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:
“Don’t you realize that as long as you have to sit down to pee, you’ll never be a dominant force in the world? You’ll never be a convincing technocrat or middle manager. Because people will know. She’s in there sitting down.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Some people are like ants. Give them a warm day and a piece of ground and they start digging. There the similarity ends. Ants keep on digging. Most people don’t. They establish contact with the soil, absorb so much vernal vigor that they can’t stay in one place, and desert the fork or spade to see how the rhubarb is coming and whether the asparagus is yet in sight.”
—Hal Borland (1900–1978)