Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

This week, Martha spoke of a Financial Times article introducing her to the British phrase bog standard, meaning "ordinary or undistinguished from others of its type". The derivation was correctly given as coming from the UK term "bog" for "toilet", and the folk etymology "box standard" was mentioned and dismissed.

It might also help to support the true interpretation if we remember another Briticism, common as muck. That also compares the ordinary to the substance found beneath the outhouse; there's always more of it than anyone could need, not very valuable, etc, and it combines the two meanings of "common", both "standard" and "of low quality". The Brits make fun of us for using "vanilla" this way, and I wonder if part of the reason is that to them it seems to equate food with the after-product of eating.

Another UK term for "ordinary" is common or garden. You'll hear them speak of "common or garden television programmes", to distinguish them from the special, highly-prized sort. The influence here is clearly from nature books, which so often referred to things like snails or daisies by the two alternative adjectives one after the other that "common or garden" has become a fixed phrase for things not commonly found in gardens at all.