"track record"

[Laurence Horn]

Then there's "get untracked", as when a baseball (basketball, etc.)
player or team in a slump "can't get untracked", which appears to
have derived from a eggcornish reanalysis of "can't get on track" (of
a train car).  Being "untracked" is thus a positive (cf. "finally got
untracked"), precisely the way being on track is for the train, one
that seems to allude to undoing a negative (as when a car or wagon in
stuck in a track/rut).
(Cf. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001390.html.)


LH


At 2:51 PM +0000 11/18/10, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>According to the OED, "track record" derives from horse racing.
>Whether horse racing qualifies as a "sport" is open to question:
>The activity is covered in the "sports" section of newspapers, but I
>always wonder who is the athlete--the horse or the rider or the
>owner.  The question is perhaps even more troubling as regards auto
>racing.
>
>But I wonder whether modern users of the phrase "track record," if
>they ever stopped to wonder, would think of it in terms of horse
>racing or auto racing or human foot racing.  (Of course, the thing
>about cliches is that their users seldom do think about them.)
>
>--Charlie
>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>Jonathan Lighter [wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
>Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 9:31 AM
>
>Ubiquitous indeed.  I can't remember the last time a TV news individual said
>"record" when he could say 'track record."
>
>Sports-related metaphors are more frequent than ever. Cf. last week's post
>about "pregame speculation" before the G-20 summit.
>
>JL

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org