(no subject)

[jack]

In golf, low scores are good, and there is a term "par", meaning the average expected number of shots to pot a ball in a particular hole: if your number of shots is below par, that's good, and above par, that's bad.

For a long time non-golf metaphoric uses of "par" bothered me. Eventually I decided "below par" could be used to mean (or correspondingly, "above par" the opposite) either numerically lower than average, or worse than average.

This has the advantage that it makes sense to people both ways round, but the disadvantage that the meaning has to be inferred from context. Are we ok with this, or should we attempt to recapture "below par" to mean "worse than average" or even "both worse and numerically lower higher than average"? Was it ever used that restrictedly?

Comments

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if you do find the train-track metaphor intuitive (which I don't), then the Christmas counterexample doesn't necessarily break it. Deadlines are rushing towards you and you can move them further away from you or nearer to you; but when you say "Christmas should be in February" you're probably not thinking of this coming Christmas, which is an event rushing towards you currrently a month and a half away, but Christmas in general, which is a recurring event in a calendar you're conceptually looking at from outside, not coming towards you on a track.

In the same way, I think, you might want to move the end of your working day (as a general recurring event) back to 4:30pm, but if you're planning to have a meeting today at 5 you might bring that forward to 4:30.

(Hope that makes sense - it's proving harder to express verbally than I expected.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if you do find the train-track metaphor intuitive (which I don't)

I found it intuitive after thinking about it for a bit, as it were :)