the.com/goal post
The only thing in sports that moves faster than the athletes themselves.
means The upright frame marking the target in games like soccer, rugby, or football — and, in everyday speech, shorthand for 'the standard someone must meet' (especially one that keeps getting redefined).
from Straightforward compound: 'goal' (a target or end point, from Middle English, origin itself a bit murky) plus 'post' (an upright timber, from Latin 'postis'). Literal goal posts have marked field boundaries since early folk football. The figurative 'moving the goalposts' — changing the rules of success mid-game so someone can never quite win — is the newer, more cynical offspring, traced to 20th-century political and sports commentary.
- origin
- literally a rugby and soccer structure
- idiom born
- moving it means changing the rules mid-argument
- favorite habitat
- political debates and quarterly targets
- irony
- the real ones are bolted down, immovable