Can I just say (for the record)
October 6, 2008
that ‘revert’ does not mean “come back to you at a later date with the answer”.
It means “return to a previous state, practice, topic”.
For example (and this is taken from the Oxford Dictionary of English, second edition, revised):
“He reverted to his native tongue”.
Can we immediately stamp out the vile practice before I’m forced to beat someone to death with the above mentioned dictionary.
Audent's Weblog 
October 8, 2008 at 11:46 am
Completely agree with you.
October 9, 2008 at 7:12 am
Is it too much to ask that they understand the words they use?
And if it is, could we perhaps reintroduce flogging as a form of behavioural modification do you think?
October 9, 2008 at 11:54 am
We’re I am we have a senior management team who keep using the word ‘decant’, when they clearly mean ‘decamp’.
Perhaps they are being lyrical, perhaps they are being halfwits…
October 9, 2008 at 11:56 am
Actually, I meant where not we’re. Sigh, perhaps I am also a halfwit… Just a complaint along the same lines.
Yes, flogging, it is a reasonable solutions
October 12, 2008 at 10:55 am
I worked for years in the world that misused (sorry, ‘reinterpreted’) such gems as paradigm shift, so I shouldn’t be surprised, let alone angry. But I am.
Come the revolution…
October 13, 2008 at 9:10 am
What, do you mean the way ‘paradigm shift’ was reinterpreted to actually mean ‘We have a new product, all the cool people will have them?
I think there is a generation of people who don’t know that ‘paradigm shift’ doesn’t mean ‘something new, kinda like the one you’ve got now, but shinier!’
October 13, 2008 at 9:24 am
Yup. Whereas a paradigm shift is a change that means you can never go back – like “hey, you know if we move the earth from the centre and put the sun there it suddenly all makes sense”.
Not “hey, if we change the colour from beige to grey they’ll buy more PCs!”