I can see where it might be slightly confusing when first hearing it but past the initial registering of the question is it still confusing?
Question: I wonder what the highest low temperature ever recorded for this country might be.
Or: I wonder what the lowest high temperature for this country might be.
I have posed this to 3 people so far and can’t seem to explain to any of them what I am talking about. Am I phrasing the question wrong?
I think you mean “greatest” and “least”, respectively, but I’m not sure.
For the first question, the low temperatures on record are 10, 15, and 20, are you looking for 20? or are you looking for 10? Do you want the warmest low, or the coldest low?
That’s the type of question where after saying “huh” a few times I think I’d be saying “No, you’re going to have to find a different way to ask because if you just ask me the same way again I still won’t get it”.
Everytime I think it’s making sense, I try and think of what the answer is (or what it should be (or an example of what the answer would be)) and the question doesn’t make sense any more.
So, no, I don’t get it. Can you reword it? Maybe tell us what you’re trying to figure out.
It’s not like temperatures are broken down into brackets. For example, your question would make sense if ‘low temperatures’ were -20 to +40 and you want to know what the highest temp on record on that bracket was…but that’s not how it works. For any “highest low temperature” there’s always going to be a higher one until you get to the hottest place on Earth and find it’s lowest temperature…wait, is that more like what you’re looking for?
Maybe you need to go find out the lowest temperature recorded in, say, Death Valley (since you said this country).
Let me try this , every day on the news they give a lowest temp in the country and the highest temp in the country. What I am looking for is the lowest highest temperature in the country ever reported, and the highest lowest temperature in the country ever recorded.
OK. I think you’ll find more people understand it if you say you’re looking for the coolest high and the warmest low.
ETA: coolest daily high and warmest daily low would be even better. Most of us hear the phrase “day’s high and low” on the weather report, so that would be a good cue.
That does sound a bit easier to comprehend.
or you might want to phrase it as
“the coolest July on record”
“the hottest December on record”
or - the hottest single day in MONTH recorded…
Until you complete the description by specifying what you mean by a low or high then the question is ambiguous. I assume you want to know what the highest daily low temperature ever recorded was, or based on some other time frame. Even then it’s going to be a confusing question, especially because it sounds like you are asking people this question without much context. If you were in a discussion about the variation of daily highs and lows recorded in some country your meaning would be more apparent.
The question was meant to sound a little confusing, I thought it was kind of a fun question because to me it was very clear if someone listened close enough.
I now am convinced it is confusing, I just can’t figure anyway to phrase it beyond using a coulple of examples predating the question.
Once I explained it like this one of the guys got it. " Everyday the news gives us the highest and lowest temperature readings in the country, The daily high temperature in summer is nearly always higher than the daily high temperature in winter, I wonder what the lowest daily high temperature ever recorded in the U.S. is. Almost certainly in winter"
Not sure what the fuss is.
I saw no confusion in those questions.
These seem crystal clear to me. I’ve often wondered those same things when we have exceptionally warm summer nights (“it only got down to 75 last night”) or really cold winter days (the high today was 15 below zero").
When you say “low temperature” or “high temperature,” you are understood to mean the most etreme temperatures on any given day (“yesterday’s low temperature was 47 degrees, the high was 75”). The addition of the superlatives “highest” and “lowest” doesn’t muddy that at all.
I’d agree that highest low isn’t confusing. Highest lowest is, for reasons I’m not quite sure of. I figured it out, but it took looking at the words in writing a few times…I’m not sure if it would be confusing orally or not.
I think you might be confused about what a question is. For instance, this:
Is not a question; it’s a statement. And this:
Is a question, but needs a question mark.
FTR, I had absolutely no trouble understanding what the OP was asking. Seemed obvious to me.
The only thing I wasn’t certain about was whether the OP is asking about high/low temps for the year, or for the day, or (possibly) some other time period.
Other than that the idea seemed perfectly clear to me.
Same here. Probably because I’ve used that construction or wondered about it before.
I understood the question, and also wondered myself.