What I mean is like for example, a person having “gravitational pull” or someone making a “quantum leap” makes no sense to anyone who knows about physics. Gravity is extremely weak and quantum leaps are tiny.
Or “David versus Goliath” to describe a huge underdoge makes no sense to anyone who knows about history, because nobody bringing a gun to a sword fight is going to be the underdog but that’s essentially what David did.
I’m looking for more examples like that.
Par comes from the Latin word meaning equal and that usage predates the golf term by 300 years.
So sub-par doesn’t really imply the golf way of being good, but actually means below equal/average? Then I’m fine with using below par as a negative.
Aren’t we talking about modern idioms here?