Did the movie measure up to the hype..

Prakash Jha’s Arakshan did not measure up to the high expectations people had of the film.

His English communication skills do not measure up to those of his brother. His brother can talk to anyone on anything while he has difficulty even in communicating very basic ideas.

“Measure up” means to be a match to, to be compared favorably with something. You use the phrase when you are comparing two things together and one of them seems decidedly inferior to the other.

Thus, you would say that Ghaziabad is an upcoming city but it doesn’t measure upto Noida in terms of roads and infrastructure or, the new IITs do not measure up to the older ones in terms of facilities, infrastructure or even the student quality.

Similarly, you would say Maruti Alto is a good small car but it doesn’t measure upto Hyundai Santro in terms of driving comfort.

The idea is to compare two things and one of them is clearly inferior, falling short of the other in some way.

Some more examples:

1. The new manager’s performance doesn’t measure upto that of his predecessors. You can be sure that he would be fired soon.
2. The son of the local politician became the MP with a lot of fanfare but his skills and maturity did not measure up to those of his father. Soon, he was embroiled into many controversies and had to resign after his name figured in a major scam.
3. Madhur Bhandarkar created a lot of hype around his movie, “Heroine”, however, the box office performance did not measure up to the expectations.
4. Your performance does not measure up to the expectations everyone had of you.
5. The party made a lot of promises during election but failed to fulfill most of them. It should come as no surprise that their performance in the recent elections has not been able to measure up to their performance in the last election.