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

@StormOfSekhmet

Chipsinthewoods, I have heard my Son use it when he has been bleeding a little bit!! If used in the context you are suggesting, it does make sense.

Small mercies I suppose, better than if he was actually bleeding out

@Wroxie

English is not a perfectly logical or efficient language. It never has been and it never will be. People use words differently than you for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they repeat things they hear because they like the way it sounds or it's what their friends say, or because the "correct" thing still sounds wrong or too informal so they try to fancy it up a bit (ask your local police officer about that one) or else it sounds too formal so they try to make it sound friendlier and less rude.

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.

Good grief, it's just a bit of fun moaning about other people, not the end of the world.

I'd like to know when worse and worst swapped meanings - or is it just another one of those words like itch and scratch where the second one has been ditched?

MN and elsewhere is riddled with things like "what's the worse thing you ever saw?"

I want to know when aeroplane become airplane in the UK.

Plate up and fry off are chef/professional kitchen terminologies.

No lay person ever used them or had even heard them, until we all went all obsessed with Masterchef and other foodie programmes in the 90s and noughties and became used to seeing professional chefs using all the jargon.

On that subject I'd like to know when any sort of jelly became a gel.

Well, no. Bleeding out is when someone bleeds to death.
See also Electrocuted to death.

Those ones (not sure if there should be an apostrophe). What's wrong with just 'those'

Bleeding out is when someone bleeds to death.

Same as plating up and frying off. We've all been watching too much telly. In the case of bleeding out, it's too much Grey's Anatomy and Holby City.

It's just regular bleeding to the rest of us.

ER instead of A&E. That's another one that's creeping in.

@HerBigChance

'Station stop' is another when travelling on public transport.

It's a station, or it's a stop. It's not both.

@HerBigChance

I think there is sense to this one (I haven’t RTFT so apols if already mentioned)

Station stop is to differentiate from a stop that’s made because of traffic (or leaves on the line etc if a train)

So ‘our next station stop will be Crewe’ means we might stop for leaves but the next official stop will be Crewe.

And I suppose you could say they don’t say ‘the next station will be Crewe’ because maybe you will pass another station before getting to Crewe

(Other main line stations are available).

I’ve obviously thought about this too much.

Chipsinthewoods, that would be awful!! He does tend to dramatize things!! I'm glad he has never actually bled out 😮

I'm in the "needs cleaned" camp.

I remember seeing a sign in (I think) Morrison's saying something along the lines of "If your bread needs slicing, just ask" and wondering who OK'd something so wrong 🤣🤣

@NewlyGranny

I heard "switch out" in the US and it threw me because it was in an electrical context. The hire Jeep had a faulty power socket so the satnav GPS died and I couldn't charge my phone.

I was advised on the phone to "switch out" the fuse - they meant buy a new one and replace the dodgy one, of course, but I had to have that spelt out to me. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Is Spelt not a type of grain?

I think some of these phrases come originally from needing to be intelligible in loud environments or over crap radio comms, such as in warfare. 'Switch out' is very clear over a radio due to the T sounds, whereas 'replace' can be lost where there's static/interference/noise on the line or in the immediate vicinity due to the sibilance of 'ace'.

The military origins could also be a driver through the need to make sentences as short, quick and to the point as possible; 'Switch out the fuse' is quicker to say than 'You need to go to an automotive supplies shop and ask for a spanglewurzel 22 volt purple fuse and then get a quart inch sprocket detightener and after ensuring the ignition is off, unscrew the quarter inch quantum flux casing, remove the existing spangewurzel 22 purple and replace it with the new one, then retighten the quarter inch flux casing until it will not come loose with vibration from going over uneven terrain, then turn the ignition key away from you and your cellphone should then charge when connected to a USB-C cable and plugged into the charging socket and the GPS system should come back to life when you press the little grey button on the bottom right of the unit'.

The longer list of instructions may be acceptable when dealing with somebody's Grandmother on holiday wondering why 'nothing works and I can't charge my phone', but when it's somebody who desperately needs to get targeting systems working before the Enemy come and do horrible things to them, all they need is 'Switch out the fuse'.

It’s people watching too many American tv shows.

You can only say reach out IF you are a member of The Four Tops. Otherwise it isn't allowed.

American I think. I’ve heard the term ‘swap out’ used for things like changing batteries or changing a brand of something - I don’t think it’s meant as terminology for actually swapping things. I tend to avoid phrases like this as some of the Americanisation of the English language really annoys me. ‘Normality’ becomes ‘normalcy’ - that sort of thing. Also spelling differences - taking the U out of OU words like colour, odour and son on. Sorry - that was a bit of a rant !!

"Lock in" an answer on quiz shows. Rather than just confirming it's their final answer. At work Cover it off rather than cover. carving out time - they are not creating Mount Rushmore

Thank you for the reach out Four Tops flow chart.

“Gifted” is my bugbear. Everything is “gifted” to someone these days. Nobody ever gets given anything any more.

And when did tips become hacks?

My DD went through a phase a while ago of sharing these (mainly beauty) "hacks" with me.
Most were nothing new and stuff I read in Just 17 magazine circa 1993, when they were still called tips!🤣

@drpaddington

My DC's say 'search up', which is something their teachers say at school. What they mean is 'google'!

I have never heard a teacher say 'search it up'; it comes entirely from the students and I've noticed my own DD starting to use it. It is a fascinating neologism, following the pattern of 'look it up' but specifically relating to electronic search engines. I find it very funny that you're correcting them to 'Google', when that particular verb is only a few years older than their phrase.

I can't get wound up about it. Sorry. You might note that OP has spelled 'swap' with an 'a' when until fairly recently the usual UK spelling was 'swop'. Both are correct but rather like squirrels the American usage has come to dominate. I am, however, quite protective of the UK spellings 'learnt', 'spelt', etc, which Americans seem to like to mock online.

Multi-word verbs exist because each particle adds/modifies in some way the original verb (think of "go" cf "go away" etc. They aren't Americanisms- their etymology is from old English/Anglo-Saxon forms which is why you don't tend to find many Latin derived verbs adding particles. (go down= descend etc- the Latinate verb already gives the extra meaning added to the Anglo-Saxon verb by the particle. New ones are formed all the time, and meanings become modified over time.

@Mythologies it isn't American English that has added the preposition particles, they've been there for centuries. Earliest corpus studies show them in very common usage in the 16th century for example.

swap out as said by many, comes from tech-digital and has been around for about as long. As with many linguistic items, its meaning becomes modified over time so I guess it's being used in a more generic "exchange" sense nowadays, though haven't come across it myself.

Fry off as others have said, adds the meaning of "remove from", you fry off meat to get rid of fat usually.

Park up - park at the side of (pavement edge, another car etc)

needs + past participle - regional variant, perfectly OK.

bleed out - to lose all your blood, rather more annoying than "bleeding" I imagine.

reach out to - 3 part multi-word verb, again from Anglo-Saxon origins, an almost, but not quite synonym of "contact" (Latin based verb)

hate on - to hate and act upon that hatred by doing something to the other person, bullying, attacking in the street etc. As opposed to hating them quietly.

meet up with gives the idea that it's a more unusual meeting. It's been planned, maybe after not seeing the other person for a long time.

station stop means the train stops at that station. Not all trains stop at all stations.

@GucciBear, not sure what your problem is with using "I have eaten" v "I ate". Both are perfectly correct in context. It's true that US English favours past simple (I ate) with time expressions that would have British English using the present perfect (I have eaten) but they are both perfectly correct.

pissed - perfectly correct US English for pissed off (as "piss off" is one of those pesky multi-word verbs that people on this thread don't like, surely you're happy with the American version, no?)

There is no "slow creep" of Americanisms into British English- it's actually the other way round. British English is the one that has evolved and been modified since the first settlers went over (taking with them the standard English in use at the time) American English usage is far nearer the original English used back then than the British English in use today. Unfortunately, that doesn't sit well with the anti-American sentiment on MN and elsewhere.

@daimbarsatemydogsbone- except when posters are all criticizing entire nations for their perfectly correct use of their own language, it's not a bit of fun, is it? It is fun to spot those posters' appalling lack of knowledge about the language though, I'll give you that.

@Wroxie, true dat. Handy for spotting who needs to look up Dunning Kruger and Muphry though.

Pockets I'm almost 50 and have never spelled it "swop". Not once! I'm English too.

And what's more Noel Edmund's Multi Coloured Swap Shop was...just that. A swap shop. And that was on telly a long time ago!

My husband is Cornish and you my pedantic English ears gets a lot of prepositions muddled up. He switches 'out' a light for example. Errr no you switch it off!

Someone on another thread identified the etymology as being from tech, where swap out and swap in had specific meanings. (Though I found that stupid as why couldn’t tech just use… swap?)

For the same reason you might say turn left or turn right rather than just turn, or plug in versus unplug, @hotmeatymilk.

@Nesbo

It doesn’t irritate me as much as the construct: “It needs sorted” and the like (instead of “”It needs to be sorted out”. That one seems peculiarly British.

Not among most Britons, I've never heard it though I don't watch wall to wall US shreiking sit coms.