"track record"

[Charles C Doyle]

A further thought:  Since the word "record" alone often suggests 'criminal record', perhaps a desire to disambiguate motivates the use of "track record."

--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

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Charles C Doyle cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> The figurative use of the phrase "track record" is certainly not new (the
> OED shows it from 1965).  Nor would it be noteworthy, except that it is
> becoming increasing ubiquitous, or so it seems to me--even in cases where
> simply "record" would suffice.
>
> --Charlie

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