meaning - Can a sport team "clinch" a championship in the last regular season game?

This question gets into the subtle shades of meaning of the word clinch, in the context of sporting teams securing spots in the playoffs.

My past experience hearing this term on television, or reading in the newspaper, carries the connotation of "regardless of the outcome of (this or other teams') remaining games." The free dictionary seems to agree.

However, recent coverage (question written during the last week of the 2014 NFL season) has described several teams having the opportunity to "clinch" a wild-card spot with a win on Sunday, if some other team also loses, or similar scenarios, always using the word clinch. At this point, I would say that the team can earn, win, receive, capture, or any of a dozen other terms, but the time to be able to clinch has passed.

So, is my perception of the meaning of clinch flawed? Or, is there clear evidence that the meaning is changing as a result of popular usage (i.e. by sports tele-casters and writers)?

Answer

Here is the entry for the transitive verb clinch in Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2014):

clinch vb [prob.alter. of clench] vt (1542) 1 : CLENCH 3 ["to set or close tightly"] 2 a : to turn over or flatten the protruding pointed end of (a driven nail); also : to treat (as a a screw, bolt, or rivet) in a similar way b : to fasten in this way 3 a : to make final or irrefutable : SETTLE {that clinched the argument} b : to assure the winning of {scored a touchdown to clinch the game}

If you think of a team's season-long effort to earn a place in the league's postseason playoffs as contest to win such a spot, then the moment at which the team is assured of playing in the postseason is the moment at which it clinches the spot—and that can happen when the team wins the final game of the regular season, or when a combination of events play out in its favor (for example, it loses its final game, but so do the other three teams that were in contention for the spot, allowing it to back in to the playoffs). Indeed, if the league used a coin flip to determine which of two teams that were tied in the final regular-season standings should get a spot in the playoffs, you could say that the favorable coin flip clinched the lucky team's place in the playoffs.

It's true that a team that can get into the playoffs only if several other teams cooperate by losing can "assure the winning of" the playoff spot for itself in a rather odd way; it might be truer to say in that scenario that it can "be assured the winning of" the spot—which does stretch definition 3b slightly. But definition 3b of clinch isn't the only available meaning of the word. Definition 3a seems to permit the use of clinch to mean "settle or decide in one's favor, regardless of the means by which the settling occurs."

As for the argument that clinch means something like "ensures the desired outcome, regardless of what competitors do," that definition would seem to forbid using clinch in a situation where two teams tied for a final playoff spot are playing each other in the last game of the season—since in that case the team that wins makes the playoffs only because the other team loses. A similar notion is at work in this example from Russ Hodges, Baseball Complete (1952):

The gifted run permitted the White Sox to down the Giants 4-2 in the 1917 World Series clincher and stamped Heinie as a bit of a blunderer. Truth to tell, Heinie was absolutely blameless. His mates had left home plate as unprotected as a cat at a dogshow and poor Heinie could find nobody to throw the ball to. So he set out after Collins in futile flight.

Here, the clincher is the deciding game of the baseball World Series. The White Sox won it and the Giants lost it, but the clinching occurred at the moment that the World Series (and the 1917 baseball season as a whole) ended.

etymology - Origin of the greeting "Sweet dreams".

Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

What are the similarities between the relationships of the characters in The Outsiders and Romeo and Juliet?

At first glance, it might appear as if the characters in The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare do not have much in common; however, when one isolates the core of the conflicts, it becomes clear that the relationships in both stories are rooted in rivalry and secrecy. In both The Outsiders and Romeo and Juliet , an overarching theme is rivalry. While socioeconomic status separates the greasers from the Socs in The Outsiders , last names separates the Montagues from the Capulets, who appear to be relatively equal in terms of socioeconomic status. Due to these rivalries, there are instances of deadly interactions in both stories. In The Outsiders , Johnny kills Bob (whether his actions were justified or not is debatable). In Romeo and Juliet , Romeo kills Tybalt and Paris, and Tybalt kills Mercutio. These deaths have profound effects on the main characters. In Ponyboy's case, the Johnny's death and other events in the novel inspire h...

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