Talk:terminate

RFD discussion: February 2023–April 2024

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

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terminate

Senses:

• (transitive) To conclude.
• (intransitive) To issue or result.

Tagged with {{rfd-redundant}} by Voltaigne on 2 October 2022, not listed. These senses were added by Neel.arunabh on 16 September 2022. J3133 (talk) 11:21, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for listing this and sorry for neglecting to do so. The transitive sense "to conclude" seems to me to be covered by the first sense "to end something". On second thoughts the intransitive sense "to issue or result" could potentially be distinguished from "to end, conclude, or cease; to come to an end" if it is intended to cover usages such as "the river terminates in a waterfall" or "the integer sequence terminates in three prime numbers". If so, some quotations would help to clarify the distinction. Voltaigne (talk) 12:36, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@J3133: and @Voltaigne: See the definitions at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/terminate. Neel.arunabh (talk) 15:48, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I would guess that "to conclude" is meant to cover "to occur at the end of something", but it should be rewritten in that case since "to conclude" is rather opaque. The dictionary.com definitions don't seem to support "to issue or result" as a separate sense, though I'm also confused by why dictionary.com have "to end" (intransitive) and "to come to an end" as separate senses. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 22:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

"To occur at the end of something" is intransitive.  --Lambiam 21:45, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Slightly confused by this comment—"to occur" is intransitive in that phrase, yes, but "to occur at the end of" (or rather "to occur at or form the conclusion of" in their wording) is substitutable for "to terminate", hence it being listed as a transitive sense at dictionary.com. (e.g.: "This scene terminates the play." = "This scene occurs at the end of the play.") —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:34, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

IMO, "the river comes to an end in a waterfall" or "the integer sequence ends in three prime numbers" are fine.  --Lambiam 21:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 03:33, 15 April 2024 (UTC)