A question of time

[tomferry]

After hearing this on the radio would love to hear your opinions on this .

If a meeting is held at lunch time 12 o clock and you move that meeting forward by 2 hours what time is the meeting now held at ?

I no my answer I don’t believe their is a correct answer though ??

 

[Speleofish]

I'd assume moving forward means earlier, so 10 o'clock. What did the radio think?

 

[tomferry]

How do we add a pole for 10am and 2pm ?

 

[Ian Ball]

Calendar time is linear surely so forward is early back is late

 

[MarkS]

How do we add a pole for 10am and 2pm ?

I think I've sorted it for you, but not tried this before on the new forum - hopefully it works! I had to shorten the question slightly for it to fit in the character limit.

 

[tomferry]

Sweet thanks I no the answer is definitely 2pm because you would say bring it forward for 10am .

 

[aricooperdavis]

To me the prefix "for"/"fore" implies nearness or advancedness. For example it means "at the front" in the contexts of foreground, forword, foredeck and "in advance" in the contexts of forecast, before, foreshadow. As such if "forward" means "towards the for" I'd suggest that means "towards the front" or "more in advance", so the meeting would be earlier at 10am.

I don't think "move" or "bring" would make much of a difference to the meaning.

Can we think of any examples where "for"/"fore" means "further away", "later", or "afterwards"? It seems to negate in some contexts, such as forbid, forgo, and forget, but that doesn't help us much.

 

[Cantclimbtom]

I think 1/2 the attendees will assume 14:00 and 1/4 will think 10:00 and the remaining 1/4 will forget and either turn up at 12:00 or just not show up at all.

Anyone gives an ambiguous instruction and fails to clarify is being a Muppet. They should state the new time, send a meeting update and check whether people accepted the update (or verbally acknowledged if not a meeting request in Outlook or whatever)

If things can go wrong, they will - but even more frequently if you let them. I'd have to ask.. who reschedules something like that?? If this is your boss, you have my permission to give him a wedgie as punishment. Let me know if you're still employed tomorrow

 

[tomferry]

To me the prefix "for"/"fore" implies nearness or advancedness. For example it means "at the front" in the contexts of foreground, forword, foredeck and "in advance" in the contexts of forecast, before, foreshadow. As such if "forward" means "towards the for" I'd suggest that means "towards the front" or "more in advance", so the meeting would be earlier at 10am.

I don't think "move" or "bring" would make much of a difference to the meaning.

Can we think of any examples where "for"/"fore" means "further away", "later", or "afterwards"? It seems to negate in some contexts, such as forbid, forgo, and forget, but that doesn't help us much.

Moving things forwards I kicked the ball
Forwards , pushed the mine cart forwards . I have moved the meeting forwards to 2pm .

 

[aricooperdavis]

I guess that makes sense - if you move backwards in time you move earlier in a timeline, but if you move forwards in time you move later in a timeline, therefore if you move a meeting forwards in time you should move it later in the timeline. And yet, I'd still interpret "move the meeting forwards" as making it sooner

 

[tomferry]

When I heard it on the radio my instant thought was 2pm , then the director said it’s 10am and I heard his thoughts on it and thought Dam I was wrong !! The more I thought of it he was wrong though because when we do our clock change and move time forwards we loose a hour ??

 

[AR]

No, he's not wrong. If you think of a point in time as being on a line approaching you, then to move that point forward will mean that you meet it sooner, and if you move it back you will meet it later. Also, we never lose or gain an hour with clock changes, all we are doing is altering our reference points from which we reckon whereabouts we are on an arbitary scale of our own devising.

 

[ttxela2]

No, he's not wrong. If you think of a point in time as being on a line approaching you, then to move that point forward will mean that you meet it sooner, and if you move it back you will meet it later. Also, we never lose or gain an hour with clock changes, all we are doing is altering our reference points from which we reckon whereabouts we are on an arbitary scale of our own devising.

Really?

So if you are waiting in a queue and someone approaches you and asks if you'd like to move forward you would go and stand behind the person already behind you in the queue? Presumably if you owned a time machine and set the dial to go back in time you'd expect to be heading towards tomorrow....

 

[tomferry]

No, he's not wrong. If you think of a point in time as being on a line approaching you, then to move that point forward will mean that you meet it sooner, and if you move it back you will meet it later. Also, we never lose or gain an hour with clock changes, all we are doing is altering our reference points from which we reckon whereabouts we are on an arbitary scale of our own devising.

If you think of a timeline from Christ -30thcentury if we wanted to go to the 30th century I would say we need to go forwards to that point in time ?

 

[ChrisJC]

I believe that to move forward is to move closer to the present, i.e. 10am. Which is what I voted for. But as Tom says, 'Spring forward, fall back', you add 1 to the time of day.
Which needs a bit of thinking about. Because when you 'Spring forward', everything gets earlier in the day, in the same way that moving a meeting forward also makes it earlier in the day. So maybe it's actually consistent! just with opposite points of reference.

Chris.

 

[Cantclimbtom]

Context is everything...

From a project management perspective, bringing a time/date forwards means closer (sooner/earlier) and pushing it back means later (further into future). Other people may place different interpretations on the words/schedules.

But I stand by my original comment - that anyone who announces a meeting moved forwards (or for that matter, back) by two hours, without also specifying the new time is acting like a "knob" and asking for trouble (using "knob" as a technical project term, of course).

I've reconsidered my original advice - and I think a wedgie is not enough for such a serious transgression.

 

[caving_fox]

The difference is in what's moving (or what you consider the reference point). If you're moving the meeting forwards you're bringing it closer to you. If you're the one moving then you're moving forwards away from where you were.

So the meeting will be at 10am.

English has lots of relative constructions like this,. Context is everything.

But as above, it's much much better to give the absolute time.

 

[Ed]

forward to 10am, push it back to 2pm.

Bring it to the fore - closer or advanced

push back -- move further away

 

[kay]

Move forward is the opposite to delay. If moving forward means 2pm, then to delay it would mean you started at 10am not 12pm, which is clearly nonsense. therefore moving forward must mean 2pm.

Would it feel any different if you said "brought forward"?