To ask where this stupid phrase has come from?

[Bluesheep8]

"Swap out"
Why the addition of the word 'out' ?
I was in a restaurant last week and heard someone say "can I swap out the chips for new potatoes?"
The word swap says all that's needed surely? It just makes no sense

One of our managers always says "them ones" and I have to stop myself saying " THOSE ones!"

Swap leans more towards exchanging equally valuable things. In IT, swap out is used more to mean exchanging something that is broken for something that isn't.

I've mostly heard "swap out" used by our hardware people. The context is usually that a piece of hardware gets swapped out for a replacement. However, there is also the context that they're not sure the piece of hardware is actually the thing that is causing an issue. Swapping out the hardware would be part of the diagnostic process and the hardware may very well get swapped in again if it's not found to be the problem.

The one which has driven me mad most recently is "conversate/conversating" with.
Who the Hell thought this was was acceptable?

I recently saw 'normalicy'. Make your mind up, is it normalcy or normality?

Like, I had, like, this relation who, like, asked why people had "to meet up with" other people. She said the word "meet" was enough.

@cuttlefishgame

Same goes for the saying so beloved of tv chefs: 'fry off'.

That's normal chef speak ime, it was used in kitchens I worked in 30 years ago. Let's forgive them that

@MrsRobbieHart this is one of my bugbears too, along with "if you would OF called me" which is even worse!

@ameanstreakamilewide yes!! Rock up can definitely fuck off. It sounds so ridiculous. I have a friend who talks about rocking up to collect her boys from school.

Reach Out is from old Norse

Really? So Scandanavians have commonly been using 'reach out' in place of 'contact' or 'get in touch with' for centuries then? Do you have any evidence of that?

And if that's the case then why has it only appeared in common usage in America in very recent times? Why hasn't it been incorporated into American Engish lexicon since the times of early Norwegian and Swedish settlers?

Besides, regardless of where Americans may have got the phrase from originally, there is no doubt that the British have got it from the Americans. Most of us wouldn't understand 'reach out' in Swedish, Danish or Norwegian if our lives depended on it.

@EileenGC I do hope your younger sibling didn't address a Professor as Dear Mr X. To start with:
Dear Professor X
If the Professor signs off as John with the title just in the email signature the next email is:
Dear John, if I may

Staff, even cross institutionally, go straight in with Dear John, if I may. Then take the cue from how the or of signs off in further correspondence.

Increasingly Profs write to me when using email as "Hi Roses" dropping the formal Dear.

My emails include my title which is Mrs and I have a feminine first name. Therefore there is no need to add my pronouns. The clue is in my title. If I had to, my pronouns would be "I and me".

Just been down a rabbit hole looking for any shred of evidence that 'reach out' meaning to communicate with or make contact was in use in Old Norse. Can't find any.

I did find this though.

www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/who-can-we-blame-for-the-ubiquity-of-the-phrase-reach-out-20170904-gyanwl

Reminds me of when people make up baby names and when told they are not a proper name they say 'yes it is, it's in the bible' or 'it means 'heavenly' in Sanskrit' or whatever.

No it doesn't. There may be a word in the bible / in Sanskrit / in Martian that bears a vague similarity and some letters in common to your made up baby name, but that is not the same thing as actually being an established name with an established meaning. Stop clutching at straws.

Why is everyone so confused about "reach out"? In many cases just "reach" alone wouldn't make sense. You reach "in" to a cupboard. You reach "out" of the car to take your food at the drive through window. The image that "reach out"is meant to convey (whether it's in a Four Tops song or a work email) is to extend your metaphorical arms outside of your normal life or work bubble and take the help you need from the person who is offering it.

This is a completely normal and sensible use of the language. You may prefer something like "call me, text me, email me, send me an instant message, or walk over to my desk if you want to discuss this further" but I think that "reach out" covers that all a bit more efficiently. We're all just trying to get through the day here, this is hardly the problem to worry about.

No one is confused by the term "reach out." It's more that the expression makes a great many people long to put a sledgehammer through the skull of whoever said it.

@YouJustFoldItIn

Reminds me of when people make up baby names and when told they are not a proper name they say 'yes it is, it's in the bible' or 'it means 'heavenly' in Sanskrit' or whatever.

No it doesn't. There may be a word in the bible / in Sanskrit / in Martian that bears a vague similarity and some letters in common to your made up baby name, but that is not the same thing as actually being an established name with an established meaning. Stop clutching at straws.

It's first appearance in a written code of words (not quite a dictionary, again, more of a corpus collection) was in the late 6th century. Though, of course, that was in Latin. The etymology of both the verb and the particle, and the use of them together to mean "contact" is old English via old Norse. The original meaning has of course been modified over the years, and it's recent surge in popularity makes people think it's a total neologism, whereas, really, there are very few of those. Old meanings and words become modified.

Not sure why you're accusing me of lying.

@WhiskyXray

No one is confused by the term "reach out." It's more that the expression makes a great many people long to put a sledgehammer through the skull of whoever said it.

Which is a childish, nasty, and stupid attitude to have. People don't owe you the language you prefer. Their responsibility is to be reasonably polite and to make themselves understood. If they end their email with something like "feel free to reach out if you have any more questions", then they have done that.

If your response to a perfectly normal, common, and clear phrase is to feel violent rage, perhaps therapy is in order.

@YouJustFoldItIn

Reminds me of when people make up baby names and when told they are not a proper name they say 'yes it is, it's in the bible' or 'it means 'heavenly' in Sanskrit' or whatever.

No it doesn't. There may be a word in the bible / in Sanskrit / in Martian that bears a vague similarity and some letters in common to your made up baby name, but that is not the same thing as actually being an established name with an established meaning. Stop clutching at straws.

Except a lot of English people are not familiar enough with other languages and cultures so names that look made up to them, are actual real names. The world isn't English centric, it never was and never will be and it doesn't owe you names that you have heard of.

I'm not talking about names from other cultures. I would not dream of presuming anything about a name given to a child by people with a heritage from another culture or religion I know little or nothing about.

I am talking about people from my own culture.

@Wroxie, you are free to use that language in office e-mail, and your lucky recipients are equally free to judge you accordingly.

@YouJustFoldItIn

Reach Out is from old Norse

Really? So Scandanavians have commonly been using 'reach out' in place of 'contact' or 'get in touch with' for centuries then? Do you have any evidence of that?

And if that's the case then why has it only appeared in common usage in America in very recent times? Why hasn't it been incorporated into American Engish lexicon since the times of early Norwegian and Swedish settlers?

Besides, regardless of where Americans may have got the phrase from originally, there is no doubt that the British have got it from the Americans. Most of us wouldn't understand 'reach out' in Swedish, Danish or Norwegian if our lives depended on it.

Really? So Scandanavians have commonly been using 'reach out' in place of 'contact' or 'get in touch with' for centuries then? Do you have any evidence of that?

I don't know. I don't speak any Scandinavian languages.

And if that's the case then why has it only appeared in common usage in America in very recent times? Why hasn't it been incorporated into American Engish lexicon since the times of early Norwegian and Swedish settlers?

While language structures are inherently linear, language change and development isn't, and there are many theories as to why changes happen, when they happen. (Why an existing but not commonplace item is suddenly everywhere) Even eminent scholars in the field of historic linguists don't always manage to agree on which particular theory (of the 50+ in existence) explains each change. The simplest one in cases like "reach out" is probably Halliday's Functional Theory. There's a lot about the resurgence of archaisms there. (an even more recent example would be the use of synchronous/asynchronous teaching used during lockdown. Not archaic as terms, but certainly not found with any kind of notable frequency until we were all moved online. That would definitely be explained applying Functional Theory.
Again, I don't know much about the language changes taken into America by the Scandinavian settlers. You'd probably need to look at corpus studies in places like Minnesota over time. As I said above, I don't know how much old Norse is present in "modern" Scandinavian languages anyway (I know that Icelandic is the nearest to the original form) so it would depend very much on if the Scandinavian settlers were still using the term in their own language at the time.

Yes, the current popularity in British English I imagine came from its frequency in US English.

No, I imagine we wouldn't (understand "reach out" in Swedish, Danish or Norwegian) In the same way I wouldn't understand a verb in any other language I don't speak. I'm learning Danish on Duolingo but we're still at the "drenge drikker vand" stage.

I think the "swap out" construction is for use when the sentence is focusing on what's happened to the item that's been removed. For example: "Didn't they give you any fries?" "Oh no, I swapped them out."

As others have said, it possibly originated in computers where data removed from memory to a "swap file" in non-volatile/slow storage like a hard disk would be said to have been "swapped out".

I agree there'd be no point in the "out" if you were to say "I swapped out the fries for some new potatoes."

[quote WhiskyXray]@Wroxie, you are free to use that language in office e-mail, and your lucky recipients are equally free to judge you accordingly.[/quote]
Interesting how you assume I'm defending my own writing rather than pointing out your lack of nuance or kindness or good sense. Sorry I wasn't being clear - I am not defending my own writing, I'm pointing out your lack of kindness, nuance, and good sense.

Just because I understand why others might use familiar language and shortcuts that feel polite to them and which reflect the writing they see from others, and that I sympathise with the fact that not everyone enjoys writing or is good at it doesn't mean that I don't enjoy writing or that I'm not good at it. I mean, I'm probably not as good as I think I am, but I do get paid decently for it, and I certainly don't judge the way others write in the way you do because I'm not a complete dick. But not to worry, you've got plenty of company.

Great posts, Wroxie.

I find the outrage at 'reach out', and particularly that stupid flowchart meme, extremely tiresome.

You can bet that if it were 'get in touch' that was the perceivedly American perceived neologism, people would be just as aerated over that. 'Makes my skin crawl.' 'I don't want anyone suggesting I touch them, thank you.' 'Whatever's the matter with plain old "reach out"?' Etc. etc.

At this moment in time . When else would you have a moment?

Wroxie, is kindness really such a sticking point with you? In two posts you have called me a "complete dick" and implied I need psychological intervention.

You are actually missing my whole point. You acknowledge that this phrase gets a lot of people's backs up. It's not the best idea to use it, then, is it, unless you don't care about the effect you're having on your reader?

As I said, write how you like. I only read fiction as a rule so I'm unlikely to be tested to your corporate prose, so we're all good.