(no subject)

[jack]

Have I asked this before? I know I was *going* to ask it.

How do you use "gross" and "net"? In the context of tax and weight, they are well defined, meaning "before tax" and "after tax", and "with packaging and lorries" and "without" respectively respectively.

I had gained the impression that "net" meant "resultant", and correspondingly assumed "gross" meant "before modifications".

And then I saw the weight example, and was told that "gross" simply meant the larger, the one with the extras, and "net" the one without.

Then I saw someone describe the weight example from the point of view of the people wanting the end product, when "resultant" would be a good description after all.

Etymologically it seems "gross" came from "big" and "net" came from "neat" (in latin). I'm not sure of their later path.

I'm sure I've heard "net effect" to mean "resultant effect, the effect remaining when everything else has cancelled out" and want to use it in that sense, but is that a valid usage?

I couldn't find it discussed anywhere.

Comments

[simont]

I'd certainly consider "the net effect" as in the cumulative effect to be a perfectly normal usage of the word.

So I suppose I'd have to say that the unifying theme is that "net" means "effective", "at the end of the day" or "the bottom line": it's what you end up with, and it's what's important for whatever purpose you then plan to use it for. Your net salary is what determines your actual ability to buy things; the net effect of a bunch of forces acting on a mass is what determines its actual acceleration. "Net" means the important measurement.

Your net salary, in particular, is not net just because it's the smaller of the two figures, or because it's without some potentially-optional stuff; it's net because that optional stuff is stuff you don't end up with. If you were claiming tax back on your salary (let's suppose, for example, that your company insisted on deducting it at a fixed 40% rate, and you then had to negotiate with the tax office to get back the extra tax you'd thereby paid on everything below the higher-rate threshold), then your net salary would be the salary including the claimed-back tax.

"Gross", I think, just means big: "including lots of stuff".

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's what I wanted to think (about net). But I was assured that it wasn't.

Do you think then net and gross might be the same for some thing? In the tax example I think I'd still use "gross" to mean "before tax" even if it were bigger afterward, as that's got so much history... But for something else it could be.

[mair_in_grenderich]

Do you think then net and gross might be the same for some thing?

Well, trivially, something that doesn't have anything to add-on/takeaway?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*sigh* *hits you* :) I don't think it counts as the same if they're the same as everything else :) I meant, noticeably the same, as in more the same than other relevant quantifiers... :)

[simont]

If I were a charity accepting Gift-Aided donations, so that after receiving some money from a person I could then do some paperwork and get an extra chunk from the tax office to go with it, then I think it wouldn't cause me much mental gear-clashing to describe the sum including that reclaimed tax as both "net" (it's the money I end up being able to spend on my charitable purpose) and "gross" (it's inclusive of everything it might reasonably include).

[cornute.livejournal.com]

Sure, take for instance... some fruit, say an apple, an orange, and a handful of seedless grapes, not on the stem, all the same gross weight. The net weight, the bit you can eat, would be less for the apple (because of the core) and the orange (peel and seeds) but for the grapes it would be the same as the gross, because you eat all of them.

If you eat grapes, that is, because if you don't I'm just comparing apples to oranges, and we know that never works.