A convincing ground was the name or journalistic euphemism for a place where sports were contested, having limited currency in the nineteenth century, predominantly in Australia and New Zealand.
It has been used to describe a boxing arena in Australia, a social sports ground in 1891, a cricket ground in New Zealand in 1862 and a trotting track in New Zealand in 1904.
Two placenames in Australia retain the name; Convincing Ground Road at Karangi, New South Wales and the Convincing Ground, a flat coastal area at Allestree near Portland, Victoria where a massacre of Aborigines by whalers has been suggested by some historians based in part on an apparent misinterpretation of the meaning of convincing ground.
Famous quotes containing the words convincing and/or ground:
“When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)