All over the map?

Reader question:

Please explain “all over the map” in this sentence: I was very busy, but I listened to his speech, part of it. He was all over the map. I have no idea what he was talking about.

My comments:

Here, a speechmaker is likened to a traveler who covered all the cities on the map.

No globetrotter, whether he travels by air or by ship, is able to see all the places in the world in a matter of hours. In speech, however, one can.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

So the speechmaker talked about this and talked about that. Before he finished talking about one subject, he started talking about another. Before you could catch the drift of what he was saying, he had moved on to something else.

So on and so forth.

The upshot?

The speechmaker was messy and confused, unable to make a point. He was inconsistent. He was incoherent. Nobody knew what he was getting at.

That’s what “all over the map” means. And, to use a shotgun analogy, the speechmaker was like a scattershot, aiming at everything but nothing in particular. Every object in front of him may get shot, but, then again, he may miss everything.

There’s no definitive answer as to the origin of “over the map” as an idiom. Plausibly, it comes from cartography or map making, as CrossIdiomAS.com explains:

The phrase “all over the map” has its roots in cartography – the science of making maps. In early maps, different regions were often depicted as separate pieces on a single sheet of paper. As cartographers began to create more detailed and accurate maps, they started to combine these individual pieces into larger sheets. However, sometimes these pieces did not fit together perfectly or were not aligned correctly with each other. The result was a map that looked messy and confusing – as if it had been thrown together haphazardly.

Over time, people began using this imagery metaphorically to describe situations where things seemed chaotic or disjointed. By the mid-20th century, “all over the map” had become a common idiomatic expression in English.

All right. Let’s read a few media examples of people who are “all over the map”:

1. Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.

Meeting attendees and people who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.

“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him, Sorkin said.

“President Trump was warmly received by everyone in the room and was commended for his policy proposals on deregulation and tax cuts,” said Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump presidential campaign.

- CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘meandering’ and ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’, CNBC.com, June 14 2024.

2. Leonardo DiCaprio may not have been one of the worst-dressed Wimbledon 2025 attendees, but his appearance at the famous tennis tournament is still earning him plenty of flak online. Despite being 50 years old, DiCaprio reportedly refuses to date women older than 25. Based on the comment section on a recent post on X, formerly Twitter, DiCaprio’s penchant for scandalous age gap relationships and his recent public behavior may be tanking his reputation.

The “Titanic” star has been an A-lister for decades, but when it comes to his public image, it seems that the tide has officially turned. On July 11, the official Wimbledon X account shared a photo of the actor with the caption, “Leonardo DiCaprio enjoying a Titanic tussle at SW19.” The photo showed DiCaprio watching a match in a t-shirt and blazer, and his signature shades. While the folks behind the account likely expected love and support for the star, the result, instead, was a comment section full of criticism. Interestingly, the reasoning behind the hate was all over the map, indicating that people just aren’t loving Leo at the moment.

When poking fun at Leonardo DiCaprio, there is no low-hanging fruit quite like his tendency toward dating younger women, so it’s unsurprising that this was a popular joke throughout the comment section. “Probably thinking to himself ‘if this match goes on any longer my date will be too old for me,’” one X user joked. “Warn all the under 25’s,” wrote another, while someone else added, “Guess he dropped his date off at Kindergarten first,” among many similar comments.

The tweet came just two weeks after DiCaprio was among the worst-dressed guests at Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Jeff Bezos’ wedding weekend, where he kept his face hidden with a baseball cap. From this odd fashion choice to the fact that he attended the highly controversial event at all, this moment clearly stuck in folks’ minds for some not-so-positive reasons. “Hey Leo, you took off the hat! Not hiding anymore?” one user posted, while another said, “Get Jeff Bezos’ boy outta here.”

DiCaprio was even repeatedly accused of phony activism. While The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation fights against climate change, some folks are now finding his environmentalist reputation to be hypocritical. “Since he’s so worried about climate change I’m sure he took his magical fairy dust plane/yacht there that spewed no CO2 into the atmosphere,” one commenter sarcastically quipped. Another called him a “fake environmentalist who loves his big private jets and yacht parties.” Clearly DiCaprio is in desperate need of a good PR moment. Maybe the solution is to date someone his own age – as long as they didn’t meet at the Bezos wedding, that is.

- Leonardo DiCaprio’s Wimbledon 2025 Appearance Proves His Reputation Will Never Recover, TheList.com, July 11, 2025.

3. Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart, two core Knicks, were benched for at least most of the fourth quarter in Wednesday’s 124-107 loss to the Magic.

Hart didn’t play at all in the final period, the second game in a row he collected zero minutes in the fourth quarter. Bridges logged just one minute in the fourth quarter, and couldn’t explain the reason.

“I’m not sure,” said Bridges, who scored a season-low six points on 3 of 9 shooting.

Hart, who had been playing better after a bumpy start to the season, appeared frustrated after the game.

Landry Shamet, Miles McBride and Jordan Clarkson all played more minutes in the fourth quarter Wednesday than either Hart or Bridges.

“I got my own stuff,” Hart, who scored 10 points in 18 minutes with three turnovers, said when asked about the apparent injury to teammate Jalen Brunson.

Regardless of the minutes distribution, there will be big alterations if Brunson is hurt. The point guard turned his right ankle in garbage time, a development that leaves coach Mike Brown under the microscope for playing his star when the game’s outcome was settled.

Before tip-off, Brown said he’d grown more comfortable with his rotation.

“I was all over the map [with my rotations earlier in the season]. Because I was all over the map, the players were all over the map,” Brown said. “And after getting some practices in, getting some games under our belt, showing the guys, ‘Hey this is what we should be looking at, we have a little bit of a rhythm.’ ”

The rhythm stopped along with the Knicks’ five-game winning streak, as Brown’s squad was outmuscled by the physical Magic.

Brown altered his rotation – particularly by benching Bridges – and he’ll have to change it further if Brunson is out.

- Mike Brown benches Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart in fourth quarter of Knicks’ ugly loss, NYPost.com, November 13, 2025.

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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）