stolen a march

[Nunty]

Greetings!

Not that I'm following the McCartney divorce extravaganza, of course not, but I did come across the following sentence in The Guardian's online edition today:

The Sun has stolen a march on Heather Mills McCartney's threat to sue the paper by asking her to "tick the boxes" on a series of allegations the paper has made about the former model.

I'm not quite sure that I get this from context. Does it mean that the Sun is getting in the first blow before being sued by Lady Heather (is that the right form of address?) Does it mean that it is making fun of her? Something else?

Many thanks.

 

[la reine victoria]

Greetings!

Not that I'm following the McCartney divorce extravaganza, of course not, but I did come across the following sentence in The Guardian's online edition today: I'm not quite sure that I get this from context. Does it mean that the Sun is getting in the first blow before being sued by Lady Heather (is that the right form of address?) Does it mean that it is making fun of her? Something else?

Many thanks.

Greetings, Sister.

It means to take advantage of, or "get one over on someone", in a sly and unexpected way.

This is typical of "The Sun" - a gutter press publication fit only for wrapping rubbish in. Sadly one of Britain's most popular newspapers, with plenty of political clout amongst the masses, who believe its every word.




LRV

 

[Nunty]

Greetings, Sister.

It means to take advantage of, or "get one over on someone", in a sly and unexpected way.

Thanks, majesty , but I'm still not quite sure I understand. Would it be used in conversation, or only in popular journalism? Would it be something like:

The pupils stole a march on the teacher when they all pretended that their books were missing page 348.

I have a feeling that I'm not getting it. Could I possibly have an example?

Thanks.

 

[TrentinaNE]

In the second episode of To Serve Them All My Days, when shy new school-master David Powlett-Jones brings a "date" to Founder's Day, a more outgoing, self-confident colleague who is sans companion jokes that PJ "has stolen a march on us all." I figured out the general meaning from the context, but it sounds a little more nuanced in this setting than "taking advantage of," more like "he snuck up on us." What say you, LRV?

Elisabettta

 

[la reine victoria]

In the second episode of To Serve Them All My Days, when shy new school-master David Powlett-Jones brings a "date" to Founder's Day, a more outgoing, self-confident colleague who is sans companion jokes that PJ "has stolen a march on us all." I figured out the general meaning from the context, but it sounds a little more nuanced in this setting than "taking advantage of," more like "he snuck up on us." What say you, LRV?

Elisabettta

In your text, Elisabetta, I would say that PJ had done something quite unexpected for such a shy person and had "got one over" on his more confident colleagues.


I'm racking my brains to come up with a good example. This idiom is little used.

The Free Dictionary says

steal a march on someone/something
to spoil someone's plans and get an advantage over them by doing something sooner or better than them. The company plans to steal a march on its competitors by offering the same computer at a lower price.

We need Maxiogee or Panjandrum to help us I feel. They are both wiser than me.






LRV

 

[Nunty]

Would this work: We'll steal a march on our competitors by putting the spring fashions out before Christmas.

Or does the idiom have a more humorous feel to it?

 

[JamesM]

I think the free dictionary hits the nail on the head. The key phrase, to me, is "...doing something sooner or better than them." The idea is to propel oneself into the lead position by outdoing the competition.

A hypothetical example:

"Microsoft plans to enter the personal audio device competition in January with its new Windows-compatible XPlayer. Besides low-level integration with Windows, Microsoft intends to capture a significant market share by undercutting the price of the popular I-pod offering from Apple. In related news, Apple appears to have stolen a march on Microsoft by announcing an immediate across-the-board 50% price reduction on all products in its I-pod line"."

(A man can dream, can't he? )

 

[Nunty]

You know? I think I get it. (Now I just have to do some quick googling before I admit that I am the last person in the known world who doesn't know what an I-pod is.)

Thank you, James.

 

[mgarizona]

Some gleanings from the OED:

"March" is used in the sense of "the distance covered in one day's marching"

"To gain a march" is to get the distance of a day's marching ahead of the other guy(s).

"To steal a march" is to gain that distance "by stealth"

Strangely there are citations from Poe's Oblong Box and T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, both of which I've read, and yet this phrase never caught my attention before.

 

[Nunty]

Thank you, mgarizona. All becomes clear...

 

[panjandrum]

Some gleanings from the OED:

"March" is used in the sense of "the distance covered in one day's marching"

"To gain a march" is to get the distance of a day's marching ahead of the other guy(s).

"To steal a march" is to gain that distance "by stealth"

Strangely there are citations from Poe's Oblong Box and T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, both of which I've read, and yet this phrase never caught my attention before.

There are several "aha" moments in this post for me.

First, the background to steal a march - the march being a day's journey, a measure of some kind of progress.

Second, the very-obvious-now-it's-been-pointed-out connection between steal (to take something wrongly), steal (to move quietly and unobtrusively) and stealth

Third, the point about the phrase never having caught mga's attention before. I suspect that its figurative meaning was established in mgarizona's brain from other contexts long before he read those particular books - and he understood the phrase without having to give it any attention at all.