"XY problem" meaning in All languages combined

See XY problem on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: XY problems [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun|head=XY problem}} XY problem (plural XY problems)
  1. A communication problem where a person seeking help (for example, from a computing helpdesk) asks a question that assumes (and implies) significant amounts of probably-incorrect information, e.g. "How can I use X to solve Y?". The problem is that X is very often the wrong tool or approach to solve Y. Often the problem is further complicated by leaving out the "to solve Y" half, which results in further confusion because, in complex problem domains, it is often not self-evident what problem the questioner is actually trying to solve. Wikipedia link: XY problem
    Sense id: en-XY_problem-en-noun-kZnvMMn1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for XY problem meaning in All languages combined (1.1kB)

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      "expansion": "XY problem (plural XY problems)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w"
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      "glosses": [
        "A communication problem where a person seeking help (for example, from a computing helpdesk) asks a question that assumes (and implies) significant amounts of probably-incorrect information, e.g. \"How can I use X to solve Y?\". The problem is that X is very often the wrong tool or approach to solve Y. Often the problem is further complicated by leaving out the \"to solve Y\" half, which results in further confusion because, in complex problem domains, it is often not self-evident what problem the questioner is actually trying to solve."
      ],
      "id": "en-XY_problem-en-noun-kZnvMMn1",
      "links": [
        [
          "communication",
          "communication"
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        [
          "help",
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        [
          "helpdesk",
          "helpdesk"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "XY problem"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "XY problem"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "XY problems",
      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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        "head": "XY problem"
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        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
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        "A communication problem where a person seeking help (for example, from a computing helpdesk) asks a question that assumes (and implies) significant amounts of probably-incorrect information, e.g. \"How can I use X to solve Y?\". The problem is that X is very often the wrong tool or approach to solve Y. Often the problem is further complicated by leaving out the \"to solve Y\" half, which results in further confusion because, in complex problem domains, it is often not self-evident what problem the questioner is actually trying to solve."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-10 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (a644e18 and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.