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:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I saw young Harry with his beaver on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed,
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,
And vaulted with such ease into his seat
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)