‘Revert’ as meaning ‘get back to you’ - is this right?

[TraceyDeacy]

I am hearing ‘revert’ quite often as meaning ‘reply’ and am perplexed as to where it has come from.

I have never heard the word used in English before this year. Etymologically, I thought it might mean ‘turns back’.

Is it really a legal term, though, or is it being incorrectly used?

Eh it was used in legal profession in Ireland in the 1990s🤣. So I am guessing it was in UK also as I worked for a UK/Irish law firm.

"As Alison Waters, a lexicographer at Oxford University Press, told The Indian Express, revert in the sense of "reply" is one of eight contributions from Indian English included in the latest batch of OALD additions. It has spread beyond India, however, cropping up in the English of Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and elsewhere.... Given the established use of revert in several Anglophone countries, often appearing in formal letter writing, it would be unfair to treat the "reply" meaning as simply erroneous."

I always just assumed it was an archaic usage that barristers maintained, but seems it might be an Indian English term that has been adopted by the legal profession.

I can confirm that the use of 'revert' to mean 'reply' is common in SE Asian English.

It’s not “popular only in India”. It’s very common in correspondence between solicitors. Old fashioned, to be sure.

I can confirm this.

I am a massive pedant, currently working in a role where almost all the people I deal with are not fluent English speakers. I use revert all the time because, crucially, Google Translate gets it right in all the languages I can check it (via multilingual colleagues) in. Sometimes clarity matters more than style, though it still makes me wince.

The online dictionary refers to it as Indian English.
I'll stick with how I use it: "We'll go with the current method, and if that doesn't work, we'll revert to our original approach."
I use it as 'return to/go back to'.

I have one rule (well, I have LOADS actually); if it's a perfectly decent word that's been bent like a dog balloon into 'jargon', I don't touch it. As someone else said upthread, it's the 'myself' thing going on. Myself and my dog went out to buy a balloon.

Damn it, jargon! I'm going to bed angry. And you're never supposed to go to bed angry.

"Revert" means "circle back"

Yes. "Revert back" grinds my gears. Using back with the word is tautology and completely unnecessary.

That's a very racist post and wrong. I'm in legal and its used all the time in correspondence of all sorts. As in 'Please revert by 4pm'.

I haven't heard it being used that way OP, that's interesting.

To me revert is 'she reverted to her maiden name after getting divorced '

Another lawyer here who has seen this around for decades- it's not new at all. Tends to be used where people want to indicate that they will be back in touch on the topic, so a very slightly different meaning to "reply" or "respond". After all, why send an email saying "we will reply by 4pm" when the email you're sending is itself a reply? And you don't want to say "respond" because that suggests a substantive response.

So it's not legal language in the sense of being a technical legal word but it is a word that tends to be understood between lawyers in a way that it might not be understood more broadly, and for that reason I'd be more likely to use it to another lawyer than to a client.

It's a mistake to assume that every use of language that you're unfamiliar with is an error or an example of someone wanting to "sound sophisticated".

Don't be daft.

I know it's used by legal types from the UK. I am one of those people. It's still a nonsensical term.

When I see people from outside the UK using this expression it's 100% because they have seen a legal type from the UK using it and they assume it must be correct.

This post is spot on. It’s a slightly different meaning to reply.

I tend to use “get back to you”. As in, “I will look into X and get back to you by EOD.” But my Indian colleagues all use “revert”. As do the American project managery types.

People from different cultural backgrounds using words differently doesn’t make it incorrect.

It's daft to suggest that the word is predominantly used by the poorly educated.

I didn't say poorly educated. You can be a lawyer and still want to appear smarter than you actually are. I don't see this expression being used by anyone who is really smart, because they use better English.

Blimey. I've never heard that before. If someone said they were going to revert to myself in an email, I'd think I'd been dropped into some weird space-time continuum dystopia where a Vodaphone salesman could slide back in time and become me. Horrendous thought.

I worked in a formal business environment (not legal) where 'revert' was used relatively frequently by various directors and senior managers. All very well educated, smart and highly capable people who did not have anything to prove.

I agree with @HorizontalNotVertical that it's a mistake to make assumptions about the use of a word you are unfamiliar with.

I'm not unfamiliar with it. I'm a lawyer. It's not good English.

Some lawyers frequently use poor English and this is one example. It's basically estate agent speak, only for people who have done the LPC.

It's not bad English either, it's all about context.

This is true, but the usage dates back to the early 20C and it’s managing clerk type language, from the days when solicitors firms relied on very able but non qualified staff to run the firm. There was a style of letter writing that most businesses used, not just solicitors and it used this type of formal and frankly pompous style. Banks, for example would write like this; think of Captain Mainwaring dictating a letter in his bank manager role.

It's bonkers
Yes, you are correct. Using it to mean 'get back to me' or 'reply', is incorrect

It's not corporate speak - it's used commonly in commercial exchanges when I'm negotiating a contract with a supplier.
'Please revert by 4pm tomorrow'
And it means you expect them to read the contract and respond with comments, or to go to agreement by that time.

No, it's not common usage in the US.