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I keep reading the phrase 10 times lighter than..... or similar. This quote is current: "Plastic containers are cheaper to make and 15 times lighter than glass ones, says Dairy Crest". This can not be correct usage surely?

I can take 'glass ones being 15 times heavier than plastic ones' or, though unwieldy, plastic ones are 1/15th the weight of plastic (ones), but 15 times lighter?

It seems popular.

Christopher Brown
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    See “Ten times fewer the number,” versus “one-tenth the number”?, Correct use of “x times lower”, and Meaning of “x is 35 times less than y" among others. – choster Sep 26 '14 at 17:23
  • The Times more / less than post at Language Log provides a good overview. Also related: “X times as many as” or “X times more than”. – choster Sep 26 '14 at 17:28
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    @FumbleFingers And I hope everyone on the site accepts the answer which was ticked as correct, at that time, and that any intelligent and literate person accepts that 'ten times fewer' is nonsensical. – WS2 Sep 26 '14 at 17:32
  • @WS2: Apparently not only am I the only one who downvoted the accepted answer on that earlier question (saying the usage is definitely incorrect and meaningless). I'm also the only one who upvoted Colin Fine's answer (which IMHO quite correctly points out that "language has very little to do with logic"). Given such usages are perfectly comprehensible and relatively common, why try to argue against them on the grounds of misplaced logical principles? – FumbleFingers Sep 26 '14 at 17:54
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    @FumbleFingers As one who spent much of his career (accountancy) trying to persuade non-financial people to quote, and understand figures logically, I can but disagree. Colin Fine makes a valid point, that language is not logic. And that's fine if you are a poet but not if you are a statistician! – WS2 Sep 26 '14 at 18:02
  • @WS2: But where do you draw the line? As Colin says, "Would you have the same objection to ten times slower?". Come to that, what about "twice as smart"? It's not just a matter of lesser portions - there are all sorts of common usages where you could reasonably ask "What exactly does that mean?". If "Tom has an IQ of 101, but Dick is twice as smart", does that mean Dick has an IQ of 102? Or 202? Or what? – FumbleFingers Sep 26 '14 at 18:18
  • @FumbleFingers You are starting to sound like Yvette Cooper, to whom I have been listening on Any Questions. She cannot possibly address the West Lothian question because of all the other iniquitous unfairnesses that exist, such as the House of Lords. 'Ten times slower' is meaningless and every 11 year old child should have it drummed into them. But because there is a slightly different type of confusion over the way IQ works,(there are similar issues with the Richter scale which is logarithmic) doesn't mean we shouldn't stop people saying 'ten times slower' or 'twice as cold'. – WS2 Sep 26 '14 at 19:48
  • @WS2: Please! - I loath Yvette Cooper, who I find even more sanctimonious & patronising than her unctuous partner. If someone tells me it's going to be "twice as cold" tomorrow, I get the message - it's going to be a lot colder. Technically it's valid to say a lightbulb is "five times brighter", or a sound is "twice as loud", since those things do have "comparable" units (lumens and decibels). But in practice they're equally "meaningless/imprecise" to ordinary people without specialist measuring equipment. So to repeat - where do you draw the line? – FumbleFingers Sep 26 '14 at 23:14
  • Ok, if someone is speaking with obvious hyperbole. But even then I feel it betrays a misunderstanding of logic. I would expect anyone doing GCSE Maths to appreciate why it was possible to say that the bulb was five times brighter, but made no sense to say it was five times dimmer. And that there was a perfectly good expression that could be used instead, namely that it had one-fifth of the brightness (if that's what five-times less bright is meant to imply) – WS2 Sep 27 '14 at 08:23

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Sometimes grammar seems odd but is correct. My opinion is that you're using the rule properly. In your phrase 'than' is used following a comparative adjective. In this case, you're comparing plastic containers to glass containers. I don't see an issue with how you have used 'than' here.

Eddie Barranco
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