Works down to
I'm listening to the Red Sox play the Yankees on the radio, and I got curious about some details of the mechanics of batting, so I went to see what Wikipedia had to say. Once at the article "Batting (baseball)" I got distracted by a peculiar turn of phrase, in the following sentence:
Batting is often cited as one of the most difficult feats in sports as it works down to hitting a small round ball with a thin round bat.
The expression works down to was unfamiliar to me. The intended meaning is clear, and there's no reason why "works down to" couldn't be English; we have plenty of idioms that are formally similar. But I suspect that the editor who wrote that sentence got hung up between "comes down to" and "works out to" and ended by writing a chimera of the two. Wait, let me check the edit history to make sure I'm not blowing smoke.
OK, that was interesting. The sentence is completely original, having survived completely intact from the very first version of the article, posted by editor "Siroxo" on 2004 September 17. Since then it has not occurred to anyone to wordsmith that sentence. It occurred to me, but I was worried that maybe I was the only person who didn't think "works down to" was English. So I googled the phrase, with quotes.
The first couple of pages of hits represent different grammatical processes bringing those words into contact. For example, a certain voltage detector "works down to zero" degrees. For another, a page title reads, "Cotton Mills Thread Works: Down to the wire".
The first actual example of "works down to" in the sense I was interested in is at the bottom of the second page of hits, and is ... the very Wikipedia article that roused my curiosity. On the third page is an example of a different "works down to", meaning "works its way down to": "Holiday mood works down to worst-hit shares", and then another sense: "an approach ... that begins at the highest conceptual level and works down to the details".
The first ten pages of hits show no other examples of the expression used in this way. I'm going to change it to "consists of".
Batting is often cited as one of the most difficult feats in sports as it works down to hitting a small round ball with a thin round bat.
The expression works down to was unfamiliar to me. The intended meaning is clear, and there's no reason why "works down to" couldn't be English; we have plenty of idioms that are formally similar. But I suspect that the editor who wrote that sentence got hung up between "comes down to" and "works out to" and ended by writing a chimera of the two. Wait, let me check the edit history to make sure I'm not blowing smoke.
OK, that was interesting. The sentence is completely original, having survived completely intact from the very first version of the article, posted by editor "Siroxo" on 2004 September 17. Since then it has not occurred to anyone to wordsmith that sentence. It occurred to me, but I was worried that maybe I was the only person who didn't think "works down to" was English. So I googled the phrase, with quotes.
The first couple of pages of hits represent different grammatical processes bringing those words into contact. For example, a certain voltage detector "works down to zero" degrees. For another, a page title reads, "Cotton Mills Thread Works: Down to the wire".
The first actual example of "works down to" in the sense I was interested in is at the bottom of the second page of hits, and is ... the very Wikipedia article that roused my curiosity. On the third page is an example of a different "works down to", meaning "works its way down to": "Holiday mood works down to worst-hit shares", and then another sense: "an approach ... that begins at the highest conceptual level and works down to the details".
The first ten pages of hits show no other examples of the expression used in this way. I'm going to change it to "consists of".