Business end

Reader question:

Please explain “the business end of things”.

My comments:

The main and functional, hence, most important part of things.

“Business end” literally refers to the end of a tool that does the business or gets the job done. A kitchen knife, for instance, has two ends. On the one end is the handle by which one holds the tool. On the other end is the sharp blade.

Needless to say, the sharp blade is the “business end” of the kitchen knife. It is the end that allows the knife to do its business and get a job done.

To wit, it allows the knife to cut.

Likewise, a hammer consists of a handle and a head, the head being its “business end”, which allows the hammer to perform a function, knocking a nail into a piece of wood, for example.

Hence, by analogy and extension, the “business end of things” refers to the functional and, hence, most important part of a project or process. For example, players and coaches consider the second half of a playing season the “business end of the season”. This is crunch time, a time when championship is decided, when trophies are won. During the first half, losing one or two games may feel alright (because the season is long, as they say). During the second half, however, every game counts. If you slip up and lose a few games, there won’t be enough time for you to recover.

Hence, the closer it is to the end, the more important, critical or crucial each game is.

I remember, by the way, encountering “business end” in Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of articles written by the late New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. In Hit on the Head with a Cow, I remember being impressed with this sentence:

He likes to push his captain’s cap on the back of his head, put his fists up like a prizefighter, and give a frightful account of the way he maimed a disrespectful shipmate by throwing pepper in his eyes and striking him in the face with “the business end of a broken beer bottle.”

The “business end” of the beer bottle, by the way, is the thick end which contains the beer. Apparently, by hitting the man with “the business end of a broken beer bottle”, the captain means business.

In other words, he really intends to punish and hurt the disrespectful shipmate.

Oh, well, no more explanation necessary. Let’s read a few media examples and take a further look at “business end” in various contexts:

1. It’s hard to find much humor in getting poked with a fish hook, particularly when your butt is in the bullseye of a No. 6 treble.

My old friend Kerry Karlix of McKinney knows the game all too well. He has a pair of fresh stab wounds to show for it.

Karlix is laughing about the ordeal now. It wasn’t so funny when it happened.

Karlix, 67, was bass fishing with Tommy Bartholomew of Mesquite on the morning of May 1 at Cedar Creek Lake. The men had been fishing for about two hours without much luck when they decided to move to a different spot.

Karlix said he felt a sudden sting on his behind the moment he plopped down on the passenger seat. At first he thought a cinder from his friend’s cigarette may have drifted onto the seat before he sat down.

Not so. When he raised up to inspect, Karlix discovered a shad pattern Bandit square bill crankbait was stuck to the backside of his shorts. One of the trebles had penetrated the fabric and was buried deep in his butt cheek, well past the barb.

Bartholomew did the courteous thing. He offered to remove the hook with a pair of pliers, but Karlix wasn’t having any of it. The angler insisted this was a job for a professional. He found one at a drive-in medical clinic in nearby Kaufman.

One shot of Novocaine and $75 later the anglers were out the door and headed for home. The whole deal took only 15 minutes to complete, but little did Karlix know his battle with the fish hook gremlin was far from over.

The gremlin got a little help from “Charlie.”

Charlie is Karlix’s year-old English Setter. The pup paid him an unexpected visit as he was stowing his fishing tackle in the garage after returning home later that afternoon. Things got nasty when Charlie put his nose where he shouldn’t have.

The dog’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Karlix was in the process of hanging a Megabass jerk bait on the wall when he felt the nudge from behind.

“I had no idea he was around and then he slipped up behind me,” Karlix said. “It startled me for a second and I jerked one of the treble hooks into my forefinger. It buried past the barb.”

Karlix’s wife, Lee Ann, played ambulance driver this time. She drove him to a nearby medical clinic, similar to the one he had visited earlier in the day.

The big city nurses here weren’t near as accommodating as the country girls were.

“They said they couldn’t remove fish hooks – that I would have to go the hospital emergency room,” he said. “I told them I had one dug out of my butt a few hours earlier at a clinic down in Kaufman, but they still refused to do it.”

Off to the ER they went. Karlix’s wife paid the lady at the front desk the $250 insurance deductible and the couple took a seat in the waiting room.

...

It’s no fun being an angler caught on the business end of a fishing hook. Twice the same day is double trouble.

- Getting hooked on fishing, by Matt Williams, DallasNews.com, June 4, 2022.

2. We are almost nearing the business end of the 2024-25 Champions League and many questions have still yet to be answered.

Whilst Liverpool, Inter Milan and Barcelona are well enroute to secure a top eight spot, some European Giants are at risk of not even making the play-offs.

With only three matches remaining in the revamped Champions League's new league phase, defending champions Real Madrid find themselves just two points above the elimination zone in 24th following their 2-0 defeat to Liverpool at Anfield.

Los Blancos are now just one spot above French champions PSG who are currently sitting in the relegation zone, with both sides needing results to go their way in the remaining league games to avoid elimination.

Following Manchester City’s recent stitch of bad form, most recently squandering a 3-0 lead to draw 3-3 with Feyenoord on match day five, Pep Guardiola’s men have severely damaged their hopes of automatic qualification.

Here is the current state-of-play in the Champions League after match day five.

The Reds with fifteen points, are the only side to pick up all available points and are currently certain of at least a play-off spot, although according to Opta’s pre-tournament simulations, they more than likely have enough points to reach the last-16.

Italian champions Inter Milan occupy second place with 13 points, just two behind Slot’s side.

Simone Inzaghi’s men alongside fifth-placed Atalanta are the only other two sides besides Liverpool who remain unbeaten so far in the league.

- Champions League state of play: What Liverpool and Aston Villa need to seal an automatic spot in the last-16, DailyMail.co.uk, November 28, 2024.

3. Professional sports stars who are at the top of their game will always be more critical about themselves than anyone else.

For Andrey Rublev, that is certainly the case.

Most players might welcome the break at this time of the year as professional tennis takes a bit of a break but Rublev must be desperately keen to get cracking with 2025.

The Russian player was seemingly out of sorts in 2024 and he won’t look back at the year with any real fondness whatsoever.

Rublev has already set out some goals for 2025 and he will want to ensure he can keep his place among the game’s top 10 players.

Rublev was sent crashing out of the recent ATP Finals at the group stage after losing all three of his matches and winning one set in the process.

Every player has their weaknesses to work on and Rublev is desperately trying to get back on track after a poor 2024.

Rublev reached the quarter-final in Australia in 2024 but then lost in the third round at the French Open, the first round at Wimbledon and the fourth round of the US Open.

For a player ranked eighth in world tennis that won’t really do and he will be desperate to start competing in the business end of tournaments going forward.

Rublev has admitted that there is one aspect of his game that he’s really keen to work on and it won’t come as too much of a surprise to any of his fans.

He told Eurosport: “There’s a little bit of everything. The main aspect is of course mental, but there are also many aspects of my game to be improved.

“I’m in the top 10, but I’m one of the worst players at the net! The other players in the 10 manage to deliver balls from different positions; mine sometimes land off the court.

“So I try to work on these kinds of details, I spend more time on them than before. In the past, I was only obsessed with my forehand; today I’m more open to working on other things in training.”

- Top 10 ATP player admits he’s terrible at the net and he’s working on his volleys in practice now, TheTennisGazzette.com, December 9, 2024.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）