"Bandwidth? Sure, it's bad. But come on, folks. People who started using bandwidth to refer to something outside bits per second are now collecting social security. What else have you got? Hit the ground running? Reagan administration. The first term! Leverage. The granddaddy of all corporate jargon. 'What do we want to leverage?' All together now: 'Our synergies!'"
"Circle back. Deep dive. Hard stop. These buzzwords have been around so long that people now use them earnestly. Everyone's claiming to lean in (doing something) while still suggesting that we take things offline (talk later and therefore delay doing anything)."
"Classic buzzword generator: Take a perfectly good word, make it a gerund and then use it as a noun or a verb. We're not deciding stuff; we're decisioning, which sounds like we'd prefer not to decide anything at all. And let's be clear: No one has ever climbed up in their decision tree to decide anything."
Corporate-speak has been mocked since interoffice memorandums, yet outdated buzzwords remain prevalent in modern business communication. The Wall Street Journal surveyed readers about their most hated corporate jargon, revealing that many terms date back decades—'bandwidth' from the computer era, 'hit the ground running' from the Reagan administration, and 'leverage' as the granddaddy of corporate jargon. Alongside these relics, newer buzzwords have emerged, including 'decisioning' and 'decision tree,' created by converting nouns into gerunds. Additional modern terms gaining traction include 'pivoting' and references to different 'spaces,' which continue the tradition of obscuring meaning rather than enhancing clarity in workplace communication.
Read at PR Daily
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