Nancy Matos

Could you explain “cherry-pick”? Is it fair or unfair?

My comments: Is cherry picking fair? Not really. To “cherry-pick” something is to select only the best or most desirable object out of a group/selection of choices. It can also refer to people, too. The unfairness results in what one person thinks is “the best” may not always be the case. By “cherry-picking” they are leaving out and/or ignoring the other options.

Top schools, like Ivy League universities Yale and Harvard, can cherry-pick students to attend their institutions, selecting what they think are the best and brightest. Consumers tend to cherry-pick when shopping—they buy products that are on sale, thereby ignoring other merchandise.

The phrase comes from the action of a farmer picking cherries (or some other fruit) from a tree. A farmer will likely select the ripest, biggest and plumpest cherries from the tree, leaving the other less desirable cherries behind. However, because we are all different and have varying tastes and opinions, this is where the unfair factor comes in: who says the biggest cherries on the tree are the best ones? Some people may prefer the smaller, less ripe ones.

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以上讨论问题来自翻吧（translate.chinadaily.com.cn）