[Boofo]

Originally Posted by Tim Skellett

Actually, the very original phrase was a little different:
Arnaud-Armaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, and "spiritual advisor" (i.e. ideologist-in-charge) to the Albigensian Crusade was the person who came up with it. When the crusader army was beseiging Beziers in France in 1209, and the "heretics" numbered only a small proportion of the beseiged town's population, someone asked Arnaud-Armaury how then they should sort out the townfolk, to which he replied,
"Kill them all. God will know his own."
(which they did, slaughtering almost everyone in town, over 20,000; the number of actual heretics was only round 200 or less, which meant 19, 800 were Officially Innocent, which didn't help them much).
_______________

So I would say you are completely free to say "sort 'em out" or "sort it out", whichever you prefer.

You know? I wish I had had that explanation given to me when I was waist-dep in mud in the tenches and trying to figure out what was the right way to say it. Thank you for that. :cross-eyed: