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How does noun 'scale' imply climbing? How does "swing for the fences" not imply baseball?
by georgieporgie 15y ago
How does noun 'scale' imply climbing?
How does "swing for the fences" not imply baseball?
- petercooper 15y agoI said I was stretching but the etymology of the term "scale" seemed to go back to either "cup" (and eventually the weights and measures sense of the term), "skin plates on fish or snakes" or "climb" (which also led to the musical definition). Ranking things on a "scale" seems, to me, to derive from the latter root meaning. I was stretching it, sure, but responding to someone picking a hole in someone's legitimate usage of a metaphor seemed like a great time to be a little jocular!
- georgieporgie 15y agoI don't understand. You're either saying that "scale" is a sports metaphor, which it isn't, or that all words in the English language are metaphors, which they aren't.