Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[kernelbogey]

I just heard on the (shared) Radio3 news 'back in 2018'. 'Back in...' seems to appear increasingly in radio speech - as though we are incapable of recognising that a date refers to a time in the past. I can just about accept it if the reference is to the nineteenth or earlier centuries... but two years ago? It is not only unnecessary, but patronising too.

[cloughie]

I just heard on the (shared) Radio3 news 'back in 2018'. 'Back in...' seems to appear increasingly in radio speech - as though we are incapable of recognising that a date refers to a time in the past. I can just about accept it if the reference is to the nineteenth or earlier centuries... but two years ago? It is not only unnecessary, but patronising too.

Maybe 2020 and Covid makes anything before seem a long long time ago. Back in 2018 we did not have the shared news we now have. Unfortunately this is based on the lower standard of reading on R2. On the examples of 8.00am yesterday and today I suggest some coaching on delivery would not go amiss! It appears that not only do Radio 2 play awful music but standards have slipped compared to before I stopped listening and Fran Godfrey, Fenella Fudge and Deadly Dedicoat read the news.

[kernelbogey]

Maybe 2020 and Covid makes anything before seem a long long time ago.

There is that, I suppose, Cloughie: I could do without the headlines and the Vox Pops in a five minute bulletin, too. But the 'back in' is more pervasive. Just as I was moving rooms, I half-heard Martin Handley say 'back in...' in relation to, I think, a performance of a Maxwell Davies piece - aah, so long ago....

[oddoneout]

I just heard on the (shared) Radio3 news 'back in 2018'. 'Back in...' seems to appear increasingly in radio speech - as though we are incapable of recognising that a date refers to a time in the past. I can just about accept it if the reference is to the nineteenth or earlier centuries... but two years ago? It is not only unnecessary, but patronising too.

"Back in the day" has been around for some time (Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2001) so, coupled with the perception skew mentioned by cloughie, it's perhaps not that surprising that a contracted form crops up in a rather recent time frame.

[Bryn]

"Back in the day" has been around for some time (Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2001) so, coupled with the perception skew mentioned by cloughie, it's perhaps not that surprising that a contracted form crops up in a rather recent time frame.

http://www.backinthedaynetherfield.co.uk/

[kernelbogey]

"Back in the day" has been around for some time (Urban Dictionary has an entry from 2001) so, coupled with the perception skew mentioned by cloughie, it's perhaps not that surprising that a contracted form crops up in a rather recent time frame.

I think that's a slightly different usage, Oddie - a vague harking back wthout a date - from the linguistic trick of making something needlessly over-historic.

But...

[Pulcinella]

For anyone with an attention span of only 15 minutes at best, which seems to be the audience that the BBC is catering for much of the time, anything longer ago than that is presumably way back in prehistory!

[oddoneout]

I think that's a slightly different usage, Oddie - a vague harking back wthout a date - from the linguistic trick of making something needlessly over-historic.

But...

You're right but as is often the way phrases heard get (mis)used as suits folks - but not necessarily as suits those of us who have used it in its original form...

[Nick Armstrong]

the (shared) Radio3 news

Calculated to set my teeth on edge whatever the content, and avoided at all costs.

Basically any programme scheduled to end on the hour has to be promptly switched off after the final chord of whatever, to avoid trailers, news &c.

[Serial_Apologist]

"From the get-go"

I heard actress Kelly MacDonald (I think it was) use this ridiculous expression on the Marred [sic] Show this morning.

When was "from the beginning" not good enough!???

[teamsaint]

"From the get-go"

I heard actress Kelly MacDonald (I think it was) use this ridiculous expression on the Marred [sic] Show this morning.

When was "from the beginning" not good enough!???

Back in the day ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Back in the day ?

[Boilk]

"From the get-go"

When was "from the beginning" not good enough!???

Yes it's annoying, and possibly a compression of "(Get) ready, get set, go!" from the other side of the Pond.

[LMcD]

Last night, the BBC's Simon Jack reported that the proposed European Super League was 'lawyered up', and this morning I read that Covid has resulted in Netflix having a 'lighter content slate' (= fewer new productions).

[kernelbogey]

'Content' is now in vogue with younger folk, and appears to mean any thing available from an onine source - video, music, photos etc.