Phase in / phase out
Today I want to tell you about a pair of phrasal verbs, they’re kind of like twins. The words are phase in and phase out. Phase is P-H-A-S-E. New York is going to phase out its old system of MetroCards and in its place the city is going to phase in a new system that lets you pay by phone or a new electronic card. The system, like you heard, is going to take place over a number of years. They won’t just cancel the MetroCard at midnight one day and make everyone use the new system starting at 12:01. They are going to do it gradually, in phases, in stages. So when you cancel or replace something gradually, you phase it out. And when you gradually introduce something new, you phase it in.
The word “phase” by itself means a stage, or a part of a project. If you’re doing a big project at work, it might have two or three phases—two or three big parts. That’s phase just by itself. When you use it as part of the phrasal verb phase out or phase in, you mean you’re retiring something or introducing something in stages, or in parts. And that is how they are going to transition the cards.
When the subway phased out the tokens, they still let you use tokens alongside the MetroCards for a while. Then they accepted tokens but didn’t sell them. And then finally they didn’t accept tokens anymore. They phased it out.
If you live in Europe and if you are of a certain age, you may remember when they phased in the new Euro currency. Prior to the Euro, France had the franc, Germany had the mark, Spain had a peso, Italy had the lire. All these countries that now use the Euro as their currency once had their own national currencies. When the European Union agreed to create a common currency, they decided to phase in the new currency over a long period of time. There was a transition period where both currencies were valid, but over time the old currencies were phased out and they are now no longer accepted.
I was in Europe on the first day of the euro paper currency. The euro had existed before that as an electronic currency, but on January 1, 2002 Europeans all got their first look at the coins and bills that would be their new money. I was in Switzerland for New Year’s Eve. Switzerland is not part of the EU, so they kept their Swiss franc currency. But I took a train early in the morning on January 1 from Lausanne, Switzerland to Munich. And I stepped off that train into a scene of total pandemonium—that means total craziness—as the Germans were first seeing and touching the new bills, figuring out how much they were worth, what kind of change to give, all that. I was very fortunate to have witnessed such a big moment in history firsthand.
So now you know phase in and phase out. I’m not sure how I turned a story about retiring the MetroCard into such a long episode, but I did. I hope you enjoyed it. If you do like and value the show, follow us on your Apple Podcast app or on Spotify or wherever you listen. If you do happen to listen on your iPhone, take a moment to leave a review in Apple Podcasts. The more reviews we get, the more people will be able to discover Plain English. Remember JR and I will be back on Monday with another World Cup special episode. I hope you’ll join us then.
Use realistic expressions like a native speaker
