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This is the Keep Your English Up to Date podcast from BBClearning English.com.

In this week's programme, John Aetto explores the origin meaning and use of the phrase,

fit for purpose.

Are you fit for purpose?

That's a question that seems to be being asked

about nearly everything and everyone these days,

so you better have your answer ready.

This rather prim phrase began life in the field of consumer protection law,

characterizing a manufactured product that does what it was designed to do.

The implication for the consumer is that if something isn't fit for purpose, you can take it back and get a refund or a replacement.

The expression was occasionally used metaphorically in British English in the early 21st century, but what really made a wider public aware of it here was the announcement in 2006 by John Reed, the newly appointed British Home Secretary, that his government department was not

fit for purpose, meaning that it was no good at doing its job. That unprecedented criticism hit the headlines and opened the way for

the use of fit-for-purpose in an almost unlimited range of applications.

A recent random search I did turned up buildings, budgets,

educational courses, street lights, railway stations, hostels for the homeless, acts of parliament, cattle sheds,

soldiers, soil and wash basins, all described as fit for purpose.

Or more often than not as not fit for purpose. So perhaps

it's time for you to ask yourself is my English fit for purpose.

That was the Keep Your English Up-to-date podcast.

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