the.com/playing field
The place where fairness is promised and gravity always has other plans.
means A literal field for games, or figuratively, the shared conditions and rules under which competitors operate.
from A straightforward compound of 'playing' and 'field,' originally just the turf where sports were played. The figurative sense — 'level playing field' meaning fair, equal conditions — took off in the 20th century, especially in business and politics, as a metaphor borrowed from sport: if both teams stand on the same unslanted ground, no one wins by terrain alone.
- origin
- Literally sports turf before it got metaphorical
- idiom
- Level playing field implies it rarely starts level
- economics
- Used to describe markets that are anything but fair
- irony
- Invoked most by those already winning