When below par is good (golf), and when below par is bad (just about everything else)...

Banks are always asking their customers to deposit "fresh funds" with them. And it's all right to have fresh ideas -- innovations or different perspectives that had not emerged previously. But the moment the money is deposited, it is no longer fresh funds; and while a new idea attracts attention, at some point it will have to be embraced (ie, no longer fresh), reworked or discarded.

So, something fresh is something new but the flipside is that it does not stay fresh, semantically speaking. It can get stale even -- as with freshly baked bread. So can eggs be passed off as fresh?...

I've already recounted the story of the fishmonger whose sign "Fresh Fish For Sale" was ridiculed by a linguist. I'm sure those free eggs in the ad above are some way from becoming rotten but they are not fresh either. It's below par to call them "fresh".

Ditto for this box of dates which -- even if airfreighted -- would surely have gone through a process of being harvested, selected, packed, etc. No, I'll quibble too with the use of "fresh" on the box:

Here in Singapore, there is an unthinking use even by the media of the label "fresh graduates" ("fresh grads") when, again, the correct phrasing should be "new graduates" or "recent graduates"...

 
So, don't say "fresh grad" -- it's below par, language-usage wise. This man below got it right!...

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As for this ad below, what's being put on sale is just a one gram gold wafer (or medallion). But it is being advertised as a "gold ingot"!...

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Foreign extra? What's that?

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I'm not just throwing brickbats. Here's one classy ad with a clever play on words. In golf, if you are playing "below par", you are playing well!...:

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I like this one too...

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I felt this Volkswagen ad (earlier this year) had that creative touch too...

I have been to Berlin, was at the Wall, listened to the tour guide's gripping account of its sad past and the momentous day when it was breached. I took back this souvenir fridge magnet:

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Finally, this ad is corny but it's kind of cute, ie, good for a laugh. Haha, "You'll be DIM not to get SUM"!