Your first bike can't be replaced with another first bike, though. It was my first proper grown-up bike that got pinched, and it had my Pembroke College sticker on it, and some little stickers that my boyfriend at the time had stuck on it, and I was a bit sentimental about it, but, y'know, if I'd had to lock it up with fifteen locks every night a) it might have still got stolen*, and b) I'd've never used it because it would have been too much hassle. The bikeness of it could be replaced, but the specific that-particular-bike-ness of it couldn't.
* I figure that if somebody wants to nick your bike specifically, they'll manage to do so, and all you really need to do is make it less appealing to an opportunist thief than at least one other bike in the same area.
I'm not sure how you could back up or insure your six-year-old's first painting. I suppose you could scan it... and back up the scan of course... 8-)
I also don't think either of those examples answers the question about whether the word "irreplaceable" necessarily means "of great personal/sentimental value". (OED supports my narrow reading here!) It also doesn't prove that everybody is equally sentimental about their property, or that everybody's risk assessment based on that sentimentality comes to the same conclusion...
e.g. (final example, I promise) my parents have kept pretty much all my & my sister's paintings, scribblings, etc; that's nearly 29 years of carting the damn things from house to house and storing them, but I suspect if they were all destroyed in a fire my parents would not actually be distraught about it, and they certainly wouldn't go to the effort of scanning each one in to ensure that they didn't lose them. I think there are some grey areas between "I would be inconsolable if these things were lost and will take every possible precaution to insure against this eventuality" and "pshaw, worthless, might as well throw them away now". Certainly most of my souvenir-ish things are things that I want to keep because when I happen across them they remind me of something good; if I didn't have them then I'd still have the good memories, but I just can't actually bring myself to throw the physical things away.
To be honest, sometimes I almost wish I could lose all that sort of junk by accident; it'd be upsetting at the time, but I wouldn't have to carry it around with me any more and in fact my life would go on exactly as normal afterwards.
Re: could not be replaced
* I figure that if somebody wants to nick your bike specifically, they'll manage to do so, and all you really need to do is make it less appealing to an opportunist thief than at least one other bike in the same area.
I'm not sure how you could back up or insure your six-year-old's first painting. I suppose you could scan it... and back up the scan of course... 8-)
I also don't think either of those examples answers the question about whether the word "irreplaceable" necessarily means "of great personal/sentimental value". (OED supports my narrow reading here!) It also doesn't prove that everybody is equally sentimental about their property, or that everybody's risk assessment based on that sentimentality comes to the same conclusion...
e.g. (final example, I promise) my parents have kept pretty much all my & my sister's paintings, scribblings, etc; that's nearly 29 years of carting the damn things from house to house and storing them, but I suspect if they were all destroyed in a fire my parents would not actually be distraught about it, and they certainly wouldn't go to the effort of scanning each one in to ensure that they didn't lose them. I think there are some grey areas between "I would be inconsolable if these things were lost and will take every possible precaution to insure against this eventuality" and "pshaw, worthless, might as well throw them away now". Certainly most of my souvenir-ish things are things that I want to keep because when I happen across them they remind me of something good; if I didn't have them then I'd still have the good memories, but I just can't actually bring myself to throw the physical things away.
To be honest, sometimes I almost wish I could lose all that sort of junk by accident; it'd be upsetting at the time, but I wouldn't have to carry it around with me any more and in fact my life would go on exactly as normal afterwards.