The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary

By Matthew R. Irwin

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Business people, you sound ridiculous.

An entire generation of white-collar workers have decided that it’s fully acceptable to say things like, “We provide a truly bespoke value-add, from concept to the coal face.”

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary was started in 2005 as a place to collect and document these outrageous expressions, which have become so common in the working world. Since launching, the dictionary has grown to become the largest collection of business jargon online. The corporate world is inventing terrible new jargon faster than we can document it, but your support will help us continue this important work.

Features:

- Over 1000 awful bits of business jargon spread out over 100+ pages
- An all new foreword about jargon and life by Matt Irwin, editor of the RBJD
- Actually useful for non-native English speakers who never had to “bell the cat” or “grease the skids” in ESL class

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew R. Irwin
• Release date: Oct 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310365348

Book preview

FOREWORD

Whenever people organize around a common interest, it doesn’t take long before they start speaking in shorthand. Bulky sentences are reduced to quick slang and conversations are peppered with inside jokes and references. Verbs are transformed into nouns and nouns become verbs. And then a curious thing happens—the new language actually speeds up communication and helps members of the group to quickly identify each other. A sense of solidarity and shared experience develops. All well and good, but somewhere along the way the business world took this idea and went straight off the effing rails.

I’ve got a repeating tickler on the Tuesday morning pulse check. When did professionals decide it was OK to talk like this? Perhaps a group of young MBA students overheard their friends in law and medicine and thought, "We should have a special secret language too…"

Part of the blame rests on large corporations, which provide the perfect environment for business jargon to incubate and thrive. Terms move down the chain of command as low-level workers learn to speak like the managers they hope to replace. At the same time, managers use trendy language to appear up-to-date and to mitigate their greatest fear—obsolescence. Vendors adopt the mannerisms of their customers, and consultants try to convey a sense of superior knowledge and savvy to their clients. And right at the start of it all, MBA students quickly realize that mandatory class participation often favors style over substance.

Just as common slang changes, business jargon evolves over time, with words moving in and out of fashion. Every day, the business world comes up with a new English-language abomination and releases it into the wild. Some of the entries in our list rose to prominence recently, but many come from the Office Space era and earlier. If you say things like herding cats and feature creep, you might as well be wearing a wide paisley tie (shiny) and loose fitting button-down (short sleeve) given how 90s you sound.

This Call May be Recorded for Ridiculous Purposes

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary started in 2005 as a place to collect and document the outrageous expressions that have become so common in the working world. I sat through meeting after meeting wondering how it was possible to keep a straight face while saying something like, We provide a truly bespoke value-add, from concept to the coal face. I’ve spotted jargon in respectable newspaper and magazine articles and heard it on podcasts. To this day, I end many conference calls with underlined words in the margins of my meeting notes. Consider this my full disclosure if we ever happen to speak on the phone.

I’m told that our humble list is technically a glossary, but the Ridiculous Business Jargon Glossary just doesn’t have the same ring to it. The collection has grown over the years with thousands of visitors writing in to contribute terms, many of them coming from @company-names.com that you would certainly recognize. The contributors are my eyes and ears in the boardrooms of the world—thanks contributors! Our traffic stats show that terrible business jargon is as much of a problem in London and Sydney as it is in New York.

I Am Not Innocent in This

I have caught myself leveraging, cross-pollinating, and recontextualizing. The thing is, I don’t actually mind some of the more common terms such as out of the box, or brainstorm. Many of these expressions have become so commonplace that they really are the most efficient way to reference a universal concept (try explaining synergy in fewer than 3 words).

But before you rush to enhance your professional speech with the terms in our list, pause to consider the downsides:

You sound completely absurd to all but the mostcorporateof your corporate colleagues.

Your message is guaranteed to lose clarity when you use invented words. Your meaningwillbe lost on someone (who may not have the courtesy to tell you).

Jargon is often used as an attempt to sound more knowledgeable or experienced. You’re probably not fooling anyone.

Did I mention that you sound absurd?

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary has been used as a reference (for better or worse) in a number of ESL Business English courses and has been viewed over 1.5 million times since launching. Our site has been mentioned in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, CBS News, BBC Magazine Monitor, NPR, LinkedIn blog, Mint.com blog, BNET MoneyWatch, The New Zealand Herald, Lifehacker, and others. You can also find our contributions in a business jargon column in the short-lived Project Magazine from Richard Branson.

Please enjoy the list and feel free to submit a term of your own. Our inbox is always open: http://www.theofficelife.com/contact-us.html. Also, don’t forget to follow @jargondujour, where all new dictionary terms appear first in Tweet form. Finally, thank you for purchasing The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary.

May all your diligences be due,

Matt Irwin

June 1, 2014

New York, NY

theOfficeLife.com

A

Above-board [adj.]

Honest and open. I don't think you're being totally above-board with me.

Aces in their places! [exp.]

When someone shouts this out, everyone runs to their station and leverages their core competency.

Acluistic [adj.]

Completely clueless.

Across the piece [exp.]

Affecting an entire project or organization. We're aiming for efficiency improvements across the piece.

Action [v.]

To undertake a given task; to put into practice. Don't bother me while I'm actioning my deliverables.

Action item [n.]

A short term goal that requires a defined measure of work to complete. Basically a dynamic, proactive version of your to do list.

Actionable [adj.]

Originally a legal word referring to anything that affords grounds for a lawsuit. In business speak, it's anything on which action can be taken.

Address [v.]

Used as a replacement for 'do', 'tackle', or 'complete', this word nicely avoids making a commitment to which the speaker can be held accountable. I will address all of your concerns in the upcoming weeks.

Adhocracy [n.]

A minimally structured business where teams are formed as they are needed to address specific problems.

Admin [n.]

Political correctness beat brevity when Secretary became Administrative Assistant. Brevity is back. Get on the horn with my Admin.

Administrivia [n.]

A term