
Revert is a word that puzzles me, it gets used frequently in business correspondence and I think it gets used incorrectly. I came across a piece in last Saturday’s Irish Times magazine in the ‘What’s Hot / What’s Cold’ section that read ‘Please revert’ - Bizarre misuse of the word, appearing with growing frequency, as in “Please leave a message and I will revert to you on my return”. How do you plan to do that, then?
So the correct dictionary definition for ‘revert’ taken from the compact Oxford English dictionary is:
Revert – verb, (revert to)
1. Return to a previous state, practice or belief
2. Biology, the action of an organism returning to a former or ancestral type
3. The legal right, especially of the original owner, to possess or succeed to property when the present possessor dies or a lease ends
ORIGIN Latin revertere ‘turn back’
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