Talk:Standee

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Expanding definition

Hope there is no objection to my taking the liberty of expanding this with a 'History' section; the 'standee', or life-size point-of-sale figurine is a phenomenon in merchandising that precedes their use in movie advertising and inclusion of that history adds context to this article. Jamesmcardle^(talk) 04:27, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Article title/alternative names

At present (current version at time of posting), the lead sentence reads:

A standee is an American term for a large self-standing display promoting a movie, product or event, or point-of-sale advertising, often in the form of a life-size cut-out figure.

From my reading of WP:REFERS and WP:ISATERMFOR, the framing of this sentence as an explanation of the meaning of the term standee is against the WP:NOTDICT policy, so I am going to reword the sentence.

However, looking into this made me wonder about the WP:COMMONNAME usage of the term standee as opposed to, for instance, cardboard cutout. A Google Books Ngram Viewer comparison between the terms standee, cardboard cut-out and cardboard cutout as nouns (here) shows that usage of cardboard cutout is significantly more common. Also, neither Merriam-Webster,^[1] the New Oxford American Dictionary,^[2] nor the Oxford Dictionary of English^[3] actually list this definition of the noun standee. Many of the 'Recent Examples on the Web' listed automatically by Merriam-Webster are examples of this usage, but this only shows that the use of standee to mean "cardboard cutout" may be more frequent than the use of standee to mean "standing passenger", not that standee is the most commonly used term for a cardboard cutout.

I'm posting this here rather than opening a move request, as I'm not sure which title the article could/should be moved to, and an RM might be unnecessary if consensus can be reached on the talk page.

References

^ "standee". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun : a standing person : one who occupies standing room
^ Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A., eds. (2015). "standee". New Oxford American Dictionary (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199891535. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who stands, especially in a passenger vehicle when all the seats are occupied or at a performance or sporting event.
^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2015). "standee". Oxford Dictionary of English (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191727665. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who is standing rather than seated, especially in a passenger vehicle.

Pineapple Storage (talk) 16:53, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 10 June 2025

It has been proposed in this section that Standee be renamed and moved somewhere else, with the name being decided below.

A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.

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Links: current log

Standee → ? – Possible new titles include Cardboard cutout, Cardboard cut-out, etc. (I'm open to other suggestions!) I raised WP:COMMONNAME concerns on the article's talk page last month, but as there have been no replies, I'm bringing it here. A Google Books Ngram Viewer comparison between the terms standee, cardboard cut-out and cardboard cutout as nouns (here) shows that usage of cardboard cutout is significantly more common. Also, even though the article previously claimed that standee was an American term, neither Merriam-Webster,^[1] the New Oxford American Dictionary,^[2] nor the Oxford Dictionary of English^[3] actually list this definition of the noun standee. (Many of the 'Recent Examples on the Web' listed automatically by Merriam-Webster are examples of this usage, but this only shows that the use of standee to mean "cardboard cutout" may be more frequent than the use of standee to mean "standing passenger", not that standee is the most commonly used term for a cardboard cutout.) As noted in the article, it's true that They are typically made of foam-board; if the title were changed to include "cardboard", it would be easy to expand this sentence to (eg.) Despite their common name, they are typically made of foam-board, to explain the discrepancy. I'm interested to hear what others think on this!

References

^ "standee". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun : a standing person : one who occupies standing room
^ Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A., eds. (2015). "standee". New Oxford American Dictionary (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199891535. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who stands, especially in a passenger vehicle when all the seats are occupied or at a performance or sporting event.
^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2015). "standee". Oxford Dictionary of English (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191727665. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who is standing rather than seated, especially in a passenger vehicle.

Pineapple Storage (talk) 01:04, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cutout by itself appears common per sources referenced in the article and a cursory Google search. The problem is, I have no idea how to disambiguate it. Cardboard cutout provides natural disambiguation but if they aren't actually made of cardboard, this doesn't seem appropriate. Per the article, it appears cutouts may be a type of standee, where the latter term can refer to similar types of displays. (Or is a standee a type of cutout?) I can't tell if the title is broken and I don't have a good solution. Interesting problem. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 00:52, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this does seem to be a surprisingly knotty issue! I did a quick search online, and most results for search strings with the keyword "standee" on Google Scholar relate to standing passengers on public transport; some results are also related to construction, as the term appears to have another definition to do with concrete (per this abstract). A Google Search for "history of standees" produces the article for Standee as the first result, with the second being the article for Photo stand-in (yet another potential usage of "cutout"/"cardboard cutout" that hadn't occurred to me!). Searches for "cardboard cut-outs" and "history of cardboard cut-outs" produced more results relating to the subject of Standee, but as you pointed out, "cutout" is commonly used by itself to refer to the same thing, and "life-size cutout" is also frequently used (but this doesn't feel like it would be a good title, as not all cutouts/"standees" are life-size).

I've also just realised that in the lead of Standee, the wikilink for "foam-board" is actually piped to Paperboard (which, according to that article, is sometimes referred to as cardboard, which is a generic, lay term used to refer to any heavy paper pulp–based board) rather than a redirect via foamboard to foamcore. Apart from that second sentence of the lead, there's no further discussion in the article of the materials typically used to make the cutouts. I found this article which says actual people wouldn’t be in there, but the cardboard versions of them could be. Or, to be more accurate, Correx versions -- a material more similar to a yard sign than a child’s science fair project. Apparently, according to this definition, Correx is a brand name for a type of corrugated plastic board made from high-impact PVC free polypropylene resin. It's also commonly referred to as corrugated plastic or corriboard. It has a structure similar to cardboard, consisting of a gridded flute core sandwiched between two flat layers which can be printed on. This article also notes the difference from the cardboard used in packaging, but nonetheless refers to them as "cardboard cutouts".

From my perspective, I think moving the article to Cardboard cutout (listing alternative names in the first sentence, and later clarifying that a standee is a cutout that stands up by itself, and that not all cutouts are made out of cardboard in the strictest sense) might be acceptable, but I'm far from confident that this is the best way forward. Pineapple Storage (talk) 17:57, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[1] "standee". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun : a standing person : one who occupies standing room

[2] Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A., eds. (2015). "standee". New Oxford American Dictionary (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199891535. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who stands, especially in a passenger vehicle when all the seats are occupied or at a performance or sporting event.

[3] Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2015). "standee". Oxford Dictionary of English (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191727665. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who is standing rather than seated, especially in a passenger vehicle.

[4] "standee". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun : a standing person : one who occupies standing room

[5] Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A., eds. (2015). "standee". New Oxford American Dictionary (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199891535. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who stands, especially in a passenger vehicle when all the seats are occupied or at a performance or sporting event.

[6] Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2015). "standee". Oxford Dictionary of English (3 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191727665. Retrieved 5 May 2025. noun — a person who is standing rather than seated, especially in a passenger vehicle.

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