the.com/standard
a rule everyone agrees on right up until someone invents a better one
means A recognized level of quality, behavior, or measurement that things are expected to meet or be judged against — or, in its older sense, a flag or banner that marks a rallying point.
from From Old French 'estandart,' a flag or rallying banner planted on the battlefield. Its deeper roots are debated: it may come from Frankish 'standhard' ('stand firm' — the place you hold your ground), or be influenced by Latin 'extendere' ('to stretch out,' as a banner unfurls). The military meaning came first; only later did 'standard' drift from the literal flag everyone gathered under to the figurative measure everyone is held to — though both senses share the idea of a fixed point others align themselves with.
- flag origin
- first standards were battle flags armies rallied around
- too many
- competing standards multiply faster than they ever consolidate
- meter bar
- a metal rod in Paris once defined the meter
- gold standard
- phrase for excellence, abandoned as actual money policy
iso 9001 — quality management standard used by over 1 million organizations worldwide
meter — international standard unit of length defined by the speed of light since 1983
ascii — character encoding standard established in 1963 for computers
html5 — web standard maintained by w3c, current version since 2014