Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Corporate lingo and trendy words that should be made obsolete

1. Touch base
2. Utilize (means to find a practical or profitable use for, not a ten-point synonym for use)
3. Robust (not technically wrong, just makes me feel icky)
4. Process (as in, who will process the mailing? An important-sounding word for the banal task of folding, stuffing, and labeling envelopes)
5. Sexy (still belongs in the bedroom or in reference to Hugh Grant in About a Boy or Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, not to the new ad campaign)
6. Google (particularly used by those who just learned of Google or read about its use as a verb in a business magazine, except if they happen to be related to me - then it's charming)
7. Current (nearly always superfluous)
8. State-of-the-art or cutting-edge (whatever that means)
9. not Lingo or Trendy but any words such as Director and Company that are Capitalized Unnecessarily
10. "key" and "impact" (Thanks Professor Larson, for teaching me how vague words such as these deter us from our goal for precision).

P.S. I might, on certain occasions or in certain instances, use the following, but only with a slightly sarcastic edge: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. Just so no one calls me a hypocrite.

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