I just imagined a pure beginner who looks up the word and memorizes
{nuH} as "possibility" and then is puzzled with a piece of text talking
about weapons and wonders why they speak about possibilities. Or the
other way, a beginner might be asking for a good possibility to do
something and uses the word {nuH}, which might look strange.
But the beginner should be learning the word nuH
as both weapon and possibility. It means both to a
Klingon. We don't worry about a beginner learning the word jIH
and then wondering why everyone is talking about monitors all the
time. It means both, and to learn the language is to learn when to
use one or the other. Sometimes people do mix those two up. We
correct them, and life goes on.
Even thought {nuH} is defined as "possibility" in the list, there still
is the /regular/ word {DuH}, of which I think it should be preferred in
usage wherever possible.
If nuH can indeed be used outside of the idiom Hoch
nuH qel, then there is no reason to discourage a beginner
from using the word nuH instead of DuH. It
shouldn't look strange, because it's a correct word to use. The
only person it will look strange to is the person who hasn't
learned that the word nuH can be used to mean possibility.
The only time it would matter is when a listener might actually
not be able to distinguish whether a weapon or a possibility is
intended.
And any external word list should label the metaphorical usage of {nuH},
in my opinion.
Possibly. But if the word can be used interchangeably with DuH to mean possibility, then it doesn't actually matter whether it's a metaphor or not — it means possibility.
Take, for example, the English word hog. It means "a
hoofed mammal of the family Suidae, order Artiodactyla, comprising
boars and swine." But it ALSO means "a selfish, gluttonous, or
filthy person," and this latter definition obviously derives from
the swine meaning. (Its first attestation as a verb in this sense
is in the book Huckleberry Finn). You don't learn that hog
in the selfish, gluttonous, filthy sense is slang or only used in
certain contexts; it's just a word you can use. It doesn't get any
special note in a dictionary. Even though one is a metaphor of the
other, you learn it as its own word that has multiple meanings.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name