yardstick

“We had our whippings. It was the yardstick,” said Stewart’s brother, Frank Kostyra.

It’s simplistic just to look at Leach’s seven wickets against Bashir’s one as the yardstick of success – the devil is in the detail.

Walking on the sandy riverbed, McNeish used a yardstick to estimate how much the water had receded in an isolated pond since her last visit.

Specifically, for modern Villa players, there is 1982, an achievement that fills their supporters with pride, but sets a mighty yardstick by which their successors are matched.

This tongue-in-cheek coverage is fine as long as it’s understood that it’s often an arbitrary way to quantify a film and not a yardstick for success.