Certainly we've all heard the phrase, "at the end of the day." However, I am wondering if suddenly it is heating up as a phrase. Have you been hearing it more? I was recently at a conference where two of their plenary speakers used the phrase a number of times - to the point that I began to count how many times. When the first did it, I thought it was just her idiosyncrasy. But the second did the same, even though they were from different universities (Albuquerque and Houston) and speaking on very different subjects. I thought it very strange - and somewhat annoying.

It's become business-speak, up there with 'blue skies thinking' and 'thinking outside of the box'. Essentially it is content-free.

Perhaps the phrase needs a sunset clause. http://legal-dictionary.thefre...ry.com/Sunset+clause

Funny, Geoff! Our boards of nursing deal with those sunset laws all the time.

Are you hearing the phrase more often, too?