Flooring the Groundless

I suppose it's a complaint in the same category of the less/fewer ignorance, but I wish to place the pedant's curse on those who use the word 'floor' when they really mean 'ground'. Surely a floor sits above the ground?

I've been floored at church by a minister, leading us in meditation indoors, telling us to put both of our feet on the ground to connect us with the earth.

Robert

Funny that - floored meaning puzzled and grounded meaning stable!

I don't know - every time I was grounded, I was acting pretty unstable.

Edited for egregious spelling errors . . .

Oh, wait, then there was the time I was grounded for what I was doing in the stable . . .

Maybe it's all connected with the difference of opinion about whether the first-floor is the ground-floor (US), or the first level above it (UK)...?

A basement floor, or the floor of a tunnel, would be "below ground" even if it has some ground below it, wouldn't it?

"Floored" meaning defeated in an argument or puzzled is an obvious extension of "floored" meaning knocked down in a fight — maybe it was originally schoolboy slang?
"Grounded" in the old sense of well-argued or well-instructed goes back a long way, but the "both feet on the ground" sense belongs to the hippy generation (or at least the Beats: the OED cites Alan Ginsberg, writing in the 70s). Helcura's sense of "not allowed out" must come from aviation. The earliest citation in the OED for that is 1950.

#6 Maybe it's all connected with the difference of opinion about whether the first-floor is the ground-floor (US), or the first level above it (UK)...?

My experience of this phenomenon would not support that hypothesis in as far as I have heard many English people in England who would refer to the ground outside as the floor. It does not seem to happen in Ireland (North or South) as much as it does in England. It is something I have noticed since I was a little boy (1, 2, 3, Awwwwww!) in the 60s.

"Floored" meaning defeated in an argument or puzzled is an obvious extension of "floored" meaning knocked down in a fight

One also finds "Floored" in reference to driving a car fast. This would be, "she's flooring it", the meaning being that the accelerator pedal was being pushed to the floor.

"Ground" and "grounded" in a meditation context draws from 1970s energy work jargon (maybe earlier); "grounded" as safely discharging extra energy into the ground, as one would do with an electrical charge. I believe the British term in the electrical context is "earthed," although I've never heard that used in the context of a meditation.

In Britain, meditation sessions would often talk about being "centred", mostly "shopping centred".

>8 PhaedraB:,9

Strange: in other ways, I would have thought of "earth" as a word with stronger yoga/meditation/new age associations than "ground", but indeed I've never come across "earthed" outside the electrical context.

now there's a funny thing - just recently I was trying to think of the French for "floored" and realised it is "atterré" which means, literally, earthed.

My French dictionary translates "earth" (vb.) in the electrical sense as "mettre à la terre", but "ground" as "mettre à la masse". Google Translate seems to do the same thing. Very odd.

>12 thorold: I think both of those are correct, the "masse" being "la masse terreuse".

As far as I know, I've only ever seen "masse" in technical documents - maybe "terre" is more old-fashioned usage.

I always think of the floor as some kind of man-made surface (including roads and pavements) and the ground as a more natural earthy or grassy surface.

I think I'm a fairly level headed person but I try to avoid being grounded, esp. in electrical storms!

>7 pgmcc:
My experience of this phenomenon would not support that hypothesis in as far as I have heard many English people in England who would refer to the ground outside as the floor.

I don't think that I, living in South-east England, have ever heard anyone refer to the ground outside buildings as the floor except in very particular instances (e.g. the floor of a quarry). Maybe it's a regional thing: folk do speak very different up North.

>15 white-van-man:
Maybe if you'd told him to take the lift to the first floor he'd have known that you were talking foreign ;-)

...and that reminds me - why do people say, and sometimes write "...he'd of known...."

why do people say, and sometimes write "...he'd of known...."

They say it because we have the habit of eliding auxiliary verbs in English: "He would have known" turns into "He'd 've known", where "'ve" is pronounced /əv/. If you're not used to seeing that written down, and you wouldn't know an auxiliary verb from a preposition anyway, it's more than likely that you represent /əv/ in writing by the most common word that is pronounced that way, "of".

>17 abbottthomas:: Agree totally with your response to pgmcc. I've only seen "floor" as a reference to inside buildings — apart from expressions such as the floor of a debating chamber.

>17 abbottthomas: & >19 PossMan:
Could well be regional. I would have heard it a lot from English soldiers.

I've also read "Have you the lamp?" but that was in a fantasy book.

>21 white-van-man:, >22 Amtep:
Yes - "Have you the lamp?" (Britons of a certain age might also remember "F.U.N.E.X.?") is a classic way of marking someone as a non-native-speaker. Perfectly correct in theory, but not the way any British or American speaker would put it. Probably because it doesn't feel right to be putting the stress on "have", as white-van-man says. I suppose that's also the reason why French often sticks in a meaningless "Est-ce que..." instead of starting the question with "Avez-vous...?" when avoir is acting as a main verb. German doesn't seem to have any problem with "Haben Sie die Lampe?", though.

>23 thorold: S.V.F.X. :)

"Lady, you HAVE to be mad!"

Well-known one-liner from a popular US film.

>23 thorold: A yes, I remember it well.

Two Ronnies?

Ok I just had to look! Pretty funny!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mX9T2qyIQ