LEO's, Please Edjakate me

[DannoBoone]

I'm 67 but believe one can never stop learning.

As a young tot and later in school, I learned that the man-made
surface in which everyone walked on was a FLOOR. If anyone
referred to a floor as "the ground", we would have been laughed
out of class.

But now, the police, news media, detective programs, etc.,
refer to floors as "the ground". "On the 7th story, we found a
body laying on the ground." Since when is a floor referred to
as terra firma? WHY? Seems ignorant as well as ridiculous to
me.

I guess what I would really like to find out is the origin of
such seemingly retarded terminology and why it was started??

 

[DesertRam]

I can't enlighten you, but I can add to your confusion. Out here folks often refer to the ground (yep, dirt, outside) as "the floor." Put that in your grammar pipe and smoke it.

 

[GC]

Must be an Iowa thing.

 

[NdIndy]

It's rote memorization. You work inside, you work outside. When you want someone down you're in a situation that having a mind stutter can be a bad thing. So everyone goes "to the ground".

We did the same thing as climbers, it doesn't matter what I dropped, you call out "rock". It's more important for the people below you to know something is hurtling towards their head than what exactly it is.

 

[Stu Farish]

common language in england, everything under your feet is "the floor".

a sidewalk, parking lot, back yard, grassy park, even an actual floor is "the floor"

maybe this writing in shows has a similar background from somewhere else, dunno.

 

[SixsixtyMags]

Except when it comes to a deck, do not call a deck a floor!

 

[jpretle]

I'm thinking EBONICS, has silently crept into the lexicon, both in enunciation and application.