status quo = 'situation'

[victor steinbok]

I don't see "situation" either. Perhaps they meant "status" rather
than "status quo", or "balance of power", which is, more or less,
stalemate. Either way, the reference is to some aspect of the
_present_condition_. So it's not just "situation", but "the current
situation", which is not as far off the traditional interpretation as
Jon initially posted.

VS-)

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I respectfully disagree.
>
> If the analyst had written, "We are facing the possibility of the status quo
> becoming entrenched...", I doubt we would be having this conversation.
>
> I read "We may be facing the possibility of an entrenched status quo..." as
> meaning the same thing.
>
> DanG
>
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> I think the issue is what "means" means.
>>
>> The speaker chose to say "status quo" when the obvious choice for most of
>> u=
>> s
>> (i.e., me) should have been "situation" or "long-term situation," etc.
>>
>> On the basis of the evidence, that's what he "meant."
>>
>> While it may be true that the kind of sitch he's talking about could also
>> b=
>> e
>> described as a "stalemate," "status quo" would not *mean* "stalemate" in a
>> dictionary sense except in
>> statements such as:
>>
>> 1. *Nobody's winning! It's a status quo!
>>
>> Now there certainly are statements such as the following, in which "status
>> quo" *refers* to a stalemate:
>>
>> 2. "What's been happening on the Western Front the past four years?"
>> "Nothing much. Status quo."
>>
>> In 2, "status quo" means 'an existing situation that hasn't changed,'
>> which=
>> ,
>> in this context, implies an actual stalemate.Status quo," under certain
>> circumstances, can allude to a stalemate, but I don't believe it ever
>> *means* "stalemate," because I don't believe that *anyone* who would say 2
>> would also say 1.
>>
>> Unless they were very weird. So "status quo" doesn't "mean" stalemate.
>>
>> JL

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