When did 'coworkers' replace 'colleagues'?

[HunkyPunk]

Just that, really. 'Colleagues' is a perfectly good word to describe people of either sex with whom you work, isn't it? It seems to have been replaced by 'coworkers' which just makes me think of a herd of fresians milling around a water cooler. Should be 'co-worker' if you must use it, imo.

Yes, I fully agree with you! I think coworkers reads as cow-workers too.

Mooing in agreement

It’s an Americanism isn’t it? I hate it too!

I like co-workers, much easier to spell

On a work related theme when did holiday become annual leave? Is there some legal difference between the two?

At my work we have holiday forms and holiday requests but people say they are on annual leave

When I see co-workers written down I mentally say cow-orkers. I am not a fan of the word.

Why does it matter though?

Oh yes my American friend uses this. So instead of saying “oh I went out for a drink with the girls from work” she’ll say “I went out for a drink with some coworkers”

I find it very odd

@Yaykyay

Why does it matter though?

You know this thread is in Pedants' corner where people discuss the use of language?

No one said it matters, it's a thread for people who find language changes interesting

At my work we have holiday forms and holiday requests but people say they are on annual leave

I think this is fair enough where one needs to be precise about contractual time off. After all, not every day of annual leave is necessarily spent on holiday, and there are bank holidays which might not count as leave in some work contracts.

I assume it is the legal term used in employment contracts: after all employers can grant leave from doing one's job for a number of reasons, eg maternity leave or compassionate leave. Annual leave is just referring to the regular entitlement to take time off written in your employment terms.

@DadDadDad

At my work we have holiday forms and holiday requests but people say they are on annual leave

I think this is fair enough where one needs to be precise about contractual time off. After all, not every day of annual leave is necessarily spent on holiday, and there are bank holidays which might not count as leave in some work contracts.

I assume it is the legal term used in employment contracts: after all employers can grant leave from doing one's job for a number of reasons, eg maternity leave or compassionate leave. Annual leave is just referring to the regular entitlement to take time off written in your employment terms.

Maybe but all the English legislation refers to holiday entitlement and holiday pay, it doesn't imply that employees are actually going away on a holiday

I'd have to double check but I'm almost certain contracts at my work also refer to days holiday per year.

Oh moo too.

I originally read the word as cow-orkers which then led me to thinking of some nightmarish cow/orca hybrid and I've never been able to shake that hideous image.

Americanisms. Sometimes they rock, sometimes one wishes the Pilgrims had stayed bloody put.

Colleagues to me has a feeling of team spirit, unity and working together, whereas co-workers gives the impression that people work alongside one another without any co-operation whatever.

I don't mind "co-worker", partly because the word "colleague" seems to be getting erroneously used more and more now to mean the same thing as "employee". Eg "speak to a colleague if you'd like to know more about our offers".

I believe the annual leave was traditionally used for people in the service industries where they both lived and worked in the same place, so for example a maid in service would be entitled to one day a month leave (normally to visit family) it wouldn't be seen as a holiday as this was something which would only have applied to the wealthy.
Again the term leave was used for soldiers during the Napoleonic war, where they could briefly take leave with the full expectation of returning to their regiment. It's still used in most service industries such as the forces and NHS (again nurses, for example, used to live in accommodation provided by the hospitals, just as troops in the forces lived in barracks provided by the employer, therefore they were physically leaving their 'home')

I meant to add it's were the term AWOL (absent without leave) comes from

IKEA opened a big store in my town when I was in sixth form. A load of people I went to school with got jobs there and they all had to call everyone co-workers. That was about 24 years ago. So I think that’s when it started.

@prettycolours

I don't mind "co-worker", partly because the word "colleague" seems to be getting erroneously used more and more now to mean the same thing as "employee". Eg "speak to a colleague if you'd like to know more about our offers".

That isn't an erroneous use of colleague, though I would have preferred to see "my colleague". You wouldn't say "Speak to an employee" or "Speak to my employee", ever.

I never hear anyone use co-worker, and don't use it myself it's always colleague. And yes, it does look like cow-orker, especially without the hyphen.

At my company (US-based) we now have PTO - paid time off instead of holiday/annula leave. Which is a bit odd to me as I dont think I'm entitled to any unpaid time off.

Used to work for an American company and always had to say “coworkers” or the Americans wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Other colleagues from all over the rest of the world, whose first language wasn’t English, would make sense of whatever words we used. But the Americans I worked with came from a small-town setting and couldn’t contextualise different English words, so we always had to adapt to use words they understood (see also: PTO). So lots of it coming from American companies for last 20-30 years and with American TV added to that, I suppose it becomes prevalent. See also: awesome. A word I clearly remember in 1998 saying I’d never, ever use.

It was popularised over here through the Dilbert strip, which did use cow-orkers.

Don't like "co-worker" at all. Co-worker always sounds like someone ploughing their own furrow - colleague is more working towards same end (to me anyway).

I'd trust a colleague (to a certain extent) but wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with a co-worker - sounds like we're cogs in a machines that can be removed with no impact whatsoever.

When people struggled to understand a complicated word such as "colleague". I despair of all this dumbing down

What I hate more is ‘work colleague’. That’s what colleague means!

I haven't thought about this much before but I do find colleague a difficult word to spell and that is why I might write coworker, however you got me thinking and I wondered if the word colleague has French roots and this led me to an interesting article on the history of the two terms www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/coworker-vs-colleague-difference