Talk:take its toll

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

What are we supposed to undertake in order to unify in one single article the current take its toll and take their toll, when the devastation is inflicted by multiple factors, exempli gratia years of no exercise and lots of junk food have taken their toll? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Also take a heavy toll, etc. Convention seems to be to pick the most general form as the “lemma” entry, and mark up the others as alternative forms. —Michael Z. 2009-03-03 16:18 z

per COCA: "take a toll" - 100; "take its toll" - 95; "take their toll" - 65; "take a heavy toll" - 14; no others with more that 6 hits. DCDuring TALK 23:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)CA

RFV discussion: March–July 2023

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take its toll

There is a long-outstanding Tea Room discussion with few participants. To me it seems clearly NISoP. As long as we have an adequate figurative definition on toll, one or two usage examples of the frequent collocations take its/their toll should cover it. DCDuring (talk) 18:17, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a question for rfd, not rfv. Your issue is not whether the phrase exists (it clearly does), but whether it is NISoP. Kiwima (talk) 23:38, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Evidence in the form of cites supporting idiomaticity would be welcome. DCDuring (talk) 16:52, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

There are 22 uses of take its toll in the first 14 pages I scrolled through when I did a Google Books search just now, not even counting variants like takes its toll and taking its toll, so I say we should move it to RFD. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 18:42, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there anything about the uses that suggest toll is being used in a way not consistent with other uses?

It is clear that the expression is not a set phrase, I think, unless someone shows overwhelmingly greater frequency of use in this form compared with:

1. uses with verbs levy, exact, etc.
2. uses with their, a
3. uses with adjectives like deadly, fatal, heavy, enormous, great, grevous, certain and comparative and superlative forms thereof, modified by adverbs

DCDuring (talk) 23:48, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you but you're basically saying this will fail RFD. It will surely pass RFV though, if and when someone bothers to find and add some quotes. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

What would a "cite supporting idiomaticity" look like anyway? This, that and the other (talk) 01:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring there are already 3 citations in the entry. What exactly is this RFV about? Ioaxxere (talk) 00:22, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

This RfV is about showing that there is idiomaticity not found in the word toll alone. To me it seems obvious that there won't be, but I've been occasionally wrong about this kind of thing, so I don't want to SPEEDY it. Obviously, it is not a set phrase. Obviously toll in its figurative sense is used with a good few verbs. RfD ends up being a fact-free debate. I'd like the discussion to involve evidence of distinct idiomatic usage. It is easy to find evidence of frequency of usage of, say, red car, but we would want evidence that sometimes red car was used with a meaning other that red + car. That's what would be needed here to show that this expression is something other than take + (DET) + toll. DCDuring (talk) 23:06, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@DCDuring I suggest that this is probably an RFD at this point, it is cited, and your contention is that those cites don't support that this term is idiomatic. Hard to close this as an RFV failed since it is cited, asking for cites which fulfill specific requirements (beyond usage) is probably not sufficient to fail RFV. - TheDaveRoss 16:31, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Nobody seems to like using RfV to gather facts for deletions. DCDuring (talk) 23:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Also not much interest in the Tea Room. Is it me or do folks really think this needs so stay included? DCDuring (talk) 23:46, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd lean to keep since MW and Oxford include it, so LEMMING nudges it. - TheDaveRoss 12:45, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

• RFV passed. Take it to RFD if you still want it deleted Mintprepper (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2023 (UTC)