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

But "fry off" means to fry something for the correct time and temperature to remove liquid or fat? Not just to fry something.
And "needs sorted" is Scottish, NI and Pittsburgh English.

Crikey I need to get out more ! I have never heard these expressions 😳

We were doing “bits” when I was a student in the 1980s. When we got to the end of the week and had no money for food (weekends were for drinking) we would empty the fridge and eat whatever leftovers and bits for tea.

It would feel unnatural for me to say “the bathroom needs to be cleaned” rather than “the bathroom needs cleaned”. I’d have to consciously think about it to add in the “to be”

I probably wouldn’t say “the bathroom needs to be cleaned”, I’d probably say “the bathroom needs cleaning” but someone may well tell me that isn’t correct.

@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 used to say come with at uni 😂 also on my first day I was in formed you can't say I'm going to Asda it's now "Going Asda, come with?" It was London everyone was too busy for complete sentences 🤷‍♀️

The "going in with" is so Jamie Oliver, it's like he's going in to war with the big guns instead of sprinkling a bit of salt.

I see a lot if 'utlize' in my work when they mean 'use'. Also signage for signs. And when did tips become hacks?

Yes, everything is 'ize' or 'ization-ed' now. You aren't burgled, you are burglarized. Just bizarre.

Why is everything followed by out?

Also 'call out' and 'call it out' Tilly Ramsay said it this week. 'I've been called out by a 67 year old man.' he een didn't call her out in the true sense of the phrase, obviously it from sports rules but is used to mean publicly challenging someone who has said or done something wrong or inappropriate.

She just meant that he had insulted her by overstepping and mentioning her weight. So if anything she was calling him out, not the other way around.

Shop local'' is my bugbear

Yes, also 'Eat healthy.' It's healthily. It's just shocking grammar otherwise.

Although 'healthy' is increasingly being replaced in the UK with 'healthful.'

Another Americanism - my son has started saying 'alternate' when he means 'alternative.' Drives me nuts.

There are some contexts in which 'swap out' may have a different meaning to 'swap over'. The computer memory usage is an example. Just 'swap' or 'swap over' has an implication of equivalence, 'swap out' doesn't.
(I'm old enough to remember a glitch in an operating system whereby it was possible for the code which enabled swapping in to get swapped out....whoops.)

In the case of the chips and potatoes, I'd have just asked if I could have potatoes instead of chips.

@FortunesFave

People on MN keep saying "I was pissed because DH was late" and the like.

Pissed? NO YOU WERE PISSED OFF!

I’m with you on this! My teen DD keeps saying it and I always pointedly add the OFF!!

Phrasal verbs are rather low on my list of linguistic irritants.

An awful lot of people say "meet up with" when they could just say "meet" or "see." If I let myself hit the roof every time I heard it, I'd spend an awful lot of time scraping bits of myself off the ceiling.

It would feel unnatural for me to say “the bathroom needs to be cleaned” rather than “the bathroom needs cleaned”. I’d have to consciously think about it to add in the “to be”

Most people would say it needs cleaning.

Scots people say 'I seen' instead of 'I saw' or 'I have seen.'

Same with 'I've went' when it should be 'I went' or 'I've gone' depending on which is most appropriate.

WhiskyXray
Exactly, if you are going to swear, swear properly!

we would empty the fridge and eat whatever leftovers and bits for tea.

So just say leftovers! It’s all what is left over. ‘Bits’ sounds like you’re peeling bits of old lettuce off the bottom of the salad drawer.

@WomanStanleyWoman

‘Change it up’ used to drive me mad in the days when The X-Factor was big.

Tulisa/Rita Ora/token younger judge who gets replaced by a retuning Louis Walsh after one series: ‘Yeah, I do love that song, it’s a classic, but really if you want to stand out on a show like this you need to change it up a bit’.

Where does the ‘it up’ come from?

Change it (meaning the performance) up (used to mean differently)

I honestly can't get annoyed about language changes. Language is fluid and changes with use. It's not a bad thing.

Most people would say it needs cleaning.

Depends where you are.

I'd spend an awful lot of time scraping bits of myself off the ceiling.

Well at least there’d be something for tea

@worriedstar

another one is things being "curated"....e.g. putting ornaments on a mantel piece, organising your wardrobe etc

Oh yes - this can fuck off to the far side of fuck.

I dislike ‘healthful’ as well although I really hate ‘blessed’.

Also treating common courtesy like the use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ as deference. It’s like there’s some sort of competition on as to who can be the rudest.

Having said that, language is constantly evolving as are manners.

On “The bathroom needs cleaned” it’s the clashing of tenses that feels like nails down a blackboard to my brain!

I hear “The bathroom needs…” and my brain is all settled in to hear about a future action, and then I get hit with a past tense - “cleaned”, as if it has already happened!

Suddenly I don’t know if up is down or if cats chase dogs!

'Can I get' ... as opposed to 'Can I have / order' ...
Unreasonably boils my piss

@Ifailed

A swap file is used to create extra virtual memory on a hard disk. Memory in this context is the faster RAM which programs use to store themselves and their data when running. When RAM starts to fill up, the operating system will swap -out the least used parts of RAM to the relatively slower hard drive.

Fuck knows what that has to do with swapping chips for new potatoes.

It's an easy way to identify people who are or have daily contact with IT professionals. (A Shibboleth, if you will).

Swap out - move the unwanted from the RAM onto the HD.
Swap in - bring from the HD into RAM.

So, pretty much a way of saying 'I don't want/need this' and 'I do want/need this'. 'Can we swap out the woolly hat for a sunhat?' means 'get rid of the woolly hat' and 'Swap in the black Converse' means 'Wear Converse instead', it's focusing on the important item - the hat you don't want and the footwear you do in this example.

Back to IT rather than hats or shoes, Swapping Out and In happens when a tab you've left open and unused for ages is held dormant/sleeping until you refresh it I never do this, honest

Techies also buy meals and ask for chips instead of New Potatoes...

Having said that, I feel irritated when Redundancy is seen as a bad thing or an automatic waste/dead wood that needs getting rid of in the interests of efficiency (or as I tend to term it, 'Creating a single point of failure due to managerial myopia'). Creating redundancy is how you try to ensure that you don't have to deal with a catastrophic failure at 8.14 Monday morning.

'Swapping out' carries the implication you may later swap it back in, so I'd be a bit surprised if anyone with proper IT knowledge would use it in the context of replacing an item they didn't want.

Pissed is especially annoying.

When someone says they are “pissed” I hear drunk.

This could get very confusing if they mean annoyed: “When I was driving my car this morning, I was really pissed...” !

“Solve for…” arrrgh you just solve! You don’t solve for…

Pre-book a table is a new annoyance of mine. It’s just book! It was always just book until Covid.