Please revert

[mudskipper]

It's getting worse.

In a meeting this week, the PM not only used the term no fewer than three times, but added a 'back' to it. :tautology

"Waiting for x to revert back".

I bit my tongue.

[aardvark]

I don't think it is just a "Bob-ism" - I see it a lot on correspondance from Solicitors and Accountants. And have done for many years.

eg - I will revert back to you in due course.

Do you get a lot of correspondence from solicitors?

Interesting - I thought it was a bobism that had wriggled its way into common parlance, but maybe revert can mean reply/respond. Revert back has got to be wrong though, shirley?

[mudskipper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/ma...ge-t.html?_r=0

Sticklers who are not already up in arms about this change in meaning will surely bristle at the redundancy of the second sentence: why revert back when you can simply revert?

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.

Guess we're stuck with it. I wonder what the other seven are...?

[Jubber]

I don't think it is just a "Bob-ism" - I see it a lot on correspondance from Solicitors and Accountants. And have done for many years.

eg - I will revert back to you in due course.

Yep - my other half is in the legal profession - correspondence from solicitors is full of it - but I've never heard her or any of her colleagues use it when speaking - I'll ask her.

[cailin maith]

Do you get a lot of correspondence from solicitors?

Actually, yes.

[cailin maith]

Yep - my other half is in the legal profession - correspondence from solicitors is full of it - but I've never heard her or any of her colleagues use it when speaking - I'll ask her.

Same, same - wouldn't use it verbally but it is commonly used.