YOU CAN’T HIT A TARGET YOU NEVER SET

From a “Karrass: Effective Negotiating 2 -Day Seminar” ad in “US Airways” magazine (9.10).

This was the title( You Can’t Hit a Target You Never Set) of an item to be discussed in the Karrass seminar.  One needs to set a goal/target to reach it.

Archery is a sport in which competitors shoot arrows with a bow at a target (target archery) or shoot animals for game. (hunting) or for fish (fishing). A target is something one shoots or aims at to score/to win, if possible.

DERIVATION: This expression derives from an old English sport;  bullbaiting dogs try to pull a bull by his nose to the ground. Gamblers placed a bet “on the bull’s eye” if he wished to make a bet. Crowns, an English coin, were used to bet so frequently “on the bull’s eye that the coin itself came to be called a bull’s-eye. Later, the term was applied to the black center of a target. The idiom right on the money is also derived from the ancient interchangeable use of a coin, bull’s-eye and the center of a target. A sentence in this case would be: ” You were right on the money with your speech.”

Tags: You can't hit a target unless you plan to play.