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A goal remote in the pursuit is so easy to lose sight of.

What does "a goal remote in the pursuit" mean here? I don't understand it structure-wise.

RegDwigнt
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1 Answers1

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I'd say the effect of this rather curious construction is to give an "archaic" flavour to a latter-day "pseudo-adage". Structurally, remote is an adjective modifying the goal. Normally it would come before the noun, but here you could say it's a post-positive adjective (coming after the noun).

To further complicate things, remote is modified by the additional adjectival clause in the pursuit.

Or (as per the Wkipedia link above), you could say it applies elision to the underlying structure...

A goal [that is] remote in the pursuit is so easy to lose sight of.

As to meaning, it's just saying if your goal is too ambitious/far in the future, you risk losing sight of it (being distracted by day-to-day activities you only undertook originally in pursuit of that goal).

EDIT: Comments (and a downvote!) may indicate not everyone is happy with the basic format...

an X that is Y in the Z
a [noun] that is [adjective] in the [noun/gerund]

As I said initially, it's a "curious" construction, which I would not advise less competent speakers to experiment with. But although I wouldn't say it's exactly "productive" today, here are a few related examples to show the basic format[s] are used elsewhere...

broad in the beam (jocular "wide-hipped", of nautical origins)
far in the offing (usually, in negated forms)
masterpiece in the making (i.e. - in the process of being made)
long in the writing (i.e. - where "the writing" is a lengthy process)
long in the construction (just to show that the noun isn't always a gerund form)

FumbleFingers
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  • 'Remote in the pursuit' sounds pseud in the extreme. 'A remote goal' is sufficient. There are only 5 hits on Google. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 27 '14 at 23:28
  • @Edwin: So tell us something new. Those five Google hits consist of two to this question plus two irrelevant accidental collocations (one duplicated). But the structurally-identical far in the offing is far from dead yet. And there might be a lot of false positives, but good in the eating certainly exists. – FumbleFingers Jan 28 '14 at 01:07
  • Try googling "tiger in the pursuit" -"in the pursuit of", and substituting other animals. I'd say it's just not used. And notice that the construction here is of the form 'Adj in the Y'. Examples of regularly-used constructions of this type are fairly rare and unpredictable. "Remote in the chasing" and "remote in the hunt" show no Google hits, though 'in the hunt' is a well known collocation. 'In the pursuit' usually parallels 'in the 100 metres'. Finding a few examples of a string does not guarantee acceptability. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 28 '14 at 05:52
  • But tiger in the pursuit means the tiger we are chasing? the tiger remote in the pursuit is "we are chasing this tiger but its still remote." ? –  Jan 28 '14 at 05:59
  • You can't just string together a few related-looking words and demand that people come up with the meaning you desire. 'Tiger in the pursuit' is undefined to me. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 28 '14 at 06:22
  • @Edwin: I think that's rather overstating the case. Granted, it's not a common format, but I think one could reasonably expect competent native speakers to understand, say, a deer in the pursuit to mean a deer [which is in the process of] being pursued. – FumbleFingers Jan 28 '14 at 14:05
  • @FF: I can understand quite a lot of the babblings of infants. That doesn't mean that I am going to encourage them in their continued use of non-standard English. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 28 '14 at 22:34
  • @Edwin: I pretty much agree, but so far as I'm concerned if people want to learn English, they should go to ELL. I warned it was a "curious" construction in the original text, and amplified on that in light of your comments, but I've no objection to competent speakers pushing the boundaries of the language. In fact, I quite enjoy it when it's well done. I'd guess OP doesn't really fall into that category - but he should by know have all the information he needs to make a decision, and although I think the "original" is clumsy, ...is easily lost to the sight doesn't sound too bad to me. – FumbleFingers Jan 28 '14 at 23:46
  • @FF I've no objection to pushing the bounds when done sympathetically, but we've got to be careful not to confuse people with 'nice turn of phrase' when they're reading 'this is what the expression is normally taken to mean'. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 29 '14 at 10:21
  • @Edwin: Yeah, well, like I say - people who're likely to be confused by this level of answer shouldn't be here in the first place (they should be on ELL). I mean to say - "this rather curious construction" in my first sentence seems like a reasonable warning to me. Would you have me start off with WARNING Here be dragons, or even avoid deconstructing the usage at all on the grounds that it's uncommon, complex, and liable to be misused? – FumbleFingers Jan 29 '14 at 14:22
  • For something with 2 independent Google hits, I'd say we need to point out it's non-standard rather than rather curious. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 29 '14 at 19:52
  • @Edwin: Now you know I'm like a dog with a bone on things like this! What does it matter that OP's exact words aren't "common"? That doesn't make them "non-standard". How exactly is remote in the pursuit structurally different to long in the writing/construction/etc.? – FumbleFingers Jan 29 '14 at 20:04
  • If you look up 'non-standard' you'll see that accepted structure isn't the only requirement for a string to not be considered 'non-standard'. 'A goal remote in the pursuit' certainly conforms to a grammatical pattern for which there are acceptable examples, but then so does 'Colorless green ideas sleep furiously'. And 'An objective distant in the hunting'. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 29 '14 at 22:22
  • let us continue this discussion in chat – FumbleFingers Jan 29 '14 at 22:31