promotion
(prəʊˈməʊʃən)
Also 5–6 -cio(u)n, -cyon.
[a. F. promotion (14th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), ad. L. prōmōtiōn-em, n. of action f. prōmov-ēre: see promove.]
1. a. Advancement in position; preferment.
on promotion, on the way to promotion, on trial; to be on one's promotion, to conduct oneself with a view to promotion (also colloq. to marriage).
| 1429 Rolls of Parlt. IV. 344/2 Ne for promotion or fortheryng of any persone to Office. 1523 Ld. Berners Froiss. I. cccxxvii. 511 With his promocyon of popalyte the romayns were apeased. 1540 Test. Ebor. (Surtees) VI. 119, I give to Dorithe and Anne my doughters xl li, to be equallye devyded betwixte them towarde ther mariadge or other promocion. 1613 Shakes. Hen. VIII, v. ii. 23 The high promotion of his Grace of Canterbury, Who holds his State at dore 'mongst Purseuants, Pages, and Foot-boyes. 1693 Luttrell Brief Rel. (1857) III. 81 Disgusted that he was not in the late promotion made a marshall of France. 1751 Earl of Orrery Remarks Swift (1752) 29 In point of power and revenue, such a deanery might be esteemed no inconsiderable promotion. 1785 Crabbe Newspaper 312 Promotion's ladder, who goes up or down. 1857 Buckle Civiliz. I. x. 602 In that period promotion depended solely on merit. |
| 1836 Lett. fr. Madras i. (1843) 4 Several Irish girls apparently on their promotion. 1848 Thackeray Van. Fair xxxix, The little kitchen-maid on her promotion. Ibid. xliv, ‘I remember when you liked 'em, though’..‘That was when I was on my promotion, Goosey’, she said. 1888 W. E. Henley Bk. Verses 4 A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion). 1902 Miss E. P. Thompson in Gentl. Mag. Dec. 583 When the canonised saints have been worked out, he has recourse to those, as it were, ‘on their promotion’. |
b. Chess. The elevation of a pawn to the rank of a higher piece.
| 1803 P. Pratt Studies of Chess (1804) I. 30 Of promoting a pawn to be a queen, rook, &c. When a pawn has penetrated to the farthest rank on the adverse side of the board, he is rewarded with promotion to the highest vacant dignity. 1900 Westm. Gaz. 12 May 3/3 If a player..is forced..to the promotion which involves the loss of the game. Ibid. 22 Dec. 3/3 A trio of promotion problems..representing three different types of promotion side by side. |
c. Curling. The positional advancement of a stone by striking.
Cf. promote v. 1 d.
| 1897 Encycl. Sport I. 261/1 A canny, or quiet, draw is expected from the lead, and it is better that his stone, when spent, should be short of the tee, where it is in the way of promotion. 1937 T. Henderson Lockerbie ix. 57 Ye're a graun' curler. That yin's in the wey o' promotion. |
d. Sport (chiefly
Assoc. Football). Reallocation of a team to a higher division of a league on the basis of final position in a league table after a season's play;
opp. to
relegation.
| 1907 Times 15 Apr. 11/3 Notts Forest and Chelsea have now made themselves certain of promotion. 1949 Times 25 Apr. 6/2 Swansea Town assured themselves of promotion to the Second Division. 1965 [see inject v. 2]. 1967 Listener 17 Aug. 223/3 ‘Millwall must be certainties for promotion’: thus Bill Nicholson, one of the two or three most analytic club managers in England. |
e. Boxing. The organization or staging of a contest; a contest staged.
| 1951 Sport 7–13 Jan. 14/4 This show is but the first of the season at Streatham but will be the forerunner of many more value-for-money promotions at the South London hall. 1958 F. C. Avis Boxing Ref. Dict. 87 Promotion, the organization of a boxing contest. 1962 Listener 27 Sept. 466/2 The odd-looking circular building would be just the place for boxing promotions. |
f. Phonetics. The intensification of normal stress levels in verse; an instance of this.
| 1956 S. Chatman in Kenyon Rev. XVIII. 424 What I have called ‘metrical tension’ can conveniently be described as ‘promotions’ or ‘suppressions’ of the stress levels of normal non-verse speech under the pressures of the abstract metrical pattern. 1973 Word 1970 XXVI. 55 These examples, from Prator, illustrate suppression and promotion respectively. |
g. Bridge. The action of promoting a card or trick (see
promote v. 1 e).
| 1959 Listener 31 Dec. 1178/2 The problem is to prevent North..from winning a second trump trick by promotion. 1964 Official Encycl. Bridge 633/2 Trump promotion, the creation of trump tricks through forcing the premature use of the trump cards of the opposition. |
h. Transformational Gram. The translation of material from an embedded to a main sentence.
| 1968 R. W. Langacker Lang. & Struct. ii. v. 128 A permutation rule that we will call Not Promotion is an interesting example that accounts for a subtle type of ambiguity in negative sentences. 1973 P. Schachter in Language XLIX. 19 The derivation of both constructions involves the promotion of material from an embedded into a matrix sentence. |
2. a. The action of helping forward; the fact or state of being helped forward; furtherance, advancement, encouragement;
spec. the furtherance of the sale of something by advertisement or other modes of publicity. Also
transf.| 1483 Caxton's Chron. Eng. v. N viij b, To the quyete state of the chyrche and to the promocion of the fayth. 1584 Reg. Privy Council Scot. III. 702 To the promotioun and furtherance of the gospell. 1664 Power Exp. Philos. iii. 188 An Authentick discouragement to the promotion of the Arts and Sciences. 1725 T. Thomas in Portland Papers VI. (Hist. MSS. Comm.) 100 There is a navigable river..which is a great promotion of the trade of the town. 1845 S. Austin Ranke's Hist. Ref. III. 60 Institutions for the promotion of learning. 1862 Sir B. Brodie Psychol. Inq. II. vii. 233 The great agent in the promotion of civilization is the advancement of knowledge. 1925 C. Morley Thunder on Left ix. 112 He spoke of the Elevated Railroad's limited appropriation for promotion, of the peculiar problems of transportation publicity. 1928 Publishers' Weekly 26 May 2169 Promotion cannot be done without waste... But the idea back of the new mergers is the idea of outlets, of promotion, of selling more goods. 1932 Ibid. 7 May 1945/2 A free gift offer in a full page Book-of-the-Month Club promotion. 1958 Listener 23 Jan. 148/1 Sir Miles [Thomas].. began his business career as an adviser to Mr. W. R. Morris..on ‘sales promotion’. 1962 Advertisers' Rev. 26 Oct. 17/2 Price-reductions were easily preferred to all other types of promotion... Other types of promotions considered effective were sample offers, banded offers and free gifts. 1969 Morning Star 20 Nov. 5 Heather..had to show a good knowledge of BEA as well as poise and charm. She will represent the airline in promotions and conferences. 1976 National Observer (U.S.) 13 Nov. 9/4 Some industry observers say one of those promotions could be trading stamps, although they cost four times as much as a game promotion and require a long-term commitment from a store. 1980 Bookseller 12 Jan. 194/1 (Advt.), Evans Brothers Limited require a Publicity Controller to deal with the promotion of their Adult and Children's Trade Books. Applicants should..be capable of dealing with all aspects of book promotion and advertising. Ibid. 194/3 The successful candidate..will have experience in organising direct mail promotions, preparing catalogues, leaflets and adverts, [etc.] |
b. The getting up of a joint-stock company.
| 1886 Law Times LXXX. 310/1 The plaintiff..was interested in the promotion of the Georgia Gold Mines Company Limited. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 8 June 7/1 He had not personally reaped the benefit of some of his promotions. |
c. Chem. The action of
promote v. 2 c.
| [1920 Jrnl. Physical Chem. XXIV. 263 Such an example of auto-catalysis..is to be distinguished from simple auto-catalysis, in which a reactant or product has a direct catalytic effect on the reaction. Here the specific effect of the product is on the catalyst... From the point of view of promoter action such a term as ‘auto-activation’ or ‘auto-promotion’ would be more appropriate.] 1926 Jrnl. Chem. Soc. 1817 (heading) Promotion with iron. 1940 Glasstone Text-bk. Physical Chem. xiii. 1128, 1 per cent. of ceria gives the optimum promotion for the catalytic action of thoria on the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. 1968 E. K. Rideal Concepts in Catalysis v. 97 The V–O stretching frequency ν = 1025 cm-1 is shifted to longer wavelengths by promoters such as alkaline sulphates, where the order of activity in promotion is Cs>Rb>K>Na. |
d. Med. The furtherance of neoplastic growth following its initiation by a carcinogen; the conversion of latent tumour cells into active, malignant ones; (see
quot. 1964
1).
| 1944 Jrnl. Exper. Med. LXXX. 121 Non-Specific Promotion.—It seems certain that many agents and influences which have no actual carcinogenicity will be found to stimulate the multiplication of latent neoplastic cells. 1964 Progress Exper. Tumor Res. IV. 209 Cocarcinogenesis is not synonymous with tumor promotion, since promotion inherently denotes a specific step in the sequence of events leading to skin tumor formation. Conversely, cocarcinogenesis describes a situation in which response to a carcinogen is increased by a second factor introduced concurrently with the carcinogen, with no implication of impact at a specific step in tumor formation. Ibid. 226 Apparently, there is a threshold for the amount of croton oil that must be used in each application in order to achieve promotion. 1976 Brit. Jrnl. Cancer XXXIV. 660/1 The events related to tumor promotion are understood better since the isolation and chemical characterization of active promoting agents by Hecker (1968) and Van Duuren (1969). |
† 3. The laying of an information against any one.
Obs.| a 1536 Tindale Exp. Matt. v–vii. 71 Couetousnes & promocion and such like,..are that ryghte hand and right eye that must be cut of & plucked out that the whole man peryshe not. [But this quot. perh. belongs to sense 1.] |
† 4. ? Motion or stirring of the mind.
Obs.| 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 136 Passyons of ire, enuy, sclaunderous wordes or other promocyons. 1656 Stanley Hist. Philos. iv. (1701) 134/1 They held..That nothing judgeth but by interior promotion, and the judgment of true and false consists of inward touch. |
† 5. Advance, getting on, progress made.
Cf. promove v. 5.
Obs.| 1649 Jer. Taylor Gt. Exemp. i. Sect. 7. 108 Whether it were truly or in appearance, in habit or in exercise of act.., it is certain the promotions of the holy Childe [Luke ii. 52] were great, admirable, and as full of wonder as of sanctity. |
6. attrib. (in sense 1 a)
promotion examination; (sense 1 d)
promotion contender,
promotion rival;
promotion-challenging,
promotion-chasing,
promotion-seeking ns. and
adjs.; (sense 2 a)
promotion campaign,
promotion kit,
promotion man,
promotion scheme,
promotion stunt; (in sense 2 b)
promotion allowance,
promotion expense,
promotion money;
promotion bar, a notional barrier imposed to restrict a person's promotion above a certain level unless certain specified requirements are met;
promotion sheet, a record of an employee's service showing his claim to promotion or increased pay.
| 1898 Engineering Mag. XVI. 32 note, The Edinburgh arbitrator took the actual cost of promotion as the test of the promotion allowance. |
| 1973 C. Mullard Black Britain ii. iv. 43 Besides overt racism employers operated a promotion bar. |
| 1962 Listener 19 July 116/1 The distributors were rash in putting it [sc. a film] on without a promotion campaign. 1972 Oxf. Mail 15 Feb. 12/6 Carlisle are in their customary promotion-challenging position. 1977 Sunday Express 30 Jan. 31/8 Big Brian Joicey grabbed two goals to earn Barnsley a well-deserved victory over promotion-chasing rivals Bournemouth. 1978 Rugby World Apr. 19/1 At the time of writing they still had three matches left to play, including games against fellow promotion contenders Jedforest and Selkirk. |
| 1899 Westm. Gaz. 4 Dec. 10/1 To look into the promotion expenses. 1903 Daily Chron. 17 Oct. 3/7 The..promotion examinations are at hand. |
| 1964 Bookseller 2 May 1783/1 The Society of Young Publishers reports that the half-way mark has been reached in their appeal for {pstlg}1,000 towards the production of ‘promotion kits’ for mailing to 2,000 booksellers and 1,000 libraries throughout the country. |
| 1958 Spectator 25 July 138/1 Given a really good labour-saving idea, the British are not so reluctant to try it as many high-powered promotion men would have us believe. 1977 Rolling Stone 19 May 14/4 Bennett formerly worked as a Beatles promotion man. 1882 Pall Mall G. 13 July 6/1 The General Hydraulic Power Company...No promotion money is to be paid. 1977 News of World 17 Apr. 24/7 It was just as well that most of Brighton's promotion rivals faltered yesterday. |
| 1925 C. Morley Thunder on Left xx. 250 The children had found some deceptive promotion scheme advertised in a cheap magazine. 1958 New Statesman 26 Apr. 548/1 Some people seem to think that there is something bogus about these promotion schemes and that their cost would be better applied in making a permanent price reduction. 1976 Norwich Mercury 10 Dec., The mark of a promotion-seeking team is to win when playing badly. |
| 1909 Daily Chron. 23 Mar. 1/4 The manipulation of their promotion sheets, with the object of postponing the payment of justly earned increased salaries, was one of the grievances of the strikers. 1955 W. Gaddis Recognitions ii. ii. 372 It was all fixed up about this guy who jumped out a window... It's something for a TV promotion stunt. |