I'm not following your description, so I'm going to rephrase to what I think you are meaning. When we are talking competitions (whether teams or individuals), the quarterfinals have four 'matches', with the winners going forward to the semi-finals, which then have two 'matches', the winners of which then go on to the final. But that reality televisions shows do something else, but use the words, so that the third last episode is named the quarter final, even if there are not 8 contestants in 4 1-on-1 matches? And then the penultimate episode is called the semi-final, regardless of how many contestants remain from the previous episode or the selection?
Which yes, does feel weird as a generalisation now that I've written it out like that. But I can also see that using language that is familiar but Not Quite Right probably makes what they are doing an accessible way to ramp up the intensity. Alternatively, it is that 'final episode' fits into the meaning of final in a normal way, but that sportsball has narrowed the meaning.
I had not stopped to think about this before, that was an interesting bit of language to engage with.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-11-09 02:13 am (UTC)I'm not following your description, so I'm going to rephrase to what I think you are meaning. When we are talking competitions (whether teams or individuals), the quarterfinals have four 'matches', with the winners going forward to the semi-finals, which then have two 'matches', the winners of which then go on to the final. But that reality televisions shows do something else, but use the words, so that the third last episode is named the quarter final, even if there are not 8 contestants in 4 1-on-1 matches? And then the penultimate episode is called the semi-final, regardless of how many contestants remain from the previous episode or the selection?
Which yes, does feel weird as a generalisation now that I've written it out like that. But I can also see that using language that is familiar but Not Quite Right probably makes what they are doing an accessible way to ramp up the intensity. Alternatively, it is that 'final episode' fits into the meaning of final in a normal way, but that sportsball has narrowed the meaning.
I had not stopped to think about this before, that was an interesting bit of language to engage with.