It’s longer but it’s shorter

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You’d think someone would have made a mistake saying this but actually it can make sense. When we’re trying to decide where to go while we’re travelling in France, we’ll put the name of a town into the GPS and she’ll chug away for a minute or two and come up with a route. I was going to put ‘suitable’ route but that wouldn’t be quite accurate either. Doris, the GPS, has different ideas about routes that might or might not be ‘suitable’. Often she will offer several routes in different colours which led Vince to say that the ‘blue’ route was longer but it was shorter. So ‘longer’ in the sense of distance but ‘shorter’ in terms of time. So ‘long’ and ‘short’ aren’t always opposites. I haven’t been able to think of any other instances where supposed opposites can be used in this way. Perhaps you can. Another photo from our ‘mountain climbing’ days.