I used to work with the daughter of a British army officer who drew my attention to the way language from the military makes its way into general business language. Ever sent anything up the line? You see what I mean.
This is obviously bleeding into other areas (pun intended). I noticed a colleague of mine using medical language at a meeting recently. Speaking about a problem in the organisation she said “It is not common but where it presents, it presents acutely”. Can I clarify that we are not talking about the symptoms of a patient in hospital? She was so pleased with this odd expression that she used it several times. She also emphasised that a solution will need to “resolve matters across the piece”. “Across the piece” is very popular in this office and the next time I hear it, I will not be responsible for my actions.
My loving husband points out that “surgical strike” is an expression which combines war and medicine and that, if I am able to work it into my next intervention at a meeting, my successful future is assured.
And your particular office jargon peeve, what might that be? Feel free to share.
LEVERAGING.
Sweet fancy Moses, that one makes me nuts. Any word that is twice as long as the original word drives me insane. What’s wrong with ‘use”?
And while I’m here on my soapbox, even worse than business jargon is business jargon that takes a long word that actually means something different than the intended, replaced word. At my office right now, people (executives!) keep saying ‘simplistic’ when they mean ‘simple,’ not having the slightest clue that it actually means ‘naive, unsophisticated and crude.’
I actually love jargon. Sad but true. I mean real jargon – a word which describes something very specialised and precise, and which non-specialists don’t understand. My recent favourits are ‘camel case’ (where words are smooshed together and then their initial letters capitalised within the new word like WordPress) and ‘breadcrumb trail’ (those little links on deeply nested websites that take you back up through the various levels). Every time I come across these words or phrases they’re like shiny new toys that I want to play with. Which is exactly how they get taken up and abased in general speech. Sorry. I’ll get me coat.
hi town mouse — i just learned that web term, and we call it cookie crumbs at my place of business.
I LOVE ‘camel case.’ i love typography in general, so JARGON with typography, heaven.
sorry, waffley ,didn’t mean to highjack comments.