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

People who are experts on language would also be bothered about the correct use of your and you're, I would imagine.

Muphry's Law strikes again, a perpetual hazard of Pedants' Corner.

Somewhat irrelevantly, I find the made up Mumsnet word “outing” annoying. An outing is a jolly to the beach.. a trip to the museum.. a mooch round Tesco… it is NOT the act of risking being recognised in the process of posting something outrageous.

Outed is a word, yes. Outing, just no.

And anyway.. I suspect most people using AIBU don’t memorise everyone’s circumstances the way the users of the word “outing” think they do.

I’ve been dying for an excuse to rant about this

The first time I heard "needs must" from my English BIL I really didn't understand what he meant.

I have never heard a Canadian say it. To me it is a very odd combination of words.

[quote MrsMop1964]the weirdest use of 'curated' I've seen recently is to describe a random selection of earrings worn together
www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/curated-ear-trend[/quote]
Misuse of the word curated is rampant at the moment. I saw it in an ad for apartments/condos in a new building and they were said to be "curated." It conjured up visions of "sourcing" apartments from far and wide and piling them one on top of the other.

Given the outrageous prices for home in Vancouver, they just might sell!

‘Swap out’, ‘switch up’, ‘fill out’ - don’t we add something into a form, not remove something? All Americanisms 🤬 And don’t get me bloody started on ‘a big ask’, instead of demanding, challenging, difficult etc! Even British Journalists and News Readers use that one and the English language is supposed to be the tool of their trade FFS!

I'm a shocking pedant but I like some Americanisms - I wish we still had 'gotten' in English English for instance. It sounds as if it should be Anglo-Saxon. And wouldn't it be useful to have a word for a flight of steps up to a front door, like 'Stoop' which must have come from Dutch?

Many of the pet-hates here, however, are like screeching feed-back from a bad sound system. 'Curate', especially, and the fashionista's singular of which the worst for me is 'a jean'.

Here's one that's been getting on my tits, and I've heard it from the mouths of articulate and educated people so it must just be me. The ubiquity of the word 'multiple' used everywhere now when 'many' or 'lots of' or even just 'some' would be perfectly adequate. Why?

Also, one American verbal tic which they can keep is the strange infantilisation os some things. Does anybody in America own a full-grown cat? They only ever talk about 'kitties'.

@AdobeWanKenobi

Oh. Another thread where people can't accept that language evolves is coming then. Marvelous.

It’s not about language evolving, it’s about American culture and version of English, taking over across the world!

@Bideshi Gotten is an old English word. We dropped the ‘ten. Now it’s back because the Americans use it.

@Wroxie “ These prescriptivist language threads are tiring. You're just trying to show that YOU know good English unlike all these other dummies but all you're doing is showing that you have no idea how a language in common usage works.”

You do realise that you don’t have to look at them, let alone read them. If others want to let off steam about being pissed off at the bastardisation of the English language and you don’t, why are you here? Is it just to tell us off?

I am beginning to think that I have lost the battle on this one, but I actually cringe when I hear "exact same."

One thing I wonder about when thinking of differences in spelling between the United States and Britain is why Canada uses the British spellings.

I have spent much of my professional life trying to convince spell checkers that I do not want to replace, for example, "labour" with "labor."

I suppose it could be our membership in the Commonwealth. It could also be that many of Canada's early settlers were Americans fleeing the Revolution as they wanted to remain loyal to the Crown. Many of my ancestors left New England for the maritime provinces of Canada at that time.

Something to research I suppose.

Never heard of it. Only seen swap on its own.

Something that I have been hearing recently as well is ‘I found a park’ instead of ‘I found I parking space/somewhere to park’. I don’t know where it comes from but it pisses me off.

You don’t park your car in a park. A park has trees, grass, benches…. Maybe some swings…. Maybe an early morning yoga class, or even tennis courts and a bowling green.

You park your car in a fucking parking space.

@LoveFall

The first time I heard "needs must" from my English BIL I really didn't understand what he meant.

I have never heard a Canadian say it. To me it is a very odd combination of words.

It comes from the very old proverb 'needs must when the devil drives', and sounds strange to modern ears because 'needs' in this context is a very old adverb form.

"I'm just going to go ahead and..."

Arrrrrgh! It's, "I'm going to..."

Tell you what. Y'all stop saying "I was sat" and we Americans will give up at least two of these things that piss you off. Fair trade.

@LoveFall

I am beginning to think that I have lost the battle on this one, but I actually cringe when I hear "exact same."

One thing I wonder about when thinking of differences in spelling between the United States and Britain is why Canada uses the British spellings.

I have spent much of my professional life trying to convince spell checkers that I do not want to replace, for example, "labour" with "labor."

I suppose it could be our membership in the Commonwealth. It could also be that many of Canada's early settlers were Americans fleeing the Revolution as they wanted to remain loyal to the Crown. Many of my ancestors left New England for the maritime provinces of Canada at that time.

Something to research I suppose.

I think it was the codification of spelling for the first American English dictionaries- Webster possibly, it was decided to omit superfluous letters which had no distinct sound, so added nothing to the word. Presumably that didn't travel up to Canada. (I didn't know they used British English spelling in Canada- interesting language factoid, thank you! )

Y'all stop saying "I was sat"

Most of us don't say that though.

@SenecaFallsRedux

Tell you what. Y'all stop saying "I was sat" and we Americans will give up at least two of these things that piss you off. Fair trade.

Evening @SenecaFallsRedux. Been hoping some of the regular Pedants would turn up. You'll see it's been a long day.

@Bluesheep8 did I mix up you’re and your? Have you never seen someone do that before? I’m intrigued by the fact that you’ve tried to use that as a way to seemingly discredit me. No philologists are much less bothered by grammar stumbles, typos and mistakes. Again much of our language has evolved this way. Nice try though. To be honest with you your post seemed to be about you asserting superiority over others in a pedantic and pernicious way. I find it really silly and very ugly. Perhaps you didn’t mean it in that way. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt - your response doesn’t encourage me though.

[quote AnnieSnap]@Wroxie “ These prescriptivist language threads are tiring. You're just trying to show that YOU know good English unlike all these other dummies but all you're doing is showing that you have no idea how a language in common usage works.”

You do realise that you don’t have to look at them, let alone read them. If others want to let off steam about being pissed off at the bastardisation of the English language and you don’t, why are you here? Is it just to tell us off?[/quote]
The thing is, it isn't the bastardisation of anything.

It's always interesting to see though that prescriptivists never know as much about the language they want to police as they think they do. (Particularly if their only argument is to tell people who disagree with them to leave the thread)

@SenecaFallsRedux

Tell you what. Y'all stop saying "I was sat" and we Americans will give up at least two of these things that piss you off. Fair trade.

I hate “I was sat” too

For free. It's either 'for nothing' or it's 'free.'
Free gift.
Listen up. (Up where?)

I actually heard man order in a coffee shop once:
'Can i get a skinny cap to go?'

@maternitycoat - really should have been "please may I have a skinny cap to go"

@SenecaFallsRedux

Tell you what. Y'all stop saying "I was sat" and we Americans will give up at least two of these things that piss you off. Fair trade.

I used to work with Americans who would pepper me with questions over some of the Oxbridge EFL texts we had to teach, because their idioms and phrasal verbs were just completely different 90% of the time. BrE / AmE differences are real, and it's rather daft getting snotty over them. (My native variety is... neither., so I hate/love all of you.)

Btw, I do wish we had a word like "y'all." Well, there's "yous," but that makes me flinch as much as the ubiquitous "I was sat."