A marriage proposal spoken in office jargon
I have a long-time friend who, after years in fintech, now sometimes speaks this way unironically in non-work situations. I mean, I still think he's a good guy overall but when he recommends the DND party splits up to maximize ROI on a spell rather than just say "let's split up", it does make me cringe.
It's actually a useful device when you like to pull an analogy. Instead of explaining the whole idea, you throw a jargon and everyone constructs the rest in their head and understand it and know how to work with it. The whole point of jargon is to have precise definitions, so it works as a rails and compression for ideas.
Jargon like that in the link makes the message less precise and more meaningless, in my view.
Just simply state what you mean. Let the other person ask questions if they need clarification.
There is no single "just simply" though. All communication is based on an (inherently fallible) estimate of the recipient's mental-state, priorities, and knowledge-base.
For example, "I would like one head of lettuce" is a kind of jargon-lite for "I would like one portion of the fully-grown plant known as lettuce which is found above-ground as a connected unit in nature." Which one leads to a "simpler" exchange will depend on your assumptions about the recipient.
Except that "one head of lettuce" is a widely-known "measure" that most people are going to understand.
Most of this business-speak jargon is incomprehensible to people who haven't heard it before in the workplace. It seems "normal" to people like us here on HN because most of us have interacted with these sorts of business types (or are even one of them), but I would guess that most of the people who know what a head of lettuce represents would have no idea what ROI or noun-form "solve" means.
I never said the marriage satire was normal. (Although, in that fictional world, those two fictional people seem to be surprisingly satisfied with their choices of language.)
Just that "simple" is deceptive, non-universal, and sometimes contradictory.
That's good when you explain something technical to a layman, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about explaining non-technical issue to a technical person using jargon for analogy.
For example you can use P2P to explain how some gossip spread or you can say that your relationship with SO is like UDP recently.
So it's low latency and fast but in some contexts, firewalled?
It's like can't tell if she heard you
How is "like UDP" clearer than just saying that?
It's not clearer, it's deeper. It implies a state and creates an image in the listeners mind. You can throw it casually when explaining something and your audience now has an image in their head so you can explain the actual thing you are after.
Jargons are shortcuts to pre-agreed ideas. Just a tool.
In this case, I assure you it does not add depth, clarity, images. You're just using it as a kind of in-group joke.
I agree: it's absolutely an in-group joke. Maybe not joke, but a cutesy in-group way of expressing something.
Certainly someone who gets it will, well, get it. But in general it seems like a lot of effort in most cases to gauge whether or not the recipient will understand at the level you hope. Even the UDP example could be misunderstood by someone who is well-versed. Unreliable? A good low-level thing to build stuff on top of? These are both plausible meanings, but would convey very different things.
Better to just use clear language.
It means that you are not the intended audience because you know too much or too little about UDP.
Once I had a physicist friend freak out over my use of "exponential" to loosely explain something because he instantly began thinking about edge cases and obviously using "logarithmic" would have been more precise. We were not on the same page with the jargon, but then again I guess it requires social skills too so that you can pick where the analogy starts and ends.
My biggest pet peeve is when people use "exponential" to describe an increase defined by two points (i.e. "Americans are anticipated to consume exponentially more cookies in 2025 than they did in 2024"). Fully meaningless.
I think the udp example is a counterexample personally.
"Hmm udp, so ...unreliable and...hmm...but high throughput?...hm, good to build stuff on top of?"
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, yet I know exactly what udp is.
If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that?
It means that we are not on the same page with that and should not be used. With jargon, audience is everything.
Also, you use it in context. The jargon becomes illustrative for the analogy, not precise definition. After all, human can't have UDP connection.
> If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that?
It's not. Well, if the person you're talking to happens to get the intended meaning immediately, it's a cute in-joke. To me, that's the only real (dubious) benefit.
I mean, if you describe a relationship in terms of a protocol, sure, you're giving an interesting signal about the relationship, but probably not what you intended to say.
> The whole point of jargon is to have precise definitions
Well, not always. Per Webster:
1: the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group
2: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words
It would be great if it were only (1) but I’d often (2)
These are some effects of a jargon but the reason for its existence is precision. You learn it in an institution and then you are on the same page and there's no ambiguity over its meaning. Using jargon with a layperson is useless and could be stupid or pretentious.
> but the reason for its existence is precision
In some cases yes, but the majority of the time jargon is primarily used as a shibboleth to establish group identity, camaraderie, and a sense of exclusivity.
I don't know why is this obsession over jargon. I know the cliche, it's not true at all except when you misuse it. Maybe can be used as part of a fraud or some power move or something like that but its intended use case is a shortcut to predefined ideas. It may have side effects but that doesn't mean that those side effects are the reason to exist.
I am making an empirical statement. The majority of its actual use in life is to achieve social/political ends, not to improve communication. If you want to say the majority of its use is misuse, fine. But the misuse is intentional.
I disagree entirely, jargon use is to help us from keeping defining things so we can move on to the next problem. How do you even use "unsprung weight" or "distributed cache" for social or political ends? Maybe it can be used at some cringe encounter with layperson but that's not at all what jargon is used for.
Something like "distributed cache" is valid jargon. I already conceded that it can be useful. But the majority of it (by raw numbers) is the kind of stuff of the OP is lampooning -- business and office jargon. Of course there is plenty of scientific and mathematical jargon that's legitimate shorthand.
Even there, however, the line blurs. That is, you have terms with legitimate use that were poorly chosen. Sometimes the poor choice is historical accident, but often it's motivated by a desire to sound more impressive and complicated that it is. Something like "applicative functor" might fall into this category.
I absolutely agree that some people use jargon as a gatekeeping device or an in-group detector, and that's lame.
But jargon does have value in communication where you know the person you're talking to understands it at the level you do. Jargon, when used well, can let you be simultaneously more precise and more terse.
Think about times you've sent email or even just chat messages to different professional audiences. You're probably going to use different language when talking to a manager vs. a sales person vs. an engineer. I'm not talking about level of formality; the actual language you use to describe the topic at hand will change. Some of that will be a matter of the level of detail you provide, but some of it will likely include jargon (when you're conversing with someone in the same "group" as you), and you might not even realize it.
Jargon feels like 1 for the ingroup and 2 for the outgroup.
These 1 and 2 are pretty much always apply at the same time.
Wherever 1 or 2 applies just depends on how used you're to the usage of said jargon.
Office jargon in particular fulfills a social signalling role rather than a clear communication role. It's intended to tell upper management: "I'm one of you guys, please look kindly upon me and maybe promote me!" But there's a dynamic similar to that of "U" English vs. "non-U English"[0], as upper management is more likely to say things like "Just get the fucking thing shipped. Our business depends on it."
[0] It turns out that in England, upper-class aspirants are likely to use posher phrases and idioms than actual upper-class people, as the latter are aware of their own and others' social status and have no need for verbal affectations to communicate it. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English
it only works with other white collar people who have heard the same jargon, normal people in the real world just won't understand what you're saying, so it's just bad communication
That's right, with jargons the audience is the key.
Except that with e.g. technical jargon, the audience is important because non-technical people don’t have the training/experience to understand what’s being said.
With office jargon, I understand everything being said, but the majority of it could be stated more simply and clearly without the use of it. This type of jargon is a social signaling tool, not a useful shortcut or simplification (again, most of the time). It’s also harder to parse for non-native speakers of English.
Yeah, and then you sound like a jargoff.
Jargon is everywhere but office jargon is its own sub genre.
For office jargon, it's maybe not a practical matter, but I could see a friend being a little put off by someone speaking in office jargon to them. Office jargon is sort of impersonal by design
IMHO office jargon is just as useful but because it's not technical its harder to adjust.
>Office jargon is sort of impersonal by design
That's one of it's functions. Instead of going over each time that the thing happening isn't personal and shouldn't be taken as such, you can utilize the jargon to keep it clean. After all, it's just a job where everyone tries to play their role to produce something. It hurts much more badly if you confuse the office work for a social interaction and things don't pan out at some point.
Jargon is as much about social signaling as anything else.
Consider Cockney Rhyming Slang, which is intended to be insider-only speech.
Consider the rise and then mass-adoption of Valley Girl.
Yeah and an "artifact" of that "compression" is the "signal" that "you're a dork"
Jargon should be used only with the appropriate audience, obviously.
At least post-mortems are filled with dead carcass.
everyone knows you must maximize spellholder value
It’s your magiciary duty
I’m ded
The swarm takes 5 rightsizing damage.
This makes me want to have someone make a "Consultomancer" as a class just to read the spell descriptions.
There's a whole TTRPG called "Murders & Acquisitions" as a possible option to scratch that itch.
Hah fantastic. I need to use this somewhere.
> maximize spellholder value
This is such a magnificent phrase and I don't think it will ever get enough credit
I think ROI is getting into standard vernacular. I’ve had someone use the term in the bedroom regarding certain positions.
It's all fun and games until they bring out the scrum board
I'm not sure I'm Agile enough for that.
This happens to engineers too, it sucks. I say throughput way too often in casual conversation.
I un-ironically do that too in my personal relationships after many years in start-ups.
Sorry if it's offensive!
I'll cop to using "use case" in real life...
Is ROI pronounced “roy” or “are oh eye”?
Actually it's "uh-voyd youz-ing in so-shul si-tu-a-shuns"
“are oh eye”
"wah"
est mort
Never split the party!
When I proposed to my wife, I met her after a couple of years and didn't know at the time if she was seeing someone. I nudged the conversation towards that topic and once I found out that she isn't, I literally proposed to her in office jargon. I said, "So if the vacancy is still available, can I apply?". She said yes, and we got married eventually but she still isn't too happy about that proposal line.
So, if I get it right... You didn't meet that woman for years. You meet her, subtly ask if she's alone, then propose?
That was bold of you, but even bolder from her to accept.
Safe to assume this is Indian or muslim culture where it’s customary to set up a marriage between acquaintances, no dating as we know it.
We went to university together, had a semi-romantic friendship before as well. I always liked her and I thought she liked me back too but after graduating I was focused on other stuff, wasn't actively looking for a relationship. Hence the gap.
Thanks for your transparence about that gap in your romantic resume. :-)
Yeah, I'm confused by this to. Did they not even date first, or was this how they asked her out?
I think they meant that they'd dated in the past, but hadn't seen each other in many years.
Still bold.
I was about to say I was suprised she ended up as your wife after that.
To be frank: That is among worst possible lines you could've come up with, but glad it still worked out for you XD
Another classic in this genre: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-deep-dive-to-...
in a slightly different vein: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/i-work-from-hom...
> OPERATOR: O.K., Robert, you understand that what you just described isn’t really lunch, right?
> ROBERT: It is lunch. When there are no rules, it is lunch, Cherise!
> OPERATOR: Did you at any point dip the green peppers in the peach yogurt?
> ROBERT: Probably. Sorry.
>dip the green peppers in the peach yogurt
Reminds me of that Bloodhound Gang song
Woof, this one hit a little too close to home
This is great :) Also if anyone else is hitting New Yorker paywalls and can't read this, just disable JavaScript and reload.
Hadn't seen this one before, it's great.
>As 6:30 P.M. rolled around, she felt sick in the pit of her stomach, like when she looked at a sentence that didn’t contain an acronym.
This is incredible. The quality of the writing is on another level, it's not just about throwing corporate jargon but weaving it through a nicely written piece. Thank you for sharing, looking forward to reading more comments from you.
Regards, AA
I'd like to think I minimize the bleedover of corporate/profession-related speech into my daily life, but "orthogonal" and "non-trivial" were just not a standard part of my vocabulary before college. Over a decade later, I find myself saying them a lot.
Ways to say: 1. "that's not what we're talking about" and 2. "this is fucking important you idiot"
are always valuable :D
That sounds more like maths jargon that has bled into office speak (to my delight, but I'm a mathematician).
Those are words I use a lot and I was starting to wonder if I the office jargon was bleeding too much on my personal life. Then I read your comment and realised I started using them after attending a math course at the University. I loved my teacher. Thanks for the memories.
> I'd like to think I minimize the bleedover of corporate/profession-related speech into my daily life, but "orthogonal" and "non-trivial" were just not a standard part of my vocabulary before college. Over a decade later, I find myself saying them a lot.
As a mathematician, both of those terms are common in my technical and, therefore, everyday speech. If it helps, feel free to think of yourself, not as using corporate speech, but as using technical mathematical terms.
That makes me wary. As any mathematician knows, "trivial" means solvable. "Nontrivial" means no one has solved it yet, but no one knows any good reason why it shouldn't be solvable in principle. And "decidedly nontrivial" means no one has a fucking clue whether it's solvable or not; best not try, unless you're Terence Tao or somebody, then... maybe.
So if I were your boss and you came to me casually describing a problem as "nontrivial" I'd be like... "so is the time frame gonna be years or decades?"
That's pretty much exactly what it means in software too? A trivial task is one that you think you know how to do. A nontrivial problem is one which sounds like it should be doable, but you don't immediately know what steps will be required, and until you look into it further it may take anywhere from days to decades.
"Trivial" in software means easy. So "non-trivial" just means not easy. As such whether or not something actually is trivial or not will vary person to person.
The use of "orthogonal" is now common in SCOTUS oral arguments, both from the practitioners and the justices. Not infrequent in the intermediate appellate courts either. I do an imaginary eye roll whenever I hear it in those contexts.
Why? The entire point of a court case is to settle an argument over a specific case or controversy. So if something is orthogonal or tangential (pick your math metaphor), that means something.
That's proper corporate speak, not so much office jargon. One note: to table in the UK means to put it to vote/address, rather than "put it under the rug"
I noticed 'low hanging fruit' here is used differently than I'm used to. Where I've worked it always meant 'a task that is easy to get done'
Not just easy to get done, but has a positive impact greater than you'd expect based on how easy it is to get done.
In Robert's Rules (of Parliament Procedure), which are kind of the "base level" in US corporate politics, "to table" means to "send [back] to committee" in part coming from the idea of physically collecting all the debate notes so far and setting them aside on a table for the committee to collect to take to their next meeting in order to (try to) address concerns.
In Robert's Rules to address something is to "motion" it, with "call to vote" being a common sub-type of a motion to make. (Generally addressed to "the chair" of the meeting, or asking for wider debate from "the floor", so sometimes something might be "chaired" or "floored" to imply a vote/address, but usually "motion".)
The default vote in Robert's Rules is a show of hands or a verbal "aye"/"nay"/"abstain". It takes extra work to motion for a paper or ballot vote. I'm curious if the UK jargon for "table" is as much a difference/switch in that default among UK parliamentary procedure? More paper votes would involve more tables, if that were the case, so that would maybe explain things.
Huh, I'm in the UK and certainly every time one of my workmates has said "to table" something it's meant "let's stop fucking talking about this now"
I have queries and doubts on the proposed union. See attached ticket. Please do the needful.
You joke, but I know an actual couple that has a “family” Jira instance. They have tickets for household todo items like “Paint fence”.
I’m not sure about performance reporting but I think overall velocity has gone down despite their team size growing in recent years. I think the new members aren’t contributing much yet in the way of story points.
I worked with a sysadmin that did this for his kids, and even moved chore assignments around automatically based on grades (which he scraped from some school portal). Get a D and you'll have to do your sister's chores!
I find in this situation that new member onboarding can unfortunately take years
My wife and I use Trello for stuff like this. Though the main use case is as the world's most reliable checklist-syncing program for grocery shopping. The task tracking is also nice
Does that couple also work at the same company as product managers?
Digital list with checkbox is not inherently evil
Ticket includes one (1) proposal of conjugal union. Action this.
Adjacent News Radio Marriage Proposal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-yGUSRdNG4
I was reminded of that when reading, went to look it up on Youtube, clicked share, came back here to see if anyone had left a comment... "search news radio" yep... glance at the query... 'v=y-y...' Yep.
I highly recommend this clip.
Start with the 'Wedding' epic in Jira. Add a few spikes to figure out the details and bring those into the current sprint.
Congratulations! I hate it. You did forget to include my person pet peeve—learnings.
We already have a word for that—lessons.
Mine is performant. People sometimes use it as a synonym for high performance when really it just means working about as well as you would expect it to. It doesn't imply anything especially great.
There has only been one company I've worked for where 'learnings' was used extensively. It was Swedish. Not sure if that is relevant.
This is one of the very few that I'm a little -- a little! -- sympathetic toward. I don't know its origins, but to me, "lessons" can sound kind of harsh, like in the sense of a parent wagging their finger at a child, "I hope you've learned your lesson!" In contrast, "learnings" sounds quite a lot more friendly and less charged.
If you don’t get the joke, you may be a product manager
Here's a classic: https://professionalsuperhero.com
Get a slack channel you two
You mean, they did not book that conference room?
Brilliant! But two phrases I was hoping to see weren't there: "reach out" and "embrace."
That would be subsequent to presenting a clearer ROI case across foreseeable quarters
This is ripe for a Krazam adaptation.
This is one of those Krazam clips I simply must watch again every time someone links to it.
Another is the one about Omega Star (whose team still haven't got their shit together and implemented ISO dates like they said they would!).
Take this offline, you two
After we double click
I recently retired early from a large, F100 valley tech company and there are a few things I miss. But this is definitely something I will never miss!
Jumps off the creativity shark at "will you marry me".
Should be "shall we convince the board of directors of your parent corporation to underwrite a merger deal whereby we unite your corporate assets with mine under a single shelter?
As a modern organization, you may continue to operate under the same branding, if you choose, and the value of your stock shall not be diluted.
And the cost savings and tax benefits cannot be underestimated.
It's funny, but it sounds more like corporate/management speak than office jargon.
Employees, when no managers are present, seldom talk to each other like this. Sometimes, the way we actually speak to each other, would get us fired if someone from management was eavesdropping.
I worked at a place where line employees talked like this to each other all the time. It was maddening. In particular, whenever the word "use" might be used, everybody at this company used the word "leverage" instead. They leveraged a piece of toilet paper to wipe their ass with. Madness! I felt like I was from space, like, am I the only one who sees how silly this is?
But again, this sort of jargon serves a social signalling function. It's metacommunication, not first-order communication. It's intended to suggest "I'm a true and honest member of the business class and should be taken seriously in business affairs."
> It's intended to suggest "I'm a true and honest member of the business class and should be taken seriously in business affairs."
> true and honest
I agree wholeheartedly.
Sounds like a pair of Corporate SEALs! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUtL6IS7wcY
I thought they were going to show this:
That's what first came to mind as well.
For those not familiar / context, NewsRadio, Negotiation, S2E8 1995:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660208/quotes/>
<https://breezewiki.pussthecat.org/newsradio/wiki/Negotiation>
I haven't worked in an office in over three years. I sometimes think I miss it but now I no longer don't.
Solid but could have double-clicked on Excel and Powerpoint more to complete the roadmap.
Lost opportunity to say "Would you accept a merger?" instead of marriage.
here is a more direct proposal to contrast: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3GlKd5DOJLE
See also "Mission Statement" by Weird Al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
> But I’m so sorry, I have a three-thirty.
I assume that means that she doesn't accept the proposal (lit. she has a meeting at 3:30), but don't quite follow how that.
Can someone reach out and break that down for me.
I have no clue either, but I'm feeling this is the point
Solves, asks, learnings.
It was a surprise when I discovered just how much negativity and frustration wells up in me when I see verbs turn into nouns when there are already perfectly serviceable nouns available.
I am motivated to passive aggressively retaliate by turning even more verbs into unnecessary nouns: seeings, helpings, deliverings, discussings, respondings.
Calvin and Hobbes - January 25, 1993 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I like to verb words I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember When "Access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed.
Calvin: Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.
> we can action on our solve
This causes me physical pain.
Nothing about any sales, targets, deadlines, etc.? Not even an Excel or ppt reference? I'm dissapointed!
I imagined Gary as Ira Glass and Cindy as Jen Psaki. I could make it only about halfway before I threw up a little.
It reads like a script from Succession.
Wow, really impactful share! I feel like I got some great take-aways and learnings from this.
We need a similar one for divorce.
I threw up in my mouth a little.
"I had a visceral reaction that was less than favorable"
My girlfriend did the same to me. Still haven't circled back till this day.
No "level set"?? Booo
Reminds me of a George Saunders story, though it's missing the horror element.
oh, I think the horror element is there.
Really? Nobody is getting kicked to death.
GARY: Hey Cindy, remember last week when we were debugging that system design issue?
CINDY: Yeah, we got some pretty elegant solutions out of that sprint.
GARY: Exactly. That got me thinking: our relationship feels like a system that’s not just functional—it’s optimized.
CINDY: Oh? I’d like to hear your use case for that.
GARY: Well, I’ve run some simulations, and the output is consistent. You’re my primary key, Cindy. The stability and scalability of our relationship are off the charts.
CINDY: That’s a strong endorsement, Gary. I’ve been analyzing our feedback loops, and I feel the same way. You’ve really reduced my latency and maximized my throughput.
GARY: So I figured it’s time to push to production. In addition to all the features we’ve developed, I’d like to add one more. (He takes a knee and pulls out a ring.) Cindy, will you marry me?
CINDY: I will, Gary! This takes our architecture to the next level.
GARY: Marriage is a big commit, but I think we’ve got the bandwidth to make it work.
CINDY: Absolutely. But we need to stay agile, especially during our onboarding phase.
GARY: Agreed. I’ll make sure to stay in sync during our sprints.
CINDY: Good. Because I have one non-negotiable: we need to maintain a clean codebase.
GARY: Let’s unpack that.
CINDY: My last relationship had too many tech debts. Every time I tried to refactor, there was pushback. It was impossible to iterate.
GARY: Sounds like a monolithic mess.
CINDY: It was. But with you, it’s different. You’re modular, efficient, and your logic is rock-solid. I just want to make sure we keep things lightweight and maintainable.
GARY: I couldn’t agree more. We’ll keep our dependencies up-to-date and document everything thoroughly.
CINDY: Perfect. Let’s set up a shared repository to start planning our roadmap.
GARY: Done. I’ll draft an RFC tonight so we can align on our deliverables.
CINDY: Great. Just flag me if you hit any blockers.
GARY: Will do. And Cindy? Thank you for being my forever stack overflow.
CINDY: And thank you for being the solution to all my edge cases.
C'mon, don't just paste the content into the comments. The site doesn't have a paywall and from what I can see with a fresh browser window without ad blocker turned on there's no adverts aside from a request for subscriptions / becoming a patron.
It's not the linked article content. It's an even more audience-tailored version that I assume they made up, for our amusement.
Ah, OK, my bad.
That's not the original content on the site
Is "solves" used like that in the wild? Haven't heard that one.
I feel sick, good work - even if I couldn't get to the end.
In my former communist dictatorship country, we had a term for how the party officials spoke.
"Wooden language".
Applies very much to this too.
In the middle ages, all of Europe could hide behind Latin . . .
relevant krazam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAMRukKqQg
Not believable, didn't read "double click"
I think our organisation needs to increase headcount.
Pretty sure discussions like this really take place
See also: A PowerPoint Proposal by Don McMillan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiePuNFXwY
[ Runs off screaming into the woods ]
They're perfect for each other.
That was physically painful to read.
Brilliant.
I give them twelve quarters...
Valuable insight!
I am severely disappointed there is no a single "quick question", though there was a "quick win", which is bad but not as offensively bad.
valuable insight!
hahahaha. so good. so terrible.
[dead]
If I had to listen to this sort of shit on a daily basis I think I'd begin to understand why you all over the water are upset about the prospect of people taking away your big shooty guns.
> why you all over the water are upset about the prospect of people taking away your big shooty guns
All over the water? Ducks. It's the ducks. Ducks are the enemy. Unless we defend ourselves, the ducks will sap us of our natural vital fluids!
I think I could be alone, but one of my biggest office-speak pet peeves is using verbs as nouns.
Like “ask” (I hear this one all the time), “(value) add”, and “solve” (used in this article - I cringed).
I see this a lot on HN too, so again, many others here will obviously not agree. But I’ll intentionally use “request” or “question” over “ask” just in protest.
I know the English language has been using some verbs as nouns for millennia, but there are particular ones (like the ones above) that I mostly hear at the office (or outside the office, but spoken by “office folk”), and it’s definitely an annoy.
EDIT: Turns out I'm not alone. Thanks for the validate.
>and it’s definitely an annoy.
You didn't have to do it to drive the point home, but boy did this do the job.
Or in this generation's words: it's giving annoy
Yeah. It's definitely a fail rather than a win.
insert angry react
> boy
And nouns as interjections.
I think of the interjection "boy" as being some 1930s-1950s movie speak for earnest young people expressing surprise or excitement about something, not office related at all.
>And nouns as interjections.
Nouns?
"Boy" as an interjection, used for emphasis, has been used for over a century.
From Oxford English Dictionary[1]:
>boy: interjection (colloquial, originally U.S.). 1894–
>Expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Frequently used to give emphasis to the following statement.
You also say it as if it were unusual for interjection to be nouns.
Spoiler alert, that's not the case.
God is an obvious example (God is it tiring to see falsehoods online); so is surprise!, and many others.
All of that has nothing to do with office jargon.
[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734
My comment was meant as a joke, given the context. I am familiar with these interjections, even as a non-native anglophone. Sorry for the time you took to write a good reply.
What's there to be sorry about?
It was fun for me to dig in and find out just how long boy as an interjection has been around for (which is, by far, not an obvious thing regardless of whether one speaks English natively or not).
Same goes for trying to think of other nouns which are used as interjections (the Wikipedia article on interjections lists very few, if any, nouns).
So it was fun to think (and write) about.
FWIW, English isn't my first language either — so I hope we both learned something.
By the way, I couldn't find out why or how "boy" came to be used as an interjection — it doesn't readily appear to be a minced oath — like gosh — or a euphemism (like darn). It remains a mystery to me. So familiarity with these interjections doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss or explain :)
(I don't think I'm getting what the joke was even now, but that's beside the point)
Whenever you are about to say “boy”, say “sport” for immediate value add
I find that happens to me too (getting annoyed), but it's a good reminder to introspect when it happens. Clearly, there's nothing objectively wrong with actually using these words in their new meanings-- they're completely serviceable in their new usages, and clear too. There's some degree to which all people get annoyed with language changing and feel a conservative impulse to put a stop to it, but the annoyance with office jargon in particular seems to go beyond that. The source of our annoyance is thus revealed to be something else. I have a feeling it comes back to, like so many things, status games. Someone using new terminology that was just invented is (probably incidentally) asserting some kind of status one-upsmanship over you, demonstrating in passing they are more familiar with cultural norms. I wonder if my annoyance is actually stemming from insecurity that the other person is exactly right-- I am falling behind in the invisible status games. I can either accept my loss, try to adapt to it by using it myself, or remind myself of how little I really care about these status games.
Most of these words seem to be intentionally ineloquent. It's almost as though they were invented or first used by someone who is rich but illiterate. Or that the words were invented specifically to be "accessible" in some way.
Imagine getting a degree in English and then learning as an adult that an "ask" is modern jargon for a request, that a "learning" is a lesson, and an "add" is a differentiator. Business English always seems to involve a narrowing of the lexicon.
I feel like modern office setting gives us unprecedented linguistic situation. On one hand, you want to use complex language to sound official and very important. On the other, most likely your room is full of non-native speakers, so they might not be familiar with particularly uncommon words. This creates a situation where you're looking for words that are, at the same time, simple and fancy.
It just occurred to me that I use "ask" as a noun when talking about development/fundraising in nonprofits. And it's been used that way going back to when I was in high school (1978-1982), at least. (I went to prep school so development was a thing.)
Outside of nonprofit fundraising land, however, ask is a verb. And only a verb.
In a softly held defense of those words, they basically are an escalation level.
If someone asks you for something, it could be something with undefined scope or priority. An "ask" signals "this is official". Same thing with learnings: lesson is personal, learnings means ways things are changing.
Are there dumb business terms, absolutely, but these aren't bad IMO.
So you're saying that "an ask" is "an order" or "a demand", rather than "a request". Why not use those words?
I don't understand what "an ask" means. I don't know what the speaker intended with it, and I wouldn't know how a receiver would understand it.
It's just communicating badly, using words with no fixed shared meaning. Or somebody too afraid to be confrontational to phrase a demand as actually demanded.
And "learnings" is just somebody too lazy to say "lessons learned".
If it actually is stronger than a simple request, I could see saying "an ask" as a way of demanding using softer language. If your boss were to say "I demand ...", everybody is going to say they're a demanding jerk, but if they come to you with "an ask", that could carry the weight of the demand without sounding...demanding.
That said, I've never considered "an ask" to have any stronger meaning than a request. If I hear "an ask", I'm assuming I can push back the same amount I would to any other request.
I don't mind when language changes for a good reason. Maybe we're doing (or have) a new kind of thing and the old description of it was awkward. But changing the meaning or context of an existing word for the sake of _style_ is annoying and ought to be called out because it just adds the potential for utterly pointless confusion.
I think what grates on me the most -- deservedly or not -- is that these particular words only end up being used this way in "business speak". I find business-type people to be profoundly annoying (shallow, surface-level/transactional relationships, etc.). For me, the fact that this is a business-speak phenomenon automatically makes it eye-roll-worthy by association.
These are awful, but the worst one for me is referring to "people" or "employees" as "resources". I feel a sharp surge of irritation every time someone does that.
Absolutely agreed. For me, this goes far beyond incorrect use of language: it's directly dehumanising because the term "resource" primarily describes inanimate objects. Resources are meant to be used, but people should be employed or managed.
In searching for the origin of this usage, I found this blog post[1] which attempts to explain arguments both for and against. But, to me, the arguments it lists under the heading "Why referring to people as resources is okay" are actually stronger arguments against. They're all about making certain management tasks easier by simplifying what's being managed. Unfortunately, this goes past simplification to homogenisation.
I've lost count of the times that I've seen management treat a big set of developers as equivalent resources, free to be reallocated to projects as needed. This approach never factors in how well certain people work together or the disruption caused by splitting up a well-functioning team.
It's not just that people aren't the same as objects; it's that people aren't even the same as each other.
[1] https://www.retaininternational.com/blog/why-are-people-call...
I use to say "colleagues". That should be ok I hope.
I used to work as a scientist in a large research org. I once had the director of HR address an email to us as "Colleagues".
Talk about cringe.
(Colleagues in my world connote someone who might be considered as a research collaborator. Definitely NOT HR bureaucrats.)
I find more "cringe" to not consider HR employees to be worthy of being called colleagues.
How would you have preferred the HR director to address you in the email then?
We have switched over to "bodies."
"Headcount." Even the rest of our bodies are not really required.
I learned that they did this because some though that personell or staff would be too offensive. Same thing happened in Germany, were the English term HR is now more commonly used.
Whowever decided HR being less offensive shouldn't make judgement calls like that at all.
Yes, or "talent"
Or "customers" as "consumers".
Agreed! I've been deliberately substituting "personnel" instead.
It goes the other way too, nouns as verbs, and just as cringy: "you can solution this", "we need to action that".
Both ways come from subtle manipulation of language. "Ask" sounds like a polite word while "request" sounds demanding, so the former gets used even if it's the wrong word class. "Lesson" sounds harsh while a "learning" sounds positive. The word that gets used is whichever frames the speaker or conversation better, making them sound more courteous or cooperative and nudging the recipient towards complying.
And the more unpleasant the idea, the more they pile on the jargon. Once I was at a meeting between a bunch of companies, discussing a move to some common standard, and one guy used five minutes of dense jargon just to say "what's in it for us?"
I'm not convinced though that it's just about sounding polite and positive. Normal english is quite capable of that. Using this odd jargon has a kind of distancing effect, emphasizing that you're just playing your part in the corporation, not acting as an individual human being. I wouldn't be surprised if the most morally questionable actions in corporate America were hashed out with the heaviest jargon, with the perpetrators going home feeling like they personally didn't do anything wrong.
> "request" sounds demanding
I wonder if this is a kind of euphemism treadmill. When the feds demand the records on a user from a service, it's an "access request", as if you could politely say no, I would prefer not to. So connotations from "demand" leak onto "request" over time?
I’m pretty sure this is exactly what’s happening.
Also, I’ve noticed that for some reason more and more people care about the words rather than the intention.
My pet peeve is "utilize" when it means exactly the same thing as "use".
Verbing weirds language.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
Learnings.
Reminds me of Gurgi from Lloyd Alexander's Taran books (The Black Cauldron). Makes me giggle.
I always make that connection too, with just that one word. Not sure why that one in particular, but it's consistent...
This one grinds my gears in particular because there's a common word specifically for that - lessons.
How about nouns as verbs? "The new dashboard will surface potential issues. If we find any ,I will calendar a meeting for the cross-functional group to workshop the list, and task the relevant partner-teams to resolve"
"Surface" has been a verb for a long time, particularly relevant to marine biologists and submariners, although obviously it's just a metaphor in an office setting, like "bubble up" would be.
The others are on firmer ground as probably not good verbs.
_Workshop_ is definitely a verb, as in "workshopping a play". Its meaning in performance arts is different from office use, but they are not too far apart.
What's your opinion of "architect" as a verb? I was in a workshop once wherein the instructor paused everything to beratingly correct someone for 5 minutes on how you can't "architect" something because, he insisted, that word must only ever be a noun.
Design is the right word. Architects design things. Buildings actually. Using the word at all in tech is pretentious.
Eventually someone is going to have to be the first person in tech to be pretentious. ;)
surface as a verb isn't office jargon. Submarines and whales surface.
That's different: in "the whale surfaced," "surfaced" is an intransitive verb with no object. In "the dashboard surfaced potential issues," "surfaced" is a transitive verb with an object. The transitive verb is definitely business jargon.
Or as the proposal finishes up, "we can action on our solve."
To me there are semantic distinctions. If I say there was a request, it's neutral. If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable. If I say there was a question, you know it's just information being sought.
The article here points out the more annoying characteristic, which is using lots of stock phrases that don't contribute meaning over single words.
> “There was an ask.”
This communicates nothing to me other than that the speaker probably is going to continue to annoy me.
same.
and actually A LOT less serious in my mind than a request. If you used request I would think you are really in need of my assistance and I am paying attention. I hear “ask” and I think totally not important and ignorable
> If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable.
That’s the point - it isn’t any of those things. It’s made up by you (nothing personal, waving in general direction) on the spot and is not in any way a part of some imagined shared lingo. It’s all complete and utter meaningless bs that some people like to imagine to be loaded with contextual depth. It’s not.
And just like that, the entire field of linguistics was destroyed.
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Yeah, I'll still just say "large, possibly unreasonable request". :)
(And I've never inferred that distinction anyway -- in all the cases I've heard it, I could've replaced "ask" with "request"/"question", and it would've meant the same thing, especially with any additional context.)
Almost literally every noun in English can be verbed, and verbs can often be nouned.
Totally agree. Before I clicked into these comments I was actually just thinking about the single example that irks me the most is "the understand".
Oh wow, that's a new one. Have you really heard that in conversation?
I'm so sorry.
Not an english native, but I have the same with "win" -> "victory".
Like, "congrats for the win" or "big win".
Well, "win" as a noun is a word from Old English attested before 1150 [1]. And as a word firmly in the language it has its own specific uses in comparison to "victory". It would be silly or pompous to call a win in a sports game a "victory," for example. It would similarly be out of place to call a victory in a battle a win. "Congrats *on the big win" doesn't sound out of place.
[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168
"Team A was victorious" doesn't sound out of place to me (ESL) though. Also pretty sure I've seen victory being used in a sense of "destroying the other team" - but I'm not defending its use.
You deserve an invite to our discord server.
This point come up in every thread about office speak, so rest easy that you are not alone