Leave It Out

Hey, language watchers, have you noticed the new "out"? No, not that one, that's ancient history, by contemporary standards. Nobody cares, any more, whether you're "out" or not. In fact, being out is very "in", as we used to say. No, it seems "out" is being attached to verbs to create, well, what? These are some examples from the radio this week:

To build out ("The important thing is to build out the public housing stock")
To drive out ("My job is to drive out these changes")
To push out ("We need to push out these policies")

My suspicion is that "out" has detached itself from expressions like "to roll out" (as in "make this product available") or "to work out" (as in "systematic exercise") as a signifier of corporate or personal dynamism. An expression like "to build out" has a literal meaning, a metaphorical meaning, and some modishly muscular usages that hover somewhere in between. As well as houses, you can build out your team, your muscles, or your brand.

The trouble is, "out" is already heavily over-booked, verb-wise, and has been doing a lot of useful work for a long time, so I doubt this new trend has much wider application or even much future. I mean, here I am, writing out my blog, whilst eating out a biscuit, which I bought out at the weekend, after driving out to the supermarket, where I shopped out my weekly groceries. Hmm, those don't really work out, do they?

And another thing. The eighth letter of the alphabet: H. Now, I was not exactly brought up in a snobbish or pretentious environment – far from it – but to pronounce that letter as "haitch" was seen as a marker of unlettered ignorance on a par with eating rice pudding with a biro. I was furious when my children came home from primary school having been taught that "haitch" was "correct", because to say "aitch" mean you were dropping your, um, "haitches". Grrr.

Now, I'm aware that certain regions have always used "haitch"; most notably in Ireland. But it seems this pronunciation is gaining ground as simply an unremarkable variation, like northern versus southern vowels. I hear it often now even on BBC Radio 4, whenever the bank "HSBC" or the shop "H&M" are in the news, or even – and this one really grates on my ears – the "NHS", which is to say, most days. I suppose as a signed-up descriptivist I shouldn't mind, but I do. It's probably a class-and-aspiration issue – I hate it when people disadvantage themselves out of smugness – but may also have to do with the rice-and-biro related scoldings I 'ad to endure t' learn me better.