Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 May 25

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May 25

"before dying"

I see this cliche used over 4,000 times on enwiki but it goes without saying "before dying". Am I getting it wrong, or is there (ever) a good reason to use it? How would you reword it? -- GreenC 05:34, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Seems like it would mean "soon before dying". --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, you won't see, "Arthur was born at Buckingham Palace on 1 May 1850 before dying in 1942 at Bagshot Park." Compare also the sense of "bucket list]" defined as "a list of activities to do before dying", which seems superfluous - although people who believe in an afterlife may have a post-mortem wishlist (taking a selfie with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates?). But just "a list of activities to do" may mean things to do before going on holiday, or before marriage, so the specification of the limit carries information.  --Lambiam 08:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Most of the first page entries (other than book/episode titles and direct quotes) are "They did X in year Y before dying in year Z". If you don't like "before dying", just write "They did X in year Y and died in year Z". —Kusma (talk) 08:37, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The second hit, Autumn (Manet), uses it in the phrase the painter only had time to make two, [...] before dying. So the "before" describes what it was that limited a particular activity, and it happened that the time limit was due to death, but that doesn't go without saying. And actually the first hit, where somebody carries out a political role before dying in office is similar, but implicit: the person only had time to do a bit of work in that role, before dying. There's an old joke about somebody putting up a sign saying "wet paint", and a passerby points out that "paint" is obvious, because anybody can see that it's paint, and "wet" doesn't need saying either, because why would you put a sign up about dry paint? I forget the punchline.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

It contrasts with "after dying" which occurs only 332 times on enwiki, so people are evidently 12% as active after death. Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• The construction is very useful for indicating either proximity in time, or in juxtaposing ideas, in ways that present the concepts as fortuitous or ironic or something like that. Please don't change every such construction en masse, because many times the phrasing is serving an important narrative purpose and is not just placing items on a relative timescale, but is also being used for emphasis or other valid uses. --Jayron32 12:26, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah, no mass changes. I just find it so commonly used it feels more like a lazy short cut to combine two things into a single sentence, than a conscious construct to offset life with death. This is one of those common phrases that IMO doesn't convey much useful, usually, except for compacting text in a canned style that someone else came up with long ago and has peaked in popularity recently. GreenC 06:28, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I'll mention in passing a related peeve: calling an artist's last work their "final" work, when the chain was broken by death rather than by retirement or change of focus. —Tamfang (talk) 01:26, 28 May 2022 (UTC)