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[personal profile] randomness
I remember when the phrase "at the end of the day"--meaning "in the final analysis", or "when you get down to it"--was a distinctly British phrase. If you heard it being used by someone, they were either British, or they'd picked it up there.

Sometime in the last decade or two, it crossed the Atlantic, and now it's not much of a marker at all, as I hear it in general use in the States.

Anyone else have this memory? Or have a more exact idea of when it might have happened?

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Date: 2009-09-19 01:37 am (UTC)
dpolicar: (Default)
From: [personal profile] dpolicar
I had picked it up by the mid-90s, long before I was being exposed to Britishisms with any regularity.
I know this, because I worked for a startup, and would often respond to it by saying "Yeah, well, at the end of the day it's often tomorrow morning." (By which I meant, the final-analysis consequences of doing X might not be the most important factor.)

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