Instead of saying ‘we are cutting jobs’, companies will say they are rightsizing, reorganising, adjusting the skills mix.
There are phrases such as loop in, circle back, move the needle, touch base, drill down, holistic, intelligence, pivot, disruptive, growth hacking (just say marketing!), that make me grit my teeth. Why can’t they just speak plainly? And the worse the news, the more the ridiculous jargon is used. And it spreads into other language as well. Swedish often keeps the English word and turns it into a Swedish one.
I found a really annoying example of this type of language today. Reddit is cancelling its popular awards system in September. But instead of using the word ‘cancel’, they use the words evolve and to sunset. Sunset as a VERB! I have never heard that before and I really hope it does not catch on.
Below we have
- empowers (another favourite corporate word that is not really necessary below)
- to evolve (instead of to change)
- to sunset (twice, instead of to cancel)
My pet hates are reach out, double down and clap back. And sunset as a verb??? Ugh! To medal (at the Olympics) was bad enough!
Ooh I forgot about ‘to medal’. And ‘ping me’ makes my hackles rise.