Talk:Ridiculous

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Ridiculous article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Philosophy: Aesthetics Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Aesthetics

Comedy

	Comedy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Comedy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of comedy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComedyWikipedia:WikiProject ComedyTemplate:WikiProject ComedyComedy articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Requested move (1)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: discussion stopped and restarted because someone (not me) has moved pages about without closing this discussion. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ridiculous (general use) → Ridiculous — The current Ridiculous article is about an obscure album, and should be at Ridiculous (album), which redirects to Ridiculous. The term “ridiculous” is a common English word, and has a slightly more specialized use in philosophy and theory of humor, and is currently at ridiculous (general use), so ridiculous should be about this both common general and common specialized use. PPdd (talk) 00:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ridiculous → Ridiculous (album)
Or the plain name Ridiculous as the disambig page? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No big objection to disambiguation, except that it makes linking unnecesarily inconventient for a very commonly used concept, which we all use al the time. For example, an editor might should not have to go to a disambiguation page to link the word ridiculous. Easier to just put a hat on the main general use page, referring to Ridiculous (disambiguation). (Even the album is named for the common and generally used concept. ridiculous. PPdd (talk) 19:08, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can I suggest that we keep all the discussion at Talk:Ridiculous, as it's all part of the same suite of suggested moves? PamD (talk) 18:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. PPdd (talk) 19:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move? (2)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved per PamD's proposal JaGa^talk 19:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ridiculousness → ? —

See previous discussions, hereinabove and at Talk:Ridiculous (album)#Requested move. Someone (not me) moved Ridiculous (general use) to Ridiculousness, and Ridiculous to Ridiculous (album), and Ridiculous (disambiguation) to Ridiculous, and with them their talk pages, without closing the previous move discussion. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I propose:

Move Ridiculousness to Ridiculous, perhaps adding a hidden comment to remind future editors that the article is about the noun "Ridiculous", not the adjective "Ridiculous".
Move the dab page to Ridiculous (disambiguation)
I was about to add "make a redirect from The ridiculous to Ridiculous", but I see I did it a while back. It will be more appropriate linking to this article-formerly-known-as-ridiculousness.
Carefully pick up all the pieces of incoming links, mend whatever needs mending, take a deep breath and walk away hoping we've now got it sorted out!

PamD (talk) 13:19, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support PamD's proposal. A further argument for the proposal is below. Also, I think the adjective and noun are very closely related, in all of careful and subtle usage, history, and eymology. PPdd (talk) 14:18, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per proposal. Flamarande (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Ridiculous which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 00:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss now at #Move? (2) hereinabove: someone (not me) has moved pages about. Sorry. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The word "Ridiculousness" is ridiculous

Juxtaposing a "-ness" after the word "ridiculous", to make "ridiculousness", creates a sonic inconguity that is ridiculous. :)! PPdd (talk) 17:34, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will comment at the main discussion. PamD (talk) 19:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was actually only joking. I had thought of naming the article ridiculousness, but it sounded so ridiculous that I was afraid it would be blanked as NRS or OR, since the RS I was using just use the word "ridiculous". PPdd (talk) 22:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

What is "1540s Latin"? Oxford English Dictionary says: "Etymology: Either < post-classical Latin ridiculosus laughable, comic (4th cent.), or directly < classical Latin rīdiculus capable of arousing laughter, funny, comic, amusing, absurd, silly (see ridicule adj.) + -ous suffix. Compare Middle French, French ridiculeux, adjective (c1490).". Can't copy that verbatim for copyright reasons, but something needs to change. No time to fix it right now. PamD (talk) 19:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And, the first cited use as a noun is 1674. PamD (talk) 19:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a link for the particular version of Oxford you are using, or is it a hard copy? (The most complete Oxford would make even an Amazon Kindle weighty.)

It's the Online OED in all its glory - most UK public libraries provide free online access to it, from home, for all library members. I'm not sure how widely available it is in USA. I think you can actually join Lancashire public libraries, even from abroad, and get access to its online resources including OED - see http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/libraries/borrower/join.asp. The fact that it says "Cards are posted to UK residents only, other users will receive notification by email." implies that non-UK people can join! Good luck. PamD (talk) 15:25, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology and history are very interesting for the ridiculous, as it shows different concepts of fundamental attitudes toward life. An example is Felini's Satyricon. The ridiculous started off as being very different from "absurdity", although moidern common laguage usage is so sloppy that they have morphed into synonyms. Classically, ridiculousness is related to laughter, deformity, superiority, and incongruity, while absurdity is related to reason, and bad reason was viewed as being serious, not funny, prior to its use in comic satire and irony, whereas ridiculousness was always used in parody and satire. I have been finding it difficult to find RS that makes this simple distinction explicit. In the absense of a clear RS on this, etymologies can be used to do RS edits, and make the distinction implicitly, and are good for implicit "history of ideas" without being OR or Synth, as obvious things that are not explicit in RS can be brought to a readers mind simply by presenting historic facts, letting the reader make their own obvious inferences from the facts. PPdd (talk) 14:04, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Too little, too much; Mathematical measurement of the ridiculous

The clown in the article photo has a hat that is too small, and likely has shoes that are too big. This edit[1] similarly uses the edit summary "orthographic correction" to remove the word "of". Does anyone know of any scholarly articles or books that are related to "too little" or "too much" as these relate to "incongruity", or about a mathematical analyisis of "incongruity" as it relates to "correlation"? For example complexity and Occam's razor related to "too much", or measurements for awards given to overly long or totally unreadable (from terseness) computer programs. PPdd (talk) 15:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Repetition

The article stated: "Historic and technical usage of "absurdity" associates it with invalid argumentation and reasoning. Historic and technical usage of "nonsense" associates it with semantics and meaning. While historic and technical usage of "ridiculous" associates it with laughter, superiority, deformity, and incongruity." but I think that all this excessive repetition of "Historic and technical usage" is really... ridiculous :) LOL! Don't you agree? We should avoid unnecessary repetition, it's something we learnt at school in the writing classes, right? ^_^ I changed the repetitive paragraph and turned it into this: "From a historical and technical viewpoint, "absurdity" is associated with invalid argumentation and reasoning, "nonsense" with semantics and meaning, while "ridiculous" is most associated with laughter, superiority, deformity, and incongruity." I'd be grateful if you could have a second look and improve, as I'm not a master of writing, either :/ Cheers, Χρυσάνθη Λυκούση (talk) 15:44, 26 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]