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

Described as awesome!

[quote RosesAndHellebores]@maternitycoat - really should have been "please may I have a skinny cap to go" [/quote]
Please may i have a skinny cap to take away?

Ill let you know when i have spoke to them

@Housewife2010

Yet there also seems to be a trend to drop words, e.g people are now saying "bring it with". What's happened to the "me"?

I don't think 'bring it with' is particularly new.

My exh who is 85 was using that expression since before I met him in 1968, as have his whole family.

It used to drive me mad. I always assumed it was a London thing - he grew up in the east end of London - I've never heard anyone other than his family use it.

How we speaketh changes ov'r time

'Beach ready', 'Autumn ready' . Can't bear them.

Haven't heard 'Christmas ready' yet but am sure it will creep in before the end of November.

looking at many of the examples, they are very descriptive and that is what North Americans seem to do with the English language. where contact would be used - reach out is used, swap out, exchange would be easier

'Oven ready' (when applied to Brexit!)

Reading other forum comments, Americans defensively explain 'swap out' as meaning to replace something permanently, eg. an old car battery that is being replaced by a new car battery, with the old one being discarded. In this case, 'replace' would do just as well.

However, I have seen on car videos where they 'swap out' a dud battery for another one they have in the garage (but not a new one). It's just an idiom, like Australians used to say 'fair dinkum', when 'dinkum' would have sufficed (sadly all Aussie colloquialisms will be replaced by Americanisms within the next 100 years and Australian English will cease to exist).

Swap out (or swap in) is also used when you are just switching components in IT, for example, You can swap out the lower memory in a nicer colleague's computer and stick it in the computer of the person that barks orders at you - or you can swap in the upgraded RAM into the nice person's computer (and the barker gets 4Gb as a reward for their people skills).

The differentiation is from the observer's POV.

No need to be defensive about it - it's not necessarily permanent and it's certainly not guaranteed that the original component is being discarded.

I find the use of "wait on" for "wait" particularly annoying as it has a different meaning.

You may indeed have invented the term "Christmas ready"! Perhaps you should trademark it in case it takes off.

McDonalds already had "Reindeer Ready" a couple of years ago , so they might take umbrage

The phrase that makes me inwardly wince is "Hey Guys / You Guys" to a mixed age/mixed sex group ., if someone comes to our Team Meeting So , hello you guys , I;m Barry from xyz Pharmaceuticals

I am female and on the upper limits of middle age .
I am not , never have been and never will be A Guy .

I bite the inside of my face and eyeroll ( not a pretty sight)

Maybe that won't matter. I remember my dad telling me back in the 90s, that someone once trademarked the name "21st Century Fox", This made the film corporation, 20th Century Fox, quite unhappy, but I believe they ended up making this person a generous offer.