Dot Wordsworth

Are we overusing ‘overhaul’?

iStock 
issue 05 June 2021

Last week, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer were overhauling their stores. Football clubs were madly overhauling teams and we women were overhauling wardrobes, if you can believe what you read in the papers. There was a clear danger of over overhauling.

What do we mean by it? Overhauling implies change. But that sense has only dominated in the past 150 years.

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