BIY: translation
abbr.
Purchasing the materials required for a repair or renovation that one has hired a tradesperson or other professional to perform. [From the phrase buy-it-yourself.]
Example Citations:China's new middle class tend to buy their new apartments as shells, and then kit them out themselves...It is less DIY, however, than BIY: Buy-it-Yourself. New homes need fitting out from floor to ceiling, a job that only professionals can do.
—Malcolm Moore, " Orient Homes chief Li Fengjiang tools up for China's DIY revolution: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6091955/Orient-Homes-chief-Li-Fengjiang-tools-up-for-Chinas-DIY-revolution.html," The Daily Telegraph, August 27, 2009
The gap between hands-on DIY activities and handing over an entire project to a building contractor is shrinking because consumers are opting for BIY — buy-it-yourself.
—" If DIY is too much work, join the BIY trend to cut costs: http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5736318" (subscription required), Cape Argus, November 20, 2010
Earliest Citation:
BIY is where consumers buy the materials for professionals to fit.
—"According to the Polycell Report, from Reed's Polycell Products, DIY is being replaced by BIY (Buy-it-yourself)," Marketing, April 10, 1987
Notes:The 1950s were a hobbyist's paradise with magazines such as Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics showing the do-it-yourselfer how to build a go-kart for the kids and how to soup up his lawnmower with an actual motor! In fact, the term do-it-yourself didn't enter the language until the early 50s, and the abbreviation DIY (upon which the abbreviation BIY is based) soon followed.(My use of the male pronoun here is intentional; this was mostly a man's world, which is why the term do-it-herselfer: http://wordspy.com/words/do-it-herselfer.asp — a woman who does her own repair and maintenance work — didn't bubble up until the late 1980s.)
Related Words:do-it-herselfer
Ikea effect
MacGyver
Categories:Money
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