In this sentence:
The drop in overseas visitors in the first three quarters of this year exceeded the drop in mainland Chinese tourists.
Is it incorrect to use "outnumber" in place of "exceed"?
-
Why do you think outnumber is wrong?– KumaAraOct 12, 2017 at 4:08
-
2The sentence is referring to a single drop (of overseas visitors) against another single drop (of mainland Chinese tourists). It will be incongruous to many that a single example of something can "outnumber" a single example of another thing. Even if you allow that drop can be treated as a collective here, you have a further difficulty of expressing a negative value as "outnumbering" another negative value, which is uncommon.– chosterOct 12, 2017 at 4:38
-
And note that the two words are not interchangeable. You would not say "the drop in visitors outnumbered 7%", even though "the drop in visitors exceeded 7%" is reasonably idiomatic.– Hot LicksOct 12, 2017 at 12:05
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
A more elegant formulation that avoids your problem could be:
In the first three quarters of this year the number of overseas visitors fell by more than the number of mainland Chinese tourists.
But back to your question of exceed versus outnumber. As alluded to by choster in the comment, outnumber requires the reference word to be a countable entity. E.g.:
Visitors from overseas outnumbered those from mainland China.
Visitors is countable. The drop in visitors however, though measurable, is not countable.
Exceed, in its meaning 2 in Merriam-Webster, allows a comparison of anything that is at least conceptually measurable, though not necessarily countable. E.g.,
Peter's success exceeded his father's expectations.
While you can measure success, you can't count it.
Visitors, while countable, are not measurable. You can measure all kinds of attributes of visitors (such as visitor spending, the average age of visitors, etc), but not visitors themselves. Thus, to make exceed work in the way intended by the OP, one could refer to the number of visitors, which is measurable:
The number of visitors from overseas exceeded the number of tourists from mainland China.
Since drop is measurable but not countable, it works as a reference word for exceed, but not for outnumer. You could alter the last sentence to use the words drop in the number of visitors, but the whole phrase becomes very clumsy. Hence my suggestion at the beginning.
-
-
1@user261533 It's customary to up-vote helpful answers. After that, wait a couple of days, then give the green tick to whichever answer best answers your question. (If none do, there's no obligation to award the green tick.)– LawrenceOct 12, 2017 at 13:05