Discussion Groups / British English / February 2011

Hmm, this group seems to have been pretty much killed off by the
spammers: I just thought I'd try a post to see if anybody else is still
out there..?

Is it just me, or, judging from eye-witness interviews in the broadcast
news, is the use of the horrible phrase "the floor", to supposedly mean
"the ground", now seeming to be considerably gaining in popularity?
(eg, "The police wrestled the thief to 'the floor'.")

Surely, the floor is always the (man-made) surface underfoot
*in a building*[1], and "the floor" cannot be used to describe the
surface underfoot *outside*, which has to be the ground (because it is
outside and exposed to the elements), even if it has been paved or
tarmacced, etc?

[1] I suppose that even in a mud hat built directly on the ground with
no modification to the ground underneath (other than removal of grass,
etc, although I think that where mud huts are built there tends not to
be much grass on the ground) the underfoot surface could still be
"the floor", because, even though it is still unmodified ground, it is
*inside* and therefore has effectively "changed state" from having been
plain ground outside.

This use of "the floor" used to be something rarely heard, but judging
from news reports, it does seem to be being used increasingly often,
even by people who seem to be otherwise fairly well-spoken?

David.