Me: In 2024, could we PLEASE lose the word 'impact'? As noun, as verb. In the hideous adjective 'impactful'. I'm begging you, people. . .

Icy North: But this is your American English legacy, Dmitri. We declared independence from you in 1776 – we're not having you back. Can't you speak Meskwaki, or something?

Me: You needn't pretend you don't have that kind of bureaucrat/motivational speaker babble over there. I KNOW. When we lived in Europe, Elektra heard a British librarian say they needed to 'circularise the membership'. Elektra: You mean you're going to make them round?

I am already tired of the word 'impact' in all its forms. The church people have started using it. Okay, yes, they've already spent a whole year studying how to 'deploy' into the world with the message of love. But when they start on being impactful, I've had More Than Enough.

Language changes over time. That is the nature of human speech. By and large, it is a good thing. Our mode of expression changes to reflect alterations in our environment, new challenges to be met, and – dare we hope? – our growing understanding.

And yes, failure to recognise this fact leads to really bad historical films in which otherwise staid Victorians say, 'We need to take a deep dive into this problem.'

But, children, there are vandals at the gates, always. These vandals usually take the form of glib-but-ignorant people in HR. Motivational speakers, heaven help us. Used-whatever salesmen. Professional talking heads. Whoever and wherever they are, their encroachment upon our daily speech must be resisted with might and main. We must defend our right to say what we mean, rather than what the zeitgeist buzzwords dictate should be our thought of the moment.

Impactful, my aunt Fanny.

This morning, an otherwise respectable young woman on Twitter thanked everyone for their useful feedback (another word you don't want to hear in a Murdoch Mystery) on her husband's pottery designs. 'He's just beginning his pottery journey,' she wrote.

Aargh! Now there are 'pottery journeys'. There are also 'writing journeys', 'weight loss journeys', and 'sourdough baking journeys.' Make it stop.

From Etymology Online:

buzzword (n.)also buzz word, 1946, from buzz (n.) + word (n.). Noted as Harvard student slang for the key words in a lecture or reading. Perhaps from the use of buzz in the popular counting game.

That needs to be 'unpacked', another buzzword. 'Buzz' has meant 'a humming sound' since 1640. A buzzing sound indicated an airplane in the vicinity in the early 1900s. Logical: there weren't any airplanes in 1640. Shortly after the invention showed up, pilots started 'buzzing' fields.

In the 1920s, you 'gave someone a buzz' by calling them on your landline, which didn't have a cool ringtone back then. By 1935, 'getting a buzz on' meant being pleasantly high. In 1944, a 'buzz bomb' was something you didn't want to hear in London.

The 'popular counting game' turns out to be one in which you replace multiples of seven with the word 'buzz'. I assume this amuses baby numbers theorists. It's mentioned in Little Women, so you can use it in your 19th-century historical novel.

Now, back to buzzwords. On this very day, Ms Nicole Menendez, aka The Smart Blogger, has posted a helpful list of '31 Trending Corporate Buzzwords That'll Have You Grinning Like a Possum'. This list is wonderfully helpful. First, it will allow us to keep track of the latest buzzwords, so that we know what we're up against. Second, it will help those of us for whom the age of 30 is a distant memory to keep up with what the young'uns do and don't know.

That last statement needs to be explained. Right off the bat, Ms Menendez says she didn't know what her colleague meant by 'spitballing'. I assume she's not English, so that probably means the term is so old it's new again. If that trend continues, I will be in the catbird's seat when it comes to baseball metaphors.

Ms Menendez explains these terms to her readers in good faith – which, in my grumpy opinion, is more than they deserve. She also suggests paraphrases (good for her!). I'm going to tell you what some of these usually mean, in my experience, when used by their perpetrators.

• synergy: We're going to put two departments together in the hope that you'll pull off a miracle and make up for management's total lack of planning. Get to work!
• deep dive: I am now going to put you all to sleep by droning on for 45 minutes on a subject I know nothing about, but have googled extensively. My outline has 15 main points, with multiple subheadings.
• low-hanging fruit: a way to denigrate a colleague's success by suggesting it didn't really require that much effort.

• think outside the box: That box has been around so long it's beginning to sag. Give it a rest, people. Quick: do you know where it comes from?

  Nobody agrees who started this horror. Amazingly, everyone wants to claim responsibility. Corporate terrorists, the lot of them. What's that you say? Oh, yeah: you're supposed to figure out how to connect all the dots with four lines without picking up the pen. (Hint: think outside the box.) Now, don't you feel clever?

• thought leader: Give me a break. I'd much rather let a kindergartner lead my thoughts than one of these corporate whizzbangs. My mind would go more interesting places, as Tavaron will confirm.
• metaverse: Allegedly, this is a place invented by Mark Zuckerberg. I include this in the list to demonstrate that corporate types are jealous little magpies who are always ready to steal other people's ideas. I hope you 'grok' my meaning.

We're out of time here. Let's take the rest of this discussion offline and circle back to the topic later, remembering to keep in mind that it's 2024 and this is the new normal. We'll try to expand our bandwidth in order to make your customer journey more of a win/win.

There's a special place in hell for these people.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

15.01.24 Front Page

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