Comment by catskul2
6 months ago
> The weather was unusually mild for the season, and Kelly thought he might even have time to “bag” a second Munro,
I really hate when people use very uncommon terms without defining them. (or sometimes even people's names)
It's not that I couldn't make a guess based on context, but it's distracting, and I feel like my eyes must have skipped over something and I often keep going back over the text to see what I must have missed reading.
I imagine this is sometimes caused by sloppy editing, especially when they refer to a last name of a person who has yet to be introduced in the article, but I think sometimes it's a deliberate choice and I object.
Honest question, what was the most confusing part for you? I am guessing bag as that one might be more obscure but even then in the context I think its guessable but maybe a struggle for non-native english speakers. Munro seems difficult but since your selective quote makes it worse imo.
"...a second Munro, as the Scottish mountains above 3,000 feet are known."
The opening paragraph describes him climbing/hiking a mountain in Scotland. "His plan was to climb Creise, a 1,100-meter-high peak overlooking Glen Etive...". Which then leads into him trying to "bag" a second one.
Just a counterpoint that it does not feel like sloppy editing at all. I struggle to see what would be difficult here for native speakers.
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> Who bags a mountain? A tortured metaphor if I’ve ever heard one. And 90% of English speakers don’t know what a Munro is. I’ve been to Scotland and never heard the word.
Peak bagging is common in that community but "to bag" something is quite common in native english or at least enough so that its in the Oxford dictionary. Hard for me to see a native speaker struggle with this, the connection can be made just from the prior paragraph.
They define what a Munro is in the same sentence. Are you here to just argue? I had to go back and add your post as a quote as I am not sure how someone can miss the literal definition within the sentence. "Munro, as the Scottish mountains above 3,000 feet are known". Is that difficult for you to read and understand?
I hike but I'm not a peak bagger. But the first time I encountered the term I found it completely obvious what it meant.
Having only spent a few days of my life in Scotland I didn't know "Munro" but the article defined it.
Peak bagging is a very common term in the outdoor sports world. This complaint is like a non-tech person reading a Wired article that mentions JSON and complaining that there's no explainer.
Which is I assume an extension from the usage in hunting to "bag" an animal which is to catch/kill.
No, both stem from literarily and figuratively putting things in a bag. You can bag anything, a kiss, an award, item, person, accomplishment, etc.
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It's honestly even closer to a non-tech person complaining about the word upload being used without an explainer.
They introduce Charlie Kelly the previous paragraph, explain what a Munro is right after that and use quotes around “bag”. What else could you expect? “Bag” is extremely common in many industries and they defined both other different terms.
You just ripped on an editor for absolutely no reason.
The word to "bag" may be more common in this context but it's not exclusive to it nor very uncommon, at least in North America. You might say "they bagged a record in the 4x400m relay" or "we bagged the contract" or another form like "that objective is in the bag." I think it's etymologically derived from hunting (literally putting game in a bag) but at this point it's just a word.