Talk:color me

RFD discussion: February–March 2020

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color me

SoP. This just a specific sense of the verb color (sense 5) + pronoun. Leasnam (talk) 16:07, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Sense 5 at color doesn't tell us that "color me X" is very much a set phrase. (In fact I personally can't imagine saying "they coloured him confused".) At the very least we need a clear usage note and some real examples showing the verb in other constructions. Equinox ◑ 02:23, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

‘Rajinikanth said the attempts to "color him as a BJP man" were not correct.’ — “And the all-day-long pundits ... will ... try to color me naïve for even trying.” — “The Force Awakens humanized Ben from the start, coloring him as a broken human instead of a deadpan machine, like Vader.” (Not all are durably archived.)  --Lambiam 10:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I note also the uses with impersonal objects, such as "The chief minister J Jayalalithaa promptly issued a statement that it was a caste conflict between Thevars and Pallars and tried to colour it as a caste issue". Mihia (talk) 18:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I added a "portray (as)" sense to sense 5 at "colour". Mihia (talk) 18:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. "Color me X" is not an imperative telling someone to "portray me as X". It's an exclamation meaning "Boy, am I X!" You can't get that from its parts. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
• Keep. Set phrase, and comparatively recent construction. – Jberkel 19:50, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think anyone understands this at all. It's a play on the printed materials like this that small children were were given for class assignments years ago. They had very simple sentences where the subject of the lesson told the child about itself and how to draw it (with crayons): "I am a fire engine. Color me red." For their class assignment, the child would write a simple one-word answer or two and draw a picture on the printed sheet according to what the printed sentences said. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:14, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• RFD-kept. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:22, 21 March 2020 (UTC)