I’ve had it with all the technobabble, jargon and hackneyed idioms out there. Here are some choice words and phrases that I’d love to hear a bit less.
If you have any terms that you’d like to add, Tweet me at @stopsaying. If I like them, I’ll add them to the stream below.
- Your product is a competition "killer." That's one attack that always backfires. See Microsoft.
- "gay" as is if the word means lame. Swap the word out with a word that describes you and see if you get offended. Get it?
- “…at this point in time” – “now” is an good substitute (thanks @ paul)
- "next generation" - should only be used with engineers, Star Trek or when talking to engineers about Star Trek.
- "turnkey" solutions - really, so it's prefab? do i at least get my choice of color in vinyl siding?
- "end to end" process management - so this isn't middle management? definitely clears things up, thanks.
- "replicate" - food replicators are what they had on Star Trek (thanks @ Aaron)
- refudiate - i'll let jimmy kimmel handle this one http://ow.ly/2eFn5
- "sexy" when referring to gadgets (thanks @kpm_8080)
- utilize - really? are you a robot? do you always talk like C3P0?
- your product leverages something else unless you're Wille E. Coyote and you're planning to drop a boulder on the Road Runner.
- you're going to revolutionize a product category, unless you're taking your competition by siege.
- how your business is going to exploit an ecosystem. We know how that turned out for BP. Not a good plan.
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I’d submit “replicate” – food replicators are what they had on Star Trek.
“…at this point in time” – “now” is an good substitute
The bottom line is…-Ummm, weren’t we having a discussion here?
How about “Gay” referring to things one generally dislikes.
So you are saying it is homosexual? Or very happy? I don’t get it.
I can’t believe I missed this! Thank you so much for adding this to comments.
Oddly, someone just misused this word in a comment on another thread this morning. I corrected his word choice not so gently and told him to have a nice day. It just blows me away that people continue to misuse this word, 15 years or so after it’s popularity flamed out. (pun totally intended)
please stop “circle back”
‘Right Now’ as in ‘I’m really upset right now’. I cannot stand it – Americans use it far too much, and the tone of the sentence always sounds like a question – aargh!