Grammar

Loop back to me and we'll touch base about this offline.

While teaching at a large bank recently, I started talking about business jargon, and more precisely business buzzwords. I said that for many native-speakers, this sort of language can be incomprehensible, sound pretentious or just sound plain ugly.

In the UK many employees say they feel cut off from management, as they haven’t a clue what management are talking about. [1]. It has got so bad that the government has even sent out a list of ‘forbidden words’ to local councils. [2]

Business jargon - interactive lesson

Like any other jargon, business-specific jargon can of course be very useful, can even lead to more precision, that otherwise would involve long explanations. But what we are talking about here is something different – those trendy expressions which are used perhaps to impress and which Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times has been campaigning against. [3]

One of the students said they don’t know how to differentiate between what we could call legitimate business terminology and meaningless buzzwords. There are several places on the web where you can find lists of these expressions, but we’ll start with those that the BBC find people in Britain hate most. [4]

Buzz expressions

These are quite easily spotted, as they often sound strange, stupid or pretentious.

Exercise 1 - See if you can match these expressions with their meanings. Use the drop down selectors, and then click on 'Check answers'

1.	Blue-sky thinking	a	Looking to the future
2.	Get your ducks in a row	b	To tell everything you know about a particular topic
3.	Brain dump	c	Improve performance by going beyond commonly accepted boundaries
4.	Think outside the box	d	Idealistic or visionary ideas - not always with practical application
5.	Joined-up thinking	e	Have arrangements efficiently ordered
6.	Drill down	f	Get more detail about a particular issue
7.	Push the envelope	g	An overview
8.	The helicopter view	h	Taking into account how things affect each other - not looking at something in isolation
9.	Low-hanging fruit	i	Don't limit your thinking to within your job description; be creative
10.	Going forward	j	The easiest targets

Verbification

This is: "the tendency - usually American - to turn perfectly good nouns into perfectly bad verbs." [5] NB I have used AmE spelling in this section, as this what you are more likely to see.
Note that several simple words can sound better than a single 'verbified' verb. Or you can try using a different word instead. Eg influence instead of impact

Look at these verbs, all relatively recent adaptations of nouns, and at how they are used in context.

Noun	Verb	Example sentence
action	action	could you all action this ASAP?
incentive	incentivize	we need to incentivize the staff
priority	prioritize	you should prioritize your tasks
money	monetize	how can I monetize this blog?
impact	impact	how will this impact the business?
favorite	favorite	this video has been favorited three times
task	task	I've been tasked with bringing coffee to the meeting.
decision	decision	we're decisioning that right now.

Exercise 2 - Now look at these noun constructions. Which noun goes with which construction?

favourites · action · decision · impact · incentive · money · priority · task

1.	put things into order of
2.	be given the of doing something
3.	be added to somebody's list of
4.	make from something
5.	have a(n) on somebody, something
6.	give a(n) to somebody
7.	take / make a
8.	put something into

It's not that all verbification is ugly. I happily use 'Google' as a verb, for example. I probably even talk about accessing a file. And many verbs we now take for granted such as sleep, ship (as in transport) and divorce, started off life as verbs. It's just some sound better than others. And it's also all very subjective.

Leverage - note that this word now has several different meanings

The noun

The action or advantage of using a lever
The power to influence people and get the results you want. It is used a lot in this sense when talking about negotiations [6], and has been for a long time.
a) The use of various financial instruments to increase the potential return of an investment.

b) The amount of debt used to finance a firm's assets

The verb as technical jargon

Using credit, based on the third meaning of the noun - we heard this usage a lot during the financial crisis. [7]

over-leveraged - has borrowed too much money and cannot make payments on the debt
de-leverage - try to get out of debt [8]
leveraged buy-out - to use borrowed money to buy a company [9]

The verb as buzzword

"The grandpappy of nouns turned verbs, 'leverage' is used indiscriminately to describe how a resource can be applied to a particular environment or situation. 'We intend to leverage our investment in IT infrastructure across our business units to drive profits.'" (MBA Watch) [10]

"To utilize a resource. A list of the worst business jargon would, of course, be incomplete without it." (TheOfficeLife) [11]

Some funny buzzwords

And now for some tongue-in-cheek buzzwords I rather like, as they are rather creative. Many of them come from here [12]

Exercise 3 - Try and match the words on the left with their definitions. Click on 'Check answers' when you've finished.

1.	Al Desco	a	to have a largely silent phone.
2.	Brandalism	b	Bullshit you've definitely heard somewhere before.
3.	Conspicuous non-consumption	c	A food product with some claimed health benefit (e.g. tastes great and reduces cholesterol).
4.	Deceptionist	d	the way that libraries, art galleries etc. now have their walls defaced with the logos of their corporate sponsors.
5.	Deja-moo	e	the tendency - usually American - to turn perfectly good nouns into perfectly bad verbs. Eg incentivise, productise, remoting, tasking, visioning.
6.	Latterati	f	Describes any meal eaten at your desk (you have our sympathies if it's dinner).
7.	Multislacking	g	a receptionist whose role is to confuse, intimidate and obstruct rather than facilitate access to those he or she works for.
8.	Nutraceutical	h	to do several different types of very little at once (e.g. watch MTV, eat Doritos and download music).
9.	Serial entrepreneur	i	people who frequent bookstores, but only to use the on-site coffee shops and read the free magazines.
10.	Smirting	j	a type of snobbery based on what an individual chooses not to buy. (e.g. 'we'd never have a satellite dish.')
11.	Text starved	k	A person who starts several (not necessarily successful) business ventures.
12.	Verbification	l	Taking the opportunity to flirt with co-workers while huddled together for an outdoor cigarette break.

Buzzword bingo

Buzzword bingo is a bingo-style game where participants prepare bingo cards with buzzwords and tick them off when they are uttered during an event, such as a meeting or speech. The goal of the game is to tick off a predetermined number of words in a row and then yell "Bingo!" (Wikipedia) [14].

You can see it in action at YouTube. [15]. There are versions available for iPhone and Android (see the Wikpedia article).

Or you can print out cards at Bullshit Bingo [16]

Final thoughts

Where to find them

The most comprehensive collection is probably at TheOfficeLife [11]. I like the author's comments at MBA Watch [10]. Buzzwords 4 lists the funnier ones [12], and there's an index at Wikipedia [13]

Lost causes

As even Barack Obama uses going forward, I'm afraid we're stuck with it now.
Words such as prioritize, and expressions such as paradigm shift have crept into the Business English course books, so unfortunately we're stuck with them too.

One man's meat is another man's poison [17]

In the end this is all very subjective. I don't particularly mind - to grow the company - although others including Kellaway think this verb should be reserved for plants etc. On the other hand I hate - incentivize - while others have no problems with it.

Yesterday's buzzwords are commonplace today

It's worth remembering that words like brainstorm and outsource were probably once considered buzzwords, but seem perfectly normal words to us now.

Links and Sources

BBC News - Workplace jargon 'isolates staff'
The Telegraph - Councils told to ditch meaningless jargon
BBC News - Lucy Kellaway's campaign to ditch 'going forward'
BBC News Magazine - 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate
Buzzwords 4
Wikipedia - Leverage in negotiations
Investopedia - Leverage
Investopedia - Deleverage
Investopedia - Leveraged buyout
MBA Jargon Watch - "Where business jargon goes to die" (very funny comments)
TheOfficeLife - "The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary" (very comprehensive)
Buzzwords 4 - (very creative)
Wikipedia - List of buzzwords
Wikipedia - Buzzword Bingo
YouTube - Buzzword Bingo
Bullshit Bingo - Cards for Buzzword (aka Bullshit) Bingo
Free Dictionary - One man's meat is another man's poison

Answers

- Finding Collocations And Language In Context Using Web Tools
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- Video Lesson - The Long Johns And The Subprime Crisis
This video lesson will be of particular interest to students of Business and Financial English, or just to anyone who likes good satire The US subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 was one of the first indicators of the late-2000s financial crisis, characterized...

- When Is A Phrasal Verb Not A Phrasal Verb?
When it's a 'prepositional verb', apparently. Or - how they moved the goalposts when I wasn't looking. This post started off life as a small peeve in another post, but has now grown into a full-scale rant about how the writers of English...

- Whomwatch #1
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- Random Thoughts On The Subjunctive
I once came across an article at UsingEnglish.com, wondering why we bother to teach inversion. You can speak perfectly good English without ever using it, and it seems to give students a lot of headaches. But the certificate examination boards insist...

Grammar