I have noticed a lot of native English speakers using the phrasal verb "to dial someone in" a lot lately, and I've been wondering if this was something non-native speakers would have a lot of trouble with.
This one is both a phrasal verb and an expression because traditionally in means "to input a phone number into a phone," or "to add someone to a conference call," however nowadays, the meaning has stretched to mean "to prepare and inform someone extensively." For example, "I want to make sure that my boss is all dialed in for his trip to Europe. If things don't go well because of something I forgot to organize, I could lose my job."
Here is a video with some more examples and further explanation:
<a href="https://youtu.be/N2nVyZ-JlN8">Phrasal Verb - To Dial Someone In</a>
Anyway, I'm just curious if you are a non-native speaker and have encountered this phrasal verb, was it difficult for you to understand in its context? Do you find it frustrating that we do this a lot in English?
I agree with John. The literal reference is to a radio dial, not a telephone dial. In the United States we use both "tuned in" and "dialed in," with "tuned in" being more common.
The original meaning is probably familiar only to old people. In the old days radio was broadcast, and radio receivers were analog. Boston station WBZ, for example, had a frequency of 1030 KHz. In order to receive WBZ, which called itself "radio one-oh-three," you would turn a dial that turned smoothly, with no notches. Instead of a digital display, a pointer would move across a dial. You would turn it until it pointed to the "103" mark, and then twist it back and forth a bit to get it "tuned in" properly.
You couldn't just point it at the "103" mark and leave it at that. It was analog, nothing was exact--and as the tubes warmed up, the settings would "drift" slightly. The position for "tuning in" WBZ would be close to the "103" mark, but not exactly at it.
Anyway, you "tuned" the radio with a "dial;" thus you needed to get the station "tuned in" or "dialed in."
Before a commercial break, an announcer might say "We'll be right back after this message, so don't touch that dial!"
It's not very familiar to me, so I guess the origin is the USA.
I looked up instances of it on this worldwide sentence database https://fraze.it/n_search.jsp?hardm=1&t=0&l=0&p=4&q=dialed+in ;
I checked the first 4 pages and none of the sources were British or Australian.
Let's get this dialed in (meaning to set something up for use exactly as it's needed.)
I never use it with a person as the object, only things with settings or a setup of some sort.
"I am going to dial this in" is something I hear but don't use much and is the same to me.
American English Native here
