Talk:pickup

RFC discussion: July 2014

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

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pickup and pick up#Noun

pickup and pick up#Noun need a bit of work. Something smells fishy with the duplication of senses.

Pretty sure the noun is only spelled pickup or pick-up. Written as two words, it's only the verb. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:48, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

In theory at least, but you know native speakers don't always follow the rules found in grammar textbooks. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:07, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Not in casual writing, no, but we rely on attestations in durably archived sources, most of which (with the exception of Usenet discussions) have been copyedited and proofread. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:57, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

To me, the sense "(tennis) a half-volley" is wrong. 'Good pickup' or 'difficult pickup' refer to the difficulty of getting the ball back into play, whereas half-volley is the shot itself. It's a very slight difference and I'm not sure any citations would lead to a distinction between the two. Perhaps a cleanup of all the sense would make it easier to fix this one. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:13, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, now I think about it, it good be a good pickup to get the ball into play, but a bad half-volley. That's what I mean. Renard Migrant (talk) 11:17, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Angr. For most if not all noun senses of pick up is an alternative form of either the hyphenated form or the solid form. This would be typical, at least for compound nouns of this kind, ie, those with an phrasal verb homonym. Some empirical work or at least consultation with authorities (lemmings) is required to confirm this. DCDuring TALK 11:25, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

AFAICT no dictionary puts noun definitions at pick up rather than pickup or pick-up. Searching for plurals and article/determiner combinations at COCA shows that pickup is much more common than pick-up, which is significantly more common than pick up. If noun definitions belong at pick-up they will probably be those that are closely associated or recently derived from the verb pick up.

Accordingly, I have gutted the noun section at pick up, moving the definitions to pickup or pick-up by my lights. I left the tennis sense at pick up because it has a citation, but if the preponderance of citations of that sense are of another form, its definition should also be moved. Patient work to refine this further would yield better entries. DCDuring TALK 11:59, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

BNC shows the same ordering of forms, though not with as great a magnitude of difference as COCA. DCDuring TALK 12:03, 15 July 2014 (UTC)