Some Buzzwords words are not irritating, they are tiny works of genius — my top 5 best and worst!
When I ask participants at my workshops ‘give me your worst examples of ’bullsh*t language’ they mainly choose buzzwords — short, catchy, cliched phrases which seem innocuous, but for reasons I will come to, are intensely annoying! Those in the pic above show some of the pet hates among the 677 participants in an online workshop I did for Apolitical in 2022.
But not all succinct and popular phrases are irritating — some are tiny and irreplaceable works of genius.
I’ve become intrigued by a specific sub-group of buzzwords, those which just have two words. They can be descriptions like ‘circle back’ or something more complex like ‘psychological safety’, which Emeritus Professor of Science, Language and Society at Nottingham, Brigitte Nerlich, kindly told me are called ‘lexical compounds’. They compress complex information into two simple words allowing us to communicate difficult concepts in new and useful ways. Sometimes, almost miraculously, they create new understanding and open up conversations which didn’t happen before the phrase was invented.
The term Coercive control, for me, is at this genius end of the spectrum. It brilliantly encapsulates a complex pattern of behaviours — according to the charity Women’s Aid — “an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. This controlling behaviour is designed to make a person dependent by isolating them from support, exploiting them, depriving them of independence and regulating their everyday behaviour.”
These behaviours are now punishable by law, even without the presence of violence in a relationship. The articulation of the complexity of the issues in this one compelling term, helped provide the essential clarity the law needed to make this behaviour illegal.
Others are less compelling! Most of the very irritating ones are two words, but without the real richness of meaning of the compound. ‘Circle back’ was the most hated phrase by participants at my Bullsh*t Workshop for Apolitical as well as one of Los Angeles Magazine’s most “soul sucking corporate phrases” while CNBC called for it to be banned from offices!
So why is it so annoying? First, perhaps it looks pretentious as in: ‘I want to circle back to my original point.’ Replacing a perfectly decent word — like to come back or refer to — with something unnecessarily fancy is just trying too hard to look interesting. (This is often because what one is saying isn’t interesting, and one feels the need to pimp it up!) Pretentiousness and replacing good words with bad, may also be at the root of the annoyance with other terms suggested by the group, such as ‘unpack’, ‘ping’, ‘golden thread’ and ‘land’.
Used as a brush off, it looks like a sign of insincerity eg: ‘let’s circle back on this’. People anticipate you didn’t get the answer you were looking for, and so there will be no circling back; the issue will never be discussed again. Or that there will be endless circling back, with loads of tortuous meetings until you do get the answer you were looking for or because no-oone really knew what they were doing in the first place. Or no action at all despite the endless circling back because you never wanted to do whatever it was and are too gutless to tell them!
Could pretentious phrases like this be a leading indicator of lying and manipulation? Maybe something to watch out for!
Top 5 genius two word compounds
The best are genuine compounds or descriptions which brilliantly encapsulate layers of meaning and add a useful phrase to the language. My current faves:
- Coercive control
2. Psychological safety
3. Attention economy
4. Institutionalised gaslighting
5. Budgie smuggler (Google it if you are a young person!)
But over-use, or misuse by the insincere or manipulative can turn a perfectly good phrase it into a bullsh*t phrase. Psychological safety and Net Zero are in going that way as more organisations trumpet their supposed intent, but don’t walk the talk. Perhaps it is when they change from being descriptions or aspirations to euphemisms that the damage is done.
Some are not bad, but are tarnished by over-use or just because annoying people you don’t want to sound like seem to use them alot. These are often just two words put together to make something sound more interesting than it is, and yet… against our better judgement we still find them coming out of our mouths or pens!
5 past their sell-by but still tempting
- Sense maker (sorry I know people love that, I hate it!)
- Reach out (so useful and yet…)
- Elevator pitch (perfectly good, but sadly overused)
- Critical enabler (becomes BS when trying to make something not important look important)
- Deep dive (just annoying)
Bottom 5 — just plain bullsh*t
These are top of many people’s bullsh*t list because they are pretentious, meaningless, insincere, or experience has shown they are just a front for inaction. Not many real compounds, just word combos.
- Toxic ….anything. Too many to choose from
- Data driven, (like evidence based, usually aren’t)
- Going forward (just why)
- Circle back (as above)
- Touch base (representing lots of sports or military language, just stop)
The scary 5
These don’t come up in bullsh*t research, but show the power of the two word compound to distract, mislead or make a point. They are often euphemisms to avoid saying something clearly and potentially unpalatable. The intent behind their use is perhaps the most important factor.
They have been invented specifically for malign purposes, or sometimes unconsciously as the user tries to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. Their use can be actively harmful
- Collateral damage — a euphemism designed to dehumanise non-combatants killed or injured during combat, used to reduce the perceived culpability of military leadership in failing to prevent non-combatant casualties
- Value engineering — cost-cutting often used to try to disguise damaging repercussions — as cited in the UK’s Grenfell Tower disaster judicial review
- Right-size /Down-size —makes it easier for the user to blame someone else when they are sacking people.
- China Plague — a Trump special to blame China for Covid-19 and ferment further tension
- Take Back Control — OK it’s three. But this was deliberately crafted by the vote leave team to misdirect the emotional attention of voters in the Brexit referendum, much to our ongoing detriment.
The List
I made a list! Some are compounds others names of organisations, others just buzzwords. All are good/bad in one way or another. Please feel to suggest others, or better categories.
- Coercive control
- Psychological safety
- Attention economy
- Ethics washing, trust washing, green washing
- Budgie smuggler
- Institutionalised gaslighting
- Addiction economy
- Surveillance economy
- Intrusive staring
- Violation Tracker
- Extinction rebellion
- Algorithmic reparation
- Lived experience
- Worried well
- Zombie chargers
- Consequence scanning
- Social learning
- Toxic entrepreneurship
- Hunch culture / Just culture
- Action coalition
- Elevator pitch
- Urban mining
- Cultural over-reach
- Poison carrot
- Surveillance economy
- Emotional shielding
- Collective intelligence
- Regulatory capture
- Collateral damage
- Net Zero / Net Positive
- Conversion therapy
- Climate dread
- Value engineering
- Anticipatory governance
- Right-size/down-size
- China plague
- Sense making
- Change making
- Yoga babble
- Culture war
- Levelling up
- Left behind
- Re-purpose
- Dissonant loss
- Precision Breeding (made up name by gene editing regulator to try and not say the terrifying word Genetically Modified Organism. To much ridicule from scientists and NGOs and the Regulatory Policy Committee.
- The seated aggressor. (Made up by my son to describe our cat who sits in the kitchen chuntering fiercely at magpies but doing nothing about it! )
