Elimination competitions

[mtbc]

Many television reality competitions have a format where they start with many contestants and eliminate one-ish each episode. Once we get to the last small handful, we hold the final.

One thing that surprised me at first but seems commonplace is the idea that the semifinal is before the final, then before that is the quarterfinal, etc. I can understand that in two-contestant-trial knockout matches, as one can find in some tournaments between sports teams. Then, the teams in the quarterfinals are in the final for a quarter of the teams, the teams in the semfinals are in the final for half (semi) of the teams, etc. However, this model doesn't fit the current reality shows at all.

Perhaps my reasoning fits the original meaning, then the typical thing happened where a precise word was broadened into becoming rather less useful. Or, I was just mistaken from the start.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

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.

[andrewducker]

Clearly it should be the Antefinal and Preantefinal.