Please look at this English text …
Lacking experience, novice water-skiers tend to overcompensate for rough water, often caused by boat waves, and undercompensate for sudden turns, often caused by boat traffic.
I know compensate .
But what does overcompensate for rough water ?
very much confused . Even I can’t guess also.
what does undercompensate for sudden turns ?
Not understood.
Could you please help to understand the meaning of these two wording in this context ?
I googled define: overcompensate …None is matching in this context .
I googled define:undercompensate …No definition found .
I’m not a water skier, but whatever you do when encountering waves, over compensating would be doing it more. For example, if you encounter waves or are crossing over the wake, I’m going to assume (again, I don’t water ski) that you’d want to bend your knees to absorb the shock and maybe lean slightly back bending at the waist. Sort of to turn your body into a spring so you can absorb the shock rather then get thrown around by it. Over compensating would be seeing that you’re about to cross the wave and getting in to an almost sitting down position before going over it.
Undercompensating would be doing to little. I assume when you make a sudden turn you’re supposed to lean to the inside of the turn to keep yourself from flopping over or making the turn so wide you wind up way off to the side. If you undercompensate (probably due to being to nervous to lean that far) you’ll stay relatively straight up and down.
Does that make sense? Again, I’ve never water skied, but that doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is that over compensating means doing to much and under compensating means doing to little.
Joey’s post is pretty accurate, although he doesn’t know how to differentiate between “to” and “too.” I’m not nitpicking. If we’re going to help someone understand English we better get some things right ourselves.
Thanks for your time.
Here is what I’m stuck .The problem is we are using overcompensate …why not just compensate ? why overcompensate ? As you said “over compensating means doing to much” …what is too much . water skiers have to absorp the shock anyway. is there anything special to that we could use “overcompensate” instead of just compensate ?
Also when we need to do undercompensate ?
Well, if you say “He’s compensating for the waves,” you’re saying that he’s doing it the right amount, that he’s not making a mistake. If you overcompensate, you’re doing it too much. For instance, to take the example given, when you encounter waves you’re supposed to bend your knees. That is compensating for the waves. But if you bend them too much, that is overcompensating, because you’re going beyond what you should, and that is a mistake and will lead to other problems. If you bend them less than you should, you’re undercompensating, which is also a mistake and will lead to problems.
So, overcompensate means you’re trying to compensate more than you should, and undercompensate means you’re trying to compensate less than you should. The terms are only used to explain that the person is making a mistake by not compensating the right amount.
Using just “compensate” would mean that you are doing it correctly. By “overcompensating,” you are doing it incorrectly. You are doing too much, instead of just enough. If you are driving a car and want to pass another car then increasing your speed by say 50 kilometers per hour would be overcompensating. If you were trying to pass by only increasing your speed by 1 kilometer per hour, you would be undercompensating.
In the water skiing analogy:
Overcompensate: crouching too low, or leaning back too far.
Undercompensate: knees straight, and not leaning into the turn.
ETA: Yeah, what Captain Amazing said.
very nice explanation. Thanks for your time.
Could you guys tell me what is boat wave ?
is it a natural wave ?
is it a created wave artificially ?
is it a wave created by motor boat ?
I tried to see the wave in youtube videos …but not yet convinced what is it.
It would be very much helpful if you could throw some light on this .
I am not comfortable with these technical terms “boat wave” & “boat traffic”
To overcompensate for rough water means that the waterskiier made a mistake in judging how much of a position change they needed to make to ski for the water conditions. If they only needed to turn left 10% and they turned 20%, then they turned left too far and may fall.
When a boat travels across the water, it creates a wave behind it. This is usually called the boat’s wake. Here’s a picture of a boat’s wake:
Boat traffic just means the other boats on the lake. If you go to the road and see the cars pass by, you might say, “There is a lot of traffic on the road.”, meaning that there are a lot of cars using the road. If you go to the lake and see a lot of boats on the lake, you can say, “There is a lot of traffic on the lake.” Traffic is just the movement of people or vehicles.
beautiful …beautiful…you guys are so much knowledgeable.
Thanks a lot for the time.
This was very much helpful.
=] no problem.