Words I'd like to ban in 2004

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Garrett Serack — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:08:00 GMT

I've never been exposed to the "ask" as a noun, but I'll certainly agree with you right there!

I can't imagine a more irritating use of language than that.

I'm thinking that I'd actually be tempted to give a lesson in english if someone attempted to use that in a conversation with me :)

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:09:00 GMT

I think you should also ban any use of Nouns as Verbs. It's getting cheesy now.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

John Stovin — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:13:00 GMT

As an British English speaker, one of my pet peeves is the use of "leverage" as a verb. Its a noun - the force you apply with a lever. There is a perfectly good verb "to lever" which covers the managementspeak usage perfectly well.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

don kackman — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:32:00 GMT

I couldn't agree more.

The one that get's me is: incent, which is apparently some wacko derivation of incentive.

We're doing such and such in order to "incent" out staff to do such and such.

I've even heard incentavize.

People with MBA should not be allowed to coin words or phrases!

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Ed Kaim — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:39:00 GMT

I agree about "ask". "Ask" is ofen promoted as a term to use in negotiations because it shows more respect than terms like "demands", such as "what are your demands?" A better term to use is "interest", because that's what people should really be negotiating towards. asking someone "what are your interests?" has less of a zero-sum connotation and helps move towards a mutually beneficial agreement.

"Leverage" has become a verb based on its usage as a financial term describing using borrowed money to generate money. The idea is that you have existing assets (that don't belong to you) that help you support a new venture. Unfortunately, most people (myself included) use it to describe any scenario where you use an asset, regardless of ownership, to promote something else.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Bill Baldwin — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:42:00 GMT

I agree with the sentiment, but keep in mind that most modern dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive - i.e, they are attempting to describe the language as it is used rather than tell people what is correct usage.

So, 1) looking to (most) dictionaries for correct usage isn't really sound, and 2) if people keep using "ask" as a noun, it will end up in those dictionaries sooner or later...

Stop drilling now

geraldH — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 15:55:00 GMT

"Drill down" is quite a horrible term as well. What happened to "in-depth"? And if it has to be a verb, how about using "focus"?

Instead of people concentrating and focusing, there's a lot of drilling down going on.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Mike Dunn — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:11:00 GMT

I hate how the word "estimate" is used in development. When your boss asks for an estimate on how long it'll take to do feature X, he doesn't want an estimate, he wants a commitment to a specific amount of time.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

irf — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:18:00 GMT

Right on! I wanted to barf the first time I heard someone use "best of breed", and it's just gotten worse from there.

What is it about MBA's/management consultants that makes them feel like they have to invent words for age-old concepts anyway? I suspect they think it makes them sound more "on the ball," though to me it just makes them sound like drones incapable of an original thought.

By the way, I'm actually surprised that this stuff has infiltrated even Microsoft; I'd have expected Msft to be pretty resistant to this sort of stuff.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:40:00 GMT

"think out of the box" drives me crazy!

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Scott — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:44:00 GMT

I think my key ask when I read this was, "Is this a best-of-leading blog?" The answer, of course, was "yes". Raymond continues to leverage countless years of experience, with .Text providing the infostructure, to provide a more robust, and scaleable blog.

Yes, I've actually heard infostructure before.

We used to play at a game a failed startup. We had a client and a VP that used buzzwords exclusively. So we occasionally made up some just to see if we could get them to use them in a meeting or in a document. If they did, the winner got his/her first drink paid for when we went out. "factualize" was a nice one. "We need to factualize our design goals." We caught them using "redenormalize" once too. I don't remember how one guy used "readylate" but I remember the president of the company using it in a stockholders meeting.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

MilesArcher — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 16:47:00 GMT

R,

You can verb any noun. The only problem I have when someone tries to replace a perfectly good word with a new one. I think there was a discussion on this blog about replacing good German words with bad English ones. This is a similar case where good English words are replaced by bad English ones.

Where's Winston Smith when we need him?

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Jim Arnold — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 18:05:00 GMT

"Verbing weirds English" - Calvin (to Hobbs).

I'm leveraging the current interest in banning overused words to ban leverage

Darrell Norton's Blog — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 21:15:00 GMT

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Centaur — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 18:50:00 GMT

Every noun can be verbed, and every verb can be nouned :)

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/overgeneralization.html

What irritates me in respect to language is how everyone calls a directory a folder and a file a document, and half the people say they “run” things when in fact they “open” them (with the default associated application (should I say “program”?)).

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

keithmo — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 20:37:00 GMT

I really hate the way everything is "designed". For example: "This software is designed to detect security incursions." or "This dietary supplement is designed to burn fat while introducing only a few genetic anomalies".

My question: Are these products DESIGNED to do these things, or do they actually DO these things?

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Eric Lippert — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 20:48:00 GMT

Hey Raymond, what do you think of "process" as a verb? Fifty years ago, there was no such verb. Today we process everything from bits to cheese and think nothing of it. The ability to, uh, redenormalize word categories is one of the strengths that has kept English a vibrant and evolving language.

But while we're at it, people who can't use the phrase "beg the question" correctly drive me nuts. People, "beg the question" means to advance a spurious argument which does not actually explain anything. It does not mean to demand that a question must be asked. eg, "Christie Brinkley photographs so well because... she's photogenic!" begs the question.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Jim Causey — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 21:22:00 GMT

I hate "win" as a noun, which appears to be another heavily used bit of doublespeak at Microsoft conferences and with salespeople through the industry, as in:

"Separating UI interface from implementation is one of Avalon's big wins."

"Takeaway" is also a pseudo-noun that bothers me, as in, "These are the takeaways you should get from this presentation."

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

tom — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:56:00 GMT

Going forward let's ban "going forward."

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Russ C. — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 00:48:00 GMT

I'd like to ban the phrase 'Get someones Buy-in'

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

mike — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 07:45:00 GMT

Y'all might want to have a peek at a blog I maintain where I note new usages and novel constructions:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/wordzguy/

Unlike most folks, though, I don't have a lot of pet peeves. It's all English to me, and may the best word win. :-)

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

SteveM — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 08:45:00 GMT

Getting a bit petty, but "takeaway" is a perfectly acceptable noun in British English. We use it with reference to food (mostly Chinese and Indian) where you would use "take-out" in the US.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Peter Torr — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 09:11:00 GMT

So, when I first came to Microsoft I couldn't understand why (or how!) people started EVERY SINGLE e-mail / spoken comment with "So... "

I vowed it would be a trap I would never fall into, but that worked out about as well as, like, not saying "like" all the time.

They're just "filler" words, but wow was it an eye-opener (or ear-opener) when I first got here.

I dislike the use of "MSFT" instead of "Microsoft" -- even "M$" is better than "MSFT" -- and one thing I *have* resisted is calling people by their e-mail alias instead of their real name. That's just too impersonal for me.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 09:59:00 GMT

Solely on the subject of phrases I don't like .. 'Let's touch base'. Ugh?

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Tim Robinson — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 10:25:00 GMT

MSFT is OK -- it's the Reuters symbol for Microsoft stock.

I always thought MS looked naff: not bad, just lazy. M$ is only used by 14-year-olds who just installed Linux on their Win98 box.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

asdf — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 11:44:00 GMT

If I ever see a "Call to Action" in a powerpoint presentation again I'm going to snap.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Moi — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 12:59:00 GMT

I'd like to see the words offshoring and outsourcing banned. Use greed and stupidity instead.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Thom — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 17:03:00 GMT

Let add my scorn to INCENT's heap. It just incenses me. I always thought "motivate" worked better anyway; "incent" probably happened because somebody was too lazy to figure out a verb that corresponds to the noun "incentive".

Besides, "motivate" and "incite" and "stimulate" all have the advantage of being actual words. "Incent" is an erroneous back-formation, based on the assumption that the "-ive" at the end of "incentive" is a verb-to-noun conversion suffix -- when actually, it is just part of the Latin root, "incentivum".

I love the "Verbing weirds language" comic strip:

Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?

Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when 'access' was a thing? Now it's something we do. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.

Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Matt — Thu, 08 Jan 2004 23:22:00 GMT

My pet peeve is "partner" being used as a verb.

Can we ban that one, too?

Meta banning

Mr. Pedant — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:30:00 GMT

Not to get too introverted, but how about the noun "blog?" I hate that word.

Or even worse, blog as a verb. "Oh, I just did a little bit of blogging yesterday. Blogged here and there."

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Mike Dunn — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:34:00 GMT

No disrespect meant to the guys who deal with performance, but I have a great dislike for the adjective "performant". (ugh)

Every noun can be verbed?

Mihai Nita — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 01:02:00 GMT

My native languages is not English, but I am pretty sure "OCRing" is a bad invention. But since it is used in a manual writen by a technical writer, not a marketing "drone", I may be wronig. Or not?

Internet Explorer

Tony Schreiner's WebLog — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:33:00 GMT

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

SBC — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:12:00 GMT

'Best-of-Breed' has got to go in software. Who decides what are the other breeds - the American Kennel Club?

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Sean Gephardt — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 23:10:00 GMT

OMG if I hear "outside the box" one more time...To the moon with you Alice!

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Tom Friend — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 20:18:00 GMT

How about "Plan Of Record"? As if there is a seperate hidden agenda which we really intend to pursue...

and what is "on-demand" so much better than the old way of doing whatever? I suppose it was "on-request"...

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Victor — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 16:24:00 GMT

"On the fly" is also a damn awful phrase.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

Patricia — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 03:14:00 GMT

My vote goes to ROBUST -- incessantly parroted, mindless and sinister. Exhibit A: the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which sounds like the fantasy of a hormone-savaged 13-year-old. Laughable, or might be. But heaven help us, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator is real.

re: Words I'd like to ban in 2004

cache — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:51:00 GMT

"sorry" is played.