Talk:solid

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1. (typography) Without spaces or hyphens.

   Many long-established compounds are set solid.

We already have this as an adjective. Does it exist without a copula?​—msh210℠ 20:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Is solid never an adverb? We talked for two hours solid. Can't we add a more general adverbial sense to this, then delete it as redundant to the first sense. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Are "spell", "print", "write", and "set" copulas? If not, then it would seem to be classed as an adverb. "Solid" does not seem to be interchangeable with "solidly". This would seem to be a case where our ability and willingness to be expansive in our defining allows us to reflect subtleties ignored even by MW3 and MWOnline, which join most dictionaries in showing solidly as if it were an inflected form of solid#Adjective. Collins finds the following distinctions for solidly in its French-English dictionary.

1. firmly (solidement),
2. continuously (sans discontinuer)
3. unanimously (massivement) "to be solidly behind"
4. dependably
5. consistently

I'm not sure I understand what they mean in each case and whether every distinction is really worth making, but solid could substitute as an adverb, I think, for "firmly", "continuously" (time), and "continuously" (space). Neither "solidly" nor solid#Adverb seem readily interpreted with each of the many sense of solid#Adjective or at least the many (14 at MWOnline, 26 at RHU) senses it should have in a comprehensive dictionary as we claim to be. DCDuring TALK 15:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

I think they are copulas, yes (or maybe copula is the wrong word? See further for other examples, though, so you can see what I mean in case "copula" isn't what I mean). "It was written solid" is like "It was written big" or "Coffee is often drunk black in this house" or "The meat was eaten raw". Are such words normally considered adverbs?​—msh210℠ 17:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

I only have CGEL to consult. I wish I had Quirk et al, Biber, and Curme, too. They refer to the kind of use in your three examples as "predicative adjunct". (It applies to a much wider range of verbs than the most inclusive list of copulas I've seen.)

I suppose we have to resort to the tests of adjectivity.

1. Are two words that part of the same NP more typographically solid when separated by an en-space than an em-space? (I can't answer that.)
2. Is it gradable? (I can't answer that, either.)
3. Can "solid" in this sense occur correctly predicatively after "become" (no), "feel" (no), "seem" (no?), "make" (yes?)?
4. Can "solid" appear attributively modifying a noun? "in its solid form, 'whitespace'" (yes).

Can it also be unquestionably an adverb? Possibly. "Some dictionaries tend to spell solid. Some usually hyphenate. Others usually space." There is no obvious noun. (One can almost always infer the existence of an "understood" noun.) It may not be attestable as an adverb though. DCDuring TALK 19:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

kept, no clear consensus for deletion. -- Prince Kassad 10:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)Reply