Have you heard the words gorno or lolcat? How about the terms exploding arm or colony collapse disease?
New words and phrases are coined every year. Many of them become widely used, and others are quickly forgotten.
Click here to read more about last year’s buzzwords.
Here’s the complete list:
1. leveraging our assets: The ultimate DUH in business. Every company attempts to leverage its assets. It only makes sense that companies put their resources, whether it’s money, location or talent, to best use in order to make a profit?
2. mission-critical: Another sign that too many people in today’s business world have read too many Tom Clancy books. What’s wrong with the word “essential”?
3. conversate: To have a conversation. Created by those who (for some bizarre reason) don’t think “converse” or “talk” are adequate.
4. information touchpoint: Any contact in which information is shared or transferred. Yes, meetings are information touchpoints.
5. synopsize: To condense the details of a boring, two-hour meeting into a briefer - yet still as boring - version.
6. electronify: The process of turning paper-based data into electronic or digital form.
7. price-optimized: Something sold as cheap as possible, particularly a stripped-down version of a previously successful, but expensive product. However, the price-optimized version is likely to have more flash and less substance.
8. targeted completion date: A comforting term that gives the impression a project will be finished by a certain date (but everyone involved knows there’s no chance in hell of it happening).
9. surgerize: To have surgery. “Her face had been surgerized.”
10. relanguage: Term used by $300-an-hour consultants when $1 words, such as reword, rephrase or rewrite, would work just as well. “I think we can relanguage that to be more effective.”
11. computerate: Computer literate. To understand how a computer works. “Are you computerate? Or do you need me to do it for you?”
12. critical path: A list of tasks necessary to complete a project. In project management, it’s the ultimate alibi. If there’s even one delay in the “critical path,” the project will not be completed on time.
13. Professional Learning Community: A school faculty.
Those four buzzwords are among the 13 Most Fun Buzzwords of 2006 as selected by the readers of BuzzWhack.com, home of The Buzzword Dictionary: 1,000 Phrases Translated From Pompous to English.
“Not all buzzwords make you cringe. Some are delightfully colorful, funny and sum up life in today’s workplace,” says John Walston, author of The Buzzword Dictionary and creator of BuzzWhack.com. “And given the way the world’s been going lately, we definitely need something to laugh about.”
Here’s the complete list:
1. blamestorming: A group process where participants analyze a failed project and look for scapegoats other than themselves.
2. Death by Tweakage: When a product or project fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions.
3. BMWs: Bitchers, Moaners and Whiners.
4. clockroaches: Employees who spend most of their day watching the clock - instead of doing their jobs
5. plutoed: To be unceremoniously dumped or relegated to a lower position without an adequate reason or explanation.
6. prairie dogging: A modern office phenomenon. Occurs when workers simultaneously pop their heads up out of their cubicles to see what’s going on.
7. carbon-based error: Error caused by a human, not a computer (which we assume would be a silicon-based error).
8. menoporsche: Male menopause. Symptoms include a sudden lack of energy, crankiness and the overpowering urge to buy a Porsche.
9. adminisphere: The upper levels of management where big, impractical, and counterproductive decisions are made.
10. deja poo: The feeling that you’ve stepped in this bull before.
11. bobbleheading: The mass nod of agreement by participants in a meeting to comments made by the boss even though most have no idea what he/she just said.
12. ringtone rage: The violent response by cube mates after hearing your annoying cell phone ringtone for the 15th time.
13. muffin top: The unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight jeans
