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Re: London bridges

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:53 am
by Innocent Bystander
"Pique slang" in the context of 15yo girls is completely appropriate (in my experience).

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 6:07 am
by I.D.10-t
Boardroom speak/jargon (or what ever it is called) is the stuff I cannot handle. It mangles the language to obfuscate. The boardrooms should really circle back and touch base with the guy on main street to visualize the way they impacted the zeitgeist.

Poorly used idioms are a close second.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:25 am
by benhall.1
I.D.10-t wrote:Boardroom speak/jargon (or what ever it is called) is the stuff I cannot handle. It mangles the language to obfuscate. The boardrooms should really circle back and touch base with the guy on main street to visualize the way they impacted the zeitgeist.

Poorly used idioms are a close second.
After running all of this up the flagpole to see how it flew, I've been doing a bit of blue sky thinking ...

... that was it. Blue sky. Not a cloud. Nothing of any interest.

Meanwhile, harping back to those idioms ... (I should of taken more notice in English classes.)

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 7:40 am
by Peter Duggan
benhall.1 wrote:(I should of taken more notice in English classes.)
Subtle, Ben! :wink:

My pet hate is 'reaching out'. It's a stupidly annoying way of saying 'contacting to advertise or extract something', where it rather pretends to sound more helpful.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:52 am
by Tunborough
The latest usage to set my teeth on edge is to "socialize [information]," meaning, "to make known to a group." Socializing is something I do at parties, or with a puppy so it doesn't bite when it goes out in public, not something I do at work.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 9:34 am
by Peter Duggan
If we can stretch the discussion of obfuscated jargon to made-up words with presumably more helpful intent, I also particularly detest 'webinar'. Can't say exactly why when there are other equally ugly constructs gaining currency, but... just AARGH!

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:59 am
by benhall.1
Peter Duggan wrote:If we can stretch the discussion of obfuscated jargon to made-up words with presumably more helpful intent, I also particularly detest 'webinar'. Can't say exactly why when there are other equally ugly constructs gaining currency, but... just AARGH!
Oh? That one doesn't bother me at all, for some reason. Unlike the appalling neologism "vlogger". I mean, for heaven's sake! "Blogger" was bad enough! :boggle:

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:26 pm
by I.D.10-t
But "vlogger" has such a wonderful mouthfeel.

Dialogue is another word that seems to have become popular. I know what they are trying to say, but it seems so suitable when the news outlets say someone or something needs to have a dialogue. They mean conversation, but to me dialogue means that two groups or individuals are going to have a scripted conversation strictly for show.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:46 pm
by benhall.1
I.D.10-t wrote:But "vlogger" has such a wonderful mouthfeel.

Dialogue is another word that seems to have become popular. I know what they are trying to say, but it seems so suitable when the news outlets say someone or something needs to have a dialogue. They mean conversation, but to me dialogue means that two groups or individuals are going to have a scripted conversation strictly for show.
In that case, I'm not sure you understand the proper meaning of 'dialogue '.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 3:46 pm
by I.D.10-t
Looked it up, I've only heard it as a "conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie." Not as a conversation to resolve. Learned something new. I am pretty sure they use it as a known though I'll have to listen next time. Thanks for dialoguing with me.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 3:52 pm
by DrPhill
So. Lets off-line this and see if we can surface any solutions....... maybe convert mind-share to market share and maximise stakeholder value.

(We used to play 'bull sh*t bingo' in corporate group-think sessions).

Re: London bridges

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 4:45 pm
by david_h
I have caved in over 'stakeholder'. Using 'to have a stake in' for 'to have something to gain or lose by the turn of events' goes back quite a way. So it's a matter of co-opting 'stakeholder', originally meaning 'one who holds the stakes of a wager', to mean 'one who has a stake in something'.

What tipped the balance was working with people who have English as a second language who had never come across the original meaning and who found alternatives such 'interested parties' obscure. So, moving forward :swear: :swear:, I expect to use it more.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 1:17 am
by DrPhill
david_h wrote:I have caved in over 'stakeholder'. Using 'to have a stake in' for 'to have something to gain or lose by the turn of events' goes back quite a way. So it's a matter of co-opting 'stakeholder', originally meaning 'one who holds the stakes of a wager', to mean 'one who has a stake in something'.

What tipped the balance was working with people who have English as a second language who had never come across the original meaning and who found alternatives such 'interested parties' obscure. So, moving forward :swear: :swear:, I expect to use it more.
Good counter-point. Perhaps it was the over-use at the time that rubbed my back up the wrong way. I always pictured an angry young man with a fence stake (seven of wands in the waite pack?).

As for 'going forward'.... I have, for a long time, judged the usefulness of words by the likelyhood of their opposite. Since none of us are likely to be 'going backward', the phrase 'going forward' is completely useless.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:15 am
by s1m0n
"Stakeholder" is only a mild digression from the venerable expression "to have a stake in [something; originally a wager]". Yeah, it might initially have meant the trustee who held onto the stake rather than the person who owned it, but that's not a huge stretch. Unlike the latinate "interested persons", stakeholder is as anglo-saxon as they come, which is always a plus when you're trying to be concrete.

Re: London bridges

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 2:41 am
by Tor
"Stakeholder" feels like the good old days compared to what's now used in "agile" development. Instead of describing a software bug and how to fix it, now we have to dive into "stories" and "epics" and "grooming", and don't ask me about the meaning of any of that. It's enough to kill the passion of any software developer, so I choose to ignore it and just go on developing and debugging as I always did. That, for some reason, seems to actually produce results.