210℠18:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I agree that bare assertions are not helpful, but I don't know if the available corpus tools have the answer either. My experiments with MI and similar measures were not encouraging; I'd be interested if you've found a metric that gives usable results. Quantitative analysis would seem especially tricky for intersections of polysemous terms like "pack" and "heat"; a satisfactory frequency-based analysis would require that all of the irrelevant senses first be excluded. To do that without picking through thousands of KWICs by hand, one would need a very sophisticated word-sense disamiguation program (of the sort that is probably still years/decades in the future). So the best we can manage for now, I fear, is intersubjectivity.
Unfortunately, the state of discourse on Wiktionary seems to have actually deteriorated of late (something I would scarcely have thought possible before). On the wiki as in life, sincere inquiry requires a certain level of mutual trust. The snide and insulting behavior that has become so widespread here recently can lead even sincere and intelligent contributors to retreat behind false certainty. Likewise, as this mindset takes hold, it becomes ever harder to justify taking time for thoughtful reflection/analysis that will probably just be ignored. YMMV. -- Visviva15:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I am skeptical of the given sense of "heat". I have encountered this sense nowhere except in the phrase "pack heat", and the only example given for this sense uses "pack heat". I expect the sense can be verified, and perhaps there's a case for inclusion even if it can't. But at best this seems like a classic case of a term that is understood within a narrow speech community, while being understood by the broader community only in a specific phrase. If true, that makes this phrase significantly non-compositional. The existence of a rare independent sense is not sufficient grounds for deleting a common phrase IMO. I believe we have passed terms under these circumstances in the past.
Checking the first page of results for google books:"was packing heat": : 68 hits for "heat", but AFAICT this sense appears only in "packing heat" (1x). : 8 hits for "heat", but this sense appears only in "packing heat" (2x). : 10 hits for "heat", but this sense appears only in "packing heat" (1x). : 15 hits for "heat", but this sense appears only in "packing heat" (1x). : 10 hits for "heat", but this sense appears only in "packing heat" (1x). : 1 hit for "heat", only in "packing heat". : 4 hits for "heat", but this sense appears only in "packing heat" (1x). Two magazines and one duplicate are omitted, but these also contained no independent uses for "heat" in the putative sense. As a sanity check, there is also no use of this sense in the first page of results for "carrying heat", or in the 3 COCA hits for "carrying heat".
Based on the above, unless it can be shown that the relevant sense of "heat" is not only real but comparably widespread, IMO we have to regard "pack heat" as a distinct lexical unit, and therefore keep this entry. -- Visviva15:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Google Books: "carrying heat" gun has 5/10 relevant hits on the first page. OED has quotations including “I fogged away with my heat until I pooped that dummy,” “I won't use this heat, if I have to,” and to turn on the heat meaning “Cover One with a Gun (v. phr.).” This heat (also heater) has literal and figurative shades of meaning including “agitation,” “pressure,” “violence,” “gunplay,” and “a gun.” —MichaelZ. 2010-06-04 18:02 z
keep, per Ƿidsiþ, Visviva, etc. What Visviva calls distinct lexical unit is what linguists often call word. May I add that this phrase seemed very strange to me, I had to read the page to understand it. Lmaltier18:50, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Interesting, thanks. It still seems to me that this sense of "heat" is far less widespread than the phrase "pack heat". google books:"packing heat" gun gives about 507 hits, almost all of which are in this sense, while google books:"carry heat" gun gives 46, of which about half seem to be in this sense; that suggests a ratio of about 20:1, but I think even that is understating it, since authors are much more likely to need to use "gun" in the context of "carry heat" in order to clue their readers in to the intended meaning. Assuming the b.g.c count of ~2700 for "packing heat" can be relied on, that suggests that only about 1 in 5 uses even mentions "gun" on the same page or in the title; thus the ratio of "pack heat" to "carry heat" could be closer to 100:1. On a personal level, if someone (implausibly) were to ask me "are you packing heat," I would immediately understand their meaning; if they asked "you got any heat on you," I would be confused and perhaps think they were asking for a light. Of course, none of this may be relevant to the question of whether this entry and others like it add value to the dictionary. Certainly it is more likely that someone confused by this phrase will look at pack and/or heat for answers. -- Visviva22:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Lemming check: OneLook shows only Urban Dictionary as having "pack heat" as an entry. Not even Wordnet views this as a semantic unit. DCDuringTALK20:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Slang dictionaries are also of some lemmingological interest in this case. Cassell's gives it an entry, as does Partridge. The Shorter Slang Dictionary actually refers the reader from "heat" to "pack heat" for the lemma entry. Interestingly these vary on the date of first attestation (1920s according to Cassell's, 1930 according to Partridge), which suggests there is room for us to add some value by nailing down the earliest findable uses. (I am without OED access, so can't speak to what they may have.) -- Visviva22:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I have taken the trouble to provide cites at Citations:pack heat that provide counterexamples to the unsubstantiated claim that this is a set phrase.
Determiners may be inserted (eg, some, any, no, the)
Adjuncts may be inserted (eg. serious, heavy, automatic, semi-automatic)
"Pack" can be at once used with "heat" and other complements (eg. knife, drugs)
Contrary evidence would need to be more quantitative. Because of the polysemy it is difficult to use the readily available corpora for quantitative tests. DCDuringTALK21:09, 4 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Keep. The possibility of inserting determiners or inserting adjuncts does not run counter to the meaning of set phrase (grammatical sense 2) any more than the splitting of a phrasal verb would make it any less a phrasal verb. The term set phrase does not mean "completely and universally invariant unit". And yes, I have provided examples. In any case, the expression is extremely idiomatic, with many possible meanings of the components, but only one combination of those possibilities is usually meant. --EncycloPetey03:22, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
