Sort-of memes that are cracking you up at the moment

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cyclotron3k in reply to @jj72

Box-standard, ffs

[citation needed]

The other most often repeated theory of the derivation is that it is a mispronunciation of 'box standard', the term referring to unmodified goods coming straight from the box. This appears to be a later expression, first recorded in 1983, but is likely to have been around in everyday speech for some years prior to that. If one phrase did influence the other, it is more likely that 'box-standard' is a mispronounced or euphemistic version of 'bog standard'.

Source

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jj72 in reply to @cyclotron3k

Well I’ve been in engineering of one form or another since 1979, and I was told by a senior engineer that the correct term was box-standard back when I was an apprentice, so it’s been around since at least the 70’s. Bog-standard just doesn’t make any sense, anyway.

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gbj_tester in reply to @jj72

I was told by a senior engineer

argumentum ab auctoritate 🙂

I'd take Partridge over any engineer in a lexicographical dispute.
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itsbruce in reply to @jj72

so it’s been around since at least the 70’s

So has bog-standard. It's even possible they were coined separately. Box-standard seems much less commonly used, but all that proves is that more people heard bog-standard, it doesn't prove origin either way.

Bog-standard just doesn’t make any sense, anyway

It might have been a clever and apposite term in the context where it was first used. The way people learn language and the way neologisms spread, most new phrases end up repeated by people who don't understand how they came to acquire their meaning. "Pushing the envelope", for example. I think that's been fading out of use this century as new terms for cutting-edge technical experimentation have emerged, but it was very common pre-millennium and most people who used it had no idea of its origin.

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