Talk:white

Translations

Need to separate noun and adjective translations here, as for other colours. Fr and It done. Paul G 10:28, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

From RFC

The pronunciation section is confusing me. Is it being redundant, or am I just having a blonde moment? Beobach972 23:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

There was some talk in the Grease pit (WT:GP) recently, about overhauling the format of the pronunciation section. (I and others, have had proposed new formats at times, but none have taken off.) --Connel MacKenzie 07:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

(And yes, there are two different pronunciations that are both common for the same meanings.) --Connel MacKenzie 08:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

What about noun sense 6? Does this meet CFI? Jeffqyzt 12:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed. If included, the entry would belong at Mrs. or Ms. White, however she is known, or at the very least under capital W. Professor Plum, anyone? DAVilla 22:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I just put the obvious adjectives from "noun" into the "adjective" table (and thus overwrote the entries, which may belong in the "noun" table). -- Hämbörger 17:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Possible missing sense: clear (e.g. water)

I think I've seen clear, unpolluted water described as "white", even though it's actually transparent. Sense 1 probably doesn't cover this because it seems intended to refer to solid opaque white. Equinox ◑ 12:15, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The existence of white water (“turbulent water”) makes this very difficult to search for! google books:"calm white water" turns up several hits, but some obviously mean snow-colour water. google books:"clear white water" also turns up several hits, but some mention wax suspended in the water, or seem to mean "clear [unpolluted] but white [turbulent] water" (the only citation I see for "unpolluted white water" is definitely using that sense: 1970, The State: "The Chattooga, approximately 50 miles in length, is described in the report as one of the last remaining undisturbed, unpolluted white water rivers of the Blue Ridge escarpment"). Nonetheless, some might be the sense you're after... - -sche (discuss) 08:56, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Possible missing noun sense: blank space on page

In journalism etc. apparently the "white" is the portion not printed on. This might be covered by our sense "anything of the colour white" but IMO not convincingly; I also wonder whether the empty space on a page whose background is, say, blue, or pink, could still be technically termed the "white". Would be nice to cite this; I had trouble. Equinox ◑ 00:59, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I too am having a hard time finding anything that would clearly be this sense as opposed to a general sense. If other dictionaries distinguish it, it might still be worth adding as a subsense, even if the citations could be considered the more general sense; I don't know. Incidentally, our corresponding broad definition at black, "Part of a thing which is distinguished from the rest by being black", should perhaps be revised to be more like this one ("Anything that is [X]")... - -sche (discuss) 08:48, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Alternative forms

Several alternative forms can be found online, and probably in (especially pop-culture-y) magazines etc, for the racial sense: yt/YT (Talk:yt), whyte (currently labelled an obsolete spelling), whyt, wyt. - -sche (discuss) 03:53, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

definitions

Add "the lighter one of two (or a small number of) varieties", I don't often see it put so directly, but it fits for white chess pieces, wine, people, and coffee. I always thought of these things as not "really" white because they're not RGB 255,255,255, but it's a very common use of the word. — This unsigned comment was added by Irtapil (talk • contribs) at 18:07, 14 January 2020 (UTC).

Colours in reality aren't 100% pure like colours on a computer screen; that's just life. I don't think we need to explain it in every or any colour entry. The same goes for words like round, square, spherical: such objects are not pure geometrical entities in real life; that's a given. Equinox ◑ 19:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

RFC discussion: June–July 2020

See Talk:black#RFC discussion: June–July 2020.

white lie

What meaning is used in white lie ? JMGN (talk) 11:40, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Probably the sense relating to being 'honourable, fair or decent', though I could see why we might choose to have a slihtly different sense or subsense to cover it. --Overlordnat1 (talk) 12:13, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Possible missing Adj sense: "burnished without ornament"

This appears in Chambers 1908. Unsure of the context: could be ceramics or something? Equinox ◑ 14:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

RFD discussion: July 2023–March 2024

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This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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white

Rfd-sense: (board games, chess) The person playing with the white set of pieces. - in any competition that there is a white team this "sense" can be used, ("white was up three points to two"). While it is true in chess that the sides are referred to as white and black, the same is true in go and many other games which have white or black pieces, and when there are other colors those are also referred to by name. It doesn't seem like a distinct sense of white. - TheDaveRoss 16:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep. The person playing with the white pieces is clearly distinct from the white pieces themselves, whether chess or go (or some other game) is being referred to. —-Overlordnat1 (talk) 17:01, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Keep, I guess. The fact that it is a metonymy is not a particularly strong argument by itself, especially as it can probably be applied to other colour names besides "white" and "black". I'm more convinced by the fact that lemmings have seen fit to include this metonymy as a separate sense or subsense. This, that and the other (talk) 07:59, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Weak delete. I'm not sure on this one... Should this same sense be added to red, since checkers uses red pieces? What about yellow, blue, red and green when playing parcheesi? You could probably find any given color in some board game where it would be appropriate to refer to one player as that given color... – Guitarmankev1 ^(talk) 12:36, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep per Overlordnat1. Nothing about this sense's existence in multiple board games invalidates it; it is very common in chess particularly. –CopperyMarrow15 (talk | edits) Feel free to ping me! 20:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Delete, RTFM and not a dictionary. Fay Freak (talk) 12:17, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Keep, as idiomatic to chess; not sure whether this extends to checkers, but I note that older chess sets frequently used red pieces, although I don't know whether it was common to refer to the player using them as "red". P Aculeius (talk) 05:44, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 20:28, 10 March 2024 (UTC)