Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 14:50:47 -0230

From: "Philip Hiscock,

MUN Folklore & Language Archive" philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]KEAN.UCS.MUN.CA

Subject: End of the day



Allan Metcalf has asked about the phrase "at the end of the day" which

has achieved some currency in the States lately and which means the

same as "finally" or "after all is said and done." I am in Newfoundland,

in eastern Canada, and I first heard the phrase from a man I used to meet

at local, work-related meetings in the early 1980s -- about 1981, I would

guess. He was in his early fifties at the time and came from the West

of England, from Poole, I think. He had recently emigrated from England

to Canada and I assumed at the time he'd brought it with him. It was

a phrase that stuck out of his speech like a broken thumb; he was an

otherwise careful speaker with some graduate degree, who frequently

used the phrase in what seemed like a fashionable, for-lack-of-a-better-

word kind of way.

I figured at the time it was in current use in Britain and

through the '80s I did notice British politicians using it on the news,

and British scholars using it in their speech. Canadian politicians

and journalists use it now, too.

-Philip Hiscock

philiph[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]kean.ucs.mun.ca