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1942 Notes & Queries CLXXXIII. 256/1 Target. Who invented the ingenious use of this word for the amount aimed at in a public subscription? I think the use has been extended to things like coal consumption.

1943 Ann. Reg. 1942 307 The London Warship Week resulted in 146,065,225l. being raised as against the original target of 125,000,000l.

1951 E. Gowers ABC of Plain Words 133 If target was to have all the stimulating force it was capable of, it would not do to treat it as a live metaphor, and exhort people to do nothing more exciting..than merely to hit it. So we were offered a great variety of things that we might meritoriously do to our targets. We might reach them, achieve them, attain them or obtain them; we were to feel greatly encouraged if we came in sight of the target to which we were trying to do whatever we were trying to do, and correspondingly depressed if we found ourselves either a long way behind it or (what apparently amounts to the same thing) a long way short of it.

1952 Sat. Rev. (U.S.) 20 Sept. 9/2 There are legislative targets, crop targets, charity targets, gross national product targets.

1964 F. Chichester Lonely Sea & Sky xxxii. 333 I had failed to beat my 30 day target by 3 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes.

1967 Time 18 Aug. 88 Diddy is sure he did it; yet a blind girl near by who hears all and who proves to be on target about everything else, says he never left his seat.

1977 Times 10 Aug. 5/5 There has been unrealistic targeteering; the 1960s building target of 500,000 was never required.

1981 Times 23 Oct. 22/1 First-half results from Jeavons Engineering are on target at £306,000 pre-tax.