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For more information and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts this is the Keep your English UP to date podcast from BBCLearningEnglish.com in this week's program, John Ato explores the origin, meaning and use of the phrase fit for purpose.
Are you fit for purpose?
That's a question that seems to be being asked about nearly everything and everyone these days, so you'd better have your answer ready.
This rather prim phrase began life in the field of consumer protection law, characterizing a manufactured product that does what it was designed to do.
The implication for the consumer is that if something isn't fit for purpose, you can take it back and get a refund or a replacement.
The expression was occasionally used metaphorically in British English in the early 21st century, but what really made a wider public aware of it here was the announcement in 2006 by John Reid, the newly appointed British Home Secretary, that his government department was not fit for purpose, meaning that it was no good at doing its job.
That unprecedented criticism hit the headlines and opened the way for the use of fit for purpose in an almost unlimited range of applications.
A recent random search I did turned up buildings, budgets, educational courses, street lights, railway stations, hostels for the homeless, acts of Parliament, cattle sheds, soldiers, soil and wash basins all described as fit for purpose or, more often than not, as not fit for purpose.
So perhaps it's time for you to ask, is my English fit for purpose?
That was the Keep your English up to Date podcast.
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