If you have a meeting scheduled for Wednesday . . .

[Gori the Grey]

. . . and you get a notice that it has been moved forward two days . . .

do you understand that the meeting will now be held on Monday? or on Friday?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Forward means closer. The correct answer is Monday.

 

[Farm Boy]

Monday. Unless it's Tuesday.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

At what time is it sent on the Weds?

Half Past Tuesday?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I would say it will be on Friday. forward from the original date is Friday, Back from the original date is Monday.

 

[amadeus]

The day is the intersection point: we and events move in the opposite direction, like two trains on parallel tracks, so if something is moved forward then it means the intersection point is closer relative to us.

Monday.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This why, when you change a meeting, you always proved a new date and time.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I would say it will be on Friday. forward from the original date is Friday, Back from the original date is Monday.

Thats back to front.
Moved forward is earlier, moved back is postponed.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Forward in time from Weds is Friday; Backward in time from Weds is Monday.

 

[CKS]

"Moved forward" means moved to an earlier time. "Pushed back" means moved to a later time. (The Wednesday meeting has been moved to Monday.) These are idioms, and so you can't figure out what they mean by thinking about what they should mean.

While you can think about moving along the time axis as being forward or backwards, you have to specify which you want; later times does not necessarily mean going forward. For example, when we think about position, moving toward bigger x values might mean going forward or it might mean going backward, depending on which way you face. Since you can't even face towards later times (or any times), I don't think this is a helpful way of thinking of time.

 

[Remorseless1]

In MURICA!!, we say "the meeting has been moved up two days."

 

[Kyriakos]

It can mean either, so practically means you should email them to specify the date ^^
That said, if you feel like risking it, it probably means 2 days earlier - since usually you'd say "moved back" for postponed/set to a future date.

 

[really]

Yeah, pushed back is moving it to a later time. Think of it as a list of things to do, pushing it back down the list means it will be done later rather than sooner.

 

[Gorbles]

There's enough variance in interpreting "moved forwards", especially amongst those that aren't English-as-a-first-language speakers, that I'd ask for clarification (if the date wasn't explicitly provided, which it usually is where I work).

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Time moves forward from Wednesday to Friday, so I'd guess Friday.

 

[Gorbles]

These are idioms, and so you can't figure out what they mean by thinking about what they should mean.

I missed this in my post, but just to say for the record: idioms really don't translate well out of English (much as I'd imagine idioms in other languages don't always translate nicely into English). Even the folks I work with who have excellent English (I work as a remote worker in a mostly foreign team) won't get idioms unless they grew up somewhere like the UK or the US.

 

[Kyriakos]

There's a reason why the paradox of the Stadium exists ^^
Forward/Behind are both directions and relative to you; if your chariot is immobile, and chariot A moves forward, chariot B moves backward, it will take chariot A half of the time to pass chariot B than to pass you (used by Zeno to argue that time is also relative notionally).
Of course the use of ambiguous phrases in an office setting isn't due to intellectual reasons; just lazy attribution of the meaning to some specific understanding of it which is external and not to be deduced formally.

 

[really]

I too worked on an international team with people who had excellent English but I avoided ambiguous phrases like that, or if used I tried to be explicitly clear.

I found my own English became clearer over time.

At the same time colleagues who worked almost exclusively with native English speakers went full on corporate jargon.

 

[Kyriakos]

The problem with idioms is that they are islands of meaning. No train (of thought) gets you there.

 

[schlaufuchs]

This really threw me at first. I thought you meant “move it forward by two [business] days,” as in “it happens on the second day,” which would be Friday, vs “it’s delayed two business days,” so it will happen on the following Monday. I didn’t even consider “ask for the meeting to happen earlier,” at first lol.

I asked my partner and she assumed the same thing. “I’ve never once moved a meeting earlier I think in my life”