Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I used to despair of people beginning their answer to a question with the word "so", but it's established itself now and won't be disappearing - I'd say it originated more in Australia than America though.

The "get go" has been mentioned and it's a phrase I refuse to use, because "start" works well enough for me and is the word I was taught to use to describe the beginning of something.

I'm sure that "back in the day" has been talked about on here before and it's a relatively recent term (80s I think) - I can't ever remember using it and, again, don't see why a simple "in the past" isn't sufficient.

I'm not sure these are Americanisms, but I've only heard them in the last decade or so and, although this probably says more about me than who says them, I find myself turning against the speaker whenever I hear it.

1. "North of" - what's wrong with "more than" and I don't get why the people who use that expression never seem to say "south of" instead of "less than"".
2. When and why did people start saying "speaks to" rather than "(is) about"?
3. "Moving forward", why did "in the future" lose popularity?
Don't we sometimes use the decorative word 'Well' when starting a sentence when others say 'So'?
By the way, I am not a fan of the "I'm good" retort but it will probably be doing the rounds long after I expire.
The word 'nice' used to mean ignorant so it's a waste of time being too Canute-like regarding language.
Early this week I was reading about metathesis i.e. where consonant change places in a word e.g. bird was formally brid, foliage was previously foilage, wasp was previously wæps etc.
Metathesis exists both across and within languages.