[OkayPhysicist]

It is objectively a phrase, and not a word, because you can substitute the water for literally any other liquid and form a perfectly coherent phrase. boiling oil, boiling syrup, boiling coca cola. "Boiling" in this context is just a participial adjective, modifying the noun "water". If "boiling water" is a word, so are "six men", "good idea", "large rock", "7 year old boy", "Californian trees", "metallic flooring", etc.

Better yet, you can take advantage of English's adjective ordering to demonstrate this point. Would I describe the water I'm currently boiling for the purpose of cooking "cooking boiling water", or "boiling cooking water". Since purpose tends to be the last adjective we use, any native speaker would choose the later.

[9rx]

I know "objectively" is completely made up just as much as the rest of English, so perhaps you are not using it as I recognize the word, but as I recognize it there is nothing objective about English. It is all just made up and used as one feels like. Obviously "boiling water" can be a word, just like "six men", "good idea", "large rock", etc. can be.

Simply put, "boiling water" is a word whenever someone uses it as a word. It is reasonable to say that it isn't commonly used as a word, but that's kind of the point of the article: Asking when a word becomes worthy of inclusion in the dictionary. The very similar "hot water" is a word that is found in the dictionary. Of course, it is a word used frequently, so the inclusion isn't suspiring.

But it remains unclear where the line is between worthy of inclusion and not worthy of inclusion. The article is asking where that line is.