The word "revert."

[HoundOfTheBasketballs]

I got an email at work a few weeks ago from a contractor. I'd asked him a question and he came back to me and said he'd look into it and then "revert" shortly. It was obvious to me (at that time) that he'd used revert instead of reply. I thought it might be an autocorrect error, or just that he thought the word meant something that it didn't. A week later he emailed me again and used the same word in the same context. Hmmm. I thought. He really doesn't know what that word means.

Since then I've now had two further emails from two different people using the word revert instead of the word respond or reply. I thought I was going mad, or maybe even that I was the stupid one, so I looked up the word revert in a dictionary. Lo and behold, it still means "to regress or go back to a former state" and doesn't mean reply or respond.

So what's going on? Has this word changed its meaning? Has anyone else heard of this? Or have I entered a world where corporate bullshit jargon-speak has finally taken over and we can just use words to mean whatever we want them to now?

I think that "go back to former state" meaning has resulted in it being stretched to the sense of "putting the ball back in the other person's court".

So, you have a document from a contractor - the matter is with you to progress. Then you ask a question, so now the matter is back with the contractor to progress, and when he replies, the "ownership" of the matter reverts to you. I agree it's become a bit of business jargon.

Actually, typing the word "ownership", a thought occurred to me that it might also be related to the legal concept of property reversion legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/reversion. Once the other person answers your question, their responsibility for the matter ends and reverts to you like a property when the tenant leaves.

“revert” meaning “reply” or “get back to” I sstandard usage in legal correspondence and has been since I was training 20 years ago. And I don’t mean amongst people who favour overblown, pompous language peppered with Latin and talking about themselves as “myself”. It is used by people who write crisp, clear and concise letters and documents in Plain English.
So I’d say that yes, it has changed meaning.