"Cost them a defeat." Didn't it cost the win? Correct usage?

[whatami]

Tuesday morning rolled around this week and I was happy. It was time for TMQ (Tuesday Morning Quarterback) to resume his weekly column on ESPN.com. As I was reading a section on the Browns, this paragraph leapt out at me.

Browns quandary: Two seasons ago, there was the weird “time travel” game where officials went backward on the clock to reverse a prior play, costing the Browns a last-second defeat at home; and one season ago was the weird Dwayne Rudd helmet hurl that cost the Browns a last-second defeat at home. What bizarre thing will happen in the stadium this year? Maybe the lights will fail just as a game-winning pass is sailing toward a Browns player’s hands.

bolding mine

Now, I am most definitely not an expert on the English language, but this seems wrong. Didn’t the play cost the Browns the win, not the defeat?

Tell me Dopers, who is right? Is it the uneducated football fan, or the senior editor of New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

I’d say the odds are against me here.

[Freudian_Slit]

I’m no grammar expert, but I think you’re right. “Cost them a defeat” does sound wrong. Whatever is “costed” (er…that sounds so horrible) is what is lost, or at least that’s how I was always taught.

[Q.E.D]

FWIW, I’ve always said “cost them the win”, as it’s more logical. But then, language isn’t always about logic.

[whatami]

Well, I e-mailed him that day hoping to maybe get a mention in next weeks column. I haven’t heard anything back and doubt I will. After I sent it though, I began to wonder if I was reading the whole thing wrong.

Anyone have a definite answer?

[Age_Quod_Agis]

From dictionary.com:

cost

\Cost\ (k[o^]st; 115), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cost; p. pr. & vb. n. Costing.] [OF. coster, couster, F. co[^u]ter, fr. L. constare to stand at, to cost; con- + stare to stand. See Stand, and cf. Constant.] 1. To require to be given, expended, or laid out therefor, as in barter, purchase, acquisition, etc.; to cause the cost, expenditure, relinquishment, or loss of; as, the ticket cost a dollar; the effort cost his life.

A diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats. --Shak.

Though it cost me ten nights’ watchings. --Shak.

2. To require to be borne or suffered; to cause.

To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. --Milton.

To cost dear, to require or occasion a large outlay of money, or much labor, self-denial, suffering, etc.

Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

I think the usage you’re referring to is the first one, which refers to the “cost” as the thing given up; but the second usage, which refers to the thing accepted as a burden, seems to go along with TMQ. The Milton quote appears especially applicable.

Two seasons ago, there was the weird “time travel” game where officials went backward on the clock to reverse a prior play, costing the Browns [i.e., “causing,” or “requiring the Browns to suffer”] a last-second defeat at home; and one season ago was the weird Dwayne Rudd helmet hurl that cost the Browns [i.e., “caused,” or “required the Browns to bear”] a last-second defeat at home.

[whatami]

Thanks Age Quod Agis. When you put the definition in context like that it makes it much easier to understand it like that.

Thanks for the help.

Now I hope he doesn’t make fun of me in the next column.

[Kent_Clark]

Back in the good old days of sportswriting, the reporter would have called the story into the rewrite desk, and he would have blamed such phrasing on the clumsy kid at the other end of the phone who mis-heard “causing” as “costing.”

Now we have to resort to either tortured constructions with secondary definitions, or just own up to having had a brain-fart.