In a recent newspaper article, I read the following, "...dubbed it an oxymoronic "negative bounce."

Now, I suppose I get his point. He is only thinking that balls, or whatever, bounce up. But, can't they bounce "down" too?

When I looked it up, it seemed the "to move jerkily or bump" meaning could mean that an object can move or bump down.

BTW, I was intrigued by the chiefly British definition of "Loud, arrogant speech; bluster."

You can bounce something off a floor, or a wall, or the ceiling. Bounce has a general meaning of hitting something and coming back the opposite way.

Most often this refers to bouncing something off the floor, as in a basketball. I suppose bouncing something off the ceiling could be considered "negative bounce", but I doubt it. The term isn't oxymoronic as much as (What's the opposite of tautological, paradoxical?) it is just wrong.

Here is how something could have "negative bounce". Shoot a particle at a gold wall. It can either "bounce" off the wall, or go through the wall. I guess going through matter would be considered "negative bounce". I've only taken one course in quantum physics, so I'm not quite sure it physicists would think about it like that, so I hesitate to use the term in that context.

Quote "...BTW, I was intrigued by the chiefly British definition of "Loud, arrogant speech; bluster." ..."

But what is this a definition of? Certainly not "bounce" in my book (although, in some circumstances, it could possibly be a definition of "balls")

There are about 4000 ghits for "negative bounce", half of which are for Kerry. Almost all the rest are for a property of golf clubs, being able to slice underneath a ball or knock them upwards. It says here that "Long irons have negative bounce for greater lift, while short irons have positive bounce to limit drag."

So in golf negative bounce is lift, an upward motion, which is the normal direction of bounce nontechnically.

Excluding both Kerry and golf from the search, we find the Kerry-type image used in American sport and politics a few times, but also something electronic called bounce, measured in volts, and that can be positive or negative.

There's also a handful of occurrences in various other technical senses, such as diffusion of light.

I'm going to guess it started as a golfing term, then was misinterpreted as a sporting term meaning 'bounce in opposite of usual direction', and that's where the political metaphor has been picked up.

Oh, and nor have I heard that 'bluster' sense.

Bouncy is used as a common adjective with the bluster sense. Bouncy people are loud, bubbly and usually have fuller figures. Tigger's bounce had as much to do with his personality in the Disney films as literally being able to jump around.

I always understood negative bounce to be when you hit the floor and keep falling: when things can't get worse but will. An impossible situation that is quite common in politics.

I've certainly never seen the phrase used, but since I know little about golf and less about American politics I'm not surprised.

If confronted by the phrase without seeing the posts above I'd hazard a guess that something like jelly (jello in the States) would have negative bounce; when it hits the floor it goes splat and spreads out.

One of the definitions from dictionary.com was "to move jerkily or bump." Naturally if something bumps or moves, it can bump or move up or down. That's why I don't see a negative bounce as either an oxymoron...or wrong.

Sean, I think you are just thinking of "bounce" as referring to a ball. In that instance, I agree, the bounce has to only be positive.

Interesting that none of you Brits have heard of that British definition of bounce.

Well my Chambers includes 'boasting, a bold lie' as one of the senses, but doesn't mark it as from any region or date. The adjective 'bouncy' doesn't really fit this: bounciness is pretty positive.

I mean, anything can bounce. If you throw a pencil at the ground, it will bounce up. If you throw a can at the wall it will bounce off. If heaven forbid, a person fell out of a plane and hit the ground, they might even bounce. When you skip stones they are bouncing off the water.

To me, the only definition of bounce is to be going one direction, touch something, and change directions. Obviously this is where the "bump" part of the definition comes in. As for the "jerkily", this is probably a result of the collision, as the normal straight movement gets knocked all over.

So, then, it sounds as though the "negative bounce" is indeed an oxymoron.

I have reviewed all the definitions in onelook, and it, and you, Sean, have convinced me.

One of my favourite terms in economics is 'dead cat bounce': the apparent upturn in the economy or an indicator that doesn't actually mean all that much, because it's like what a dead cat does when it hits the ground.

Perpetual-motion machine.

Moving from econmics to mechanics ...... to build our perpetual-motion machine we must bear in mind two Universal Truths:

1) Buttered toast, when accidentally dropped on the floor, always lands butter-side down.
2) A live cat, when dropped, always lands on its feet.

We strap buttered toast to the cat's back, drop it, and watch the toast-laden cat revolve forever in mid air.

No bounce here!

Perpetual-motion machine.

Augustus de Morgan wrote a bunch of articles about perpetua mobilia that were posthumously gathered in bookform as A Budget of Paradoxes.

Well, now that we've gotten a little off the subject, I have been thinking about something only peripherally related.

I wonder how 'Bounce,' the clothing softening product very popular here in the states, got the name. It softens the clothes; it doesn't give them 'bounce.'