I thought sbunny8’s response was excellent. I applaud it and fully endorse its main point:
Yeah, you’re right: “giving 110%” is an idiom, not to be taken literally, and no one can give 110% in the sense that the phrase is meant. But some people draw the mistaken conclusion that you can never have more than 100% of anything; and sbunny8 is also correct to point out that there are situations in which “110%” makes perfect literal sense.
On the contrary. Many have tried this and lived to tell about it. It’s just that what they tell is gibberish.
As did I, explicitly.
Of course there are such situations. He later gave examples of proper usages. It’s just the one he used originally wasn’t one of them.
Percentages are a vast topic. Pulling out examples at random are likely to be irrelevant to any given problem. Irrelevant examples confuse at best. Why pollute a discussion with them?
And why this?
And why the hell not? First, many people don’t understand percentages and may indeed say something like that erroneously. Second, much more likely is that the announcer *understood *percentages and was making a joke!
That point–determine your base–was absolutely correct. But the rest of the post wandered off into territory that did not address the question in the OP.
I need to clarify what I said in my last post about this post.
There are scientific usages of more than 100% when the 100% mark is not a maximum possible, but the maximum safe running level beyond which trouble is almost certain, especially if run for long periods. Rocketry uses those numbers regularly. Other ways of exceeding a nominal maximum also exist, as in the Toyota example.
None of those are equivalent to the 110% of effort idiom - including the example stating 110% of effort because even in the quote supplied it’s obvious that the author is talking yet again about maximum possible and maximum sustained efforts.
But if movie quotes are allowable, let me offer one.
“These go to eleven.”
Checkmate.
I remember watching a movie about the first sub vs. sub battle, during the Civil War. During the battle, the Confederate sub (I think it was the H.L. Hunley) got stuck on a sandbar, and was a sitting duck, so the captain ordered the Engineer to make the hottest fire he could, burning anything flammable they had. That increased the steam production past 100%, and tripped the safety valves, so the captain ordered them to be tied shut (!). That takes some faith in the over-design of the boiler…
I read somewhere that mathematicians tried dividing by zero during WWII as part of some top secret project. They started dividing by 1 and then began to divide by ever decreasing numbers, slowly approaching zero, but never quite got there.
Zeno died from that.
I remember listening to Alan Watts decades ago discussing Zen Buddhism and such. One word he expounded upon was “mu”. He described it as sort of having the side meaning “Unask the question.” So …
“Have you stopped beating your wife?” “Mu.”
It seems to be the appropriate response to the question in the OP.
Certain questions just need to be withdrawn.