The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[poodlebrain]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

"Matrix" used in business in countless ways and is pretty much meaningless. If you are in a meeting and any of the following words or phrases are used you probably just wasted an hour of your life that you will never get back : "Synergy, Outside The Box, Thought Leader, Leverage, Millennial, Best Of Breed". And don't even get me started on turning nouns into verbs. What I call "fix something" somebody actually calls "solution it". Using the English Language as a blunt instrument. Sheesh

I'll play. A word I hear that is misused quite commonly by business people is methodology when the proper word is method. Methodology is the study of methods and their development, not the methods themselves. I remember the sour look I got from some high priced consultant when I asked him what were the methods he used to practice methodology? After his long and drawn out answer, my boss concluded his methods were simple trial and error, tempered by experience. My boss decided not to pay for advice that was essentially what not to do.

[Cap Mandrake]

Don't kid us. We all know that is completely on purpose so the second guy has to hire a lawyer just to figure out what the first guy's lawyer said.

[Canoerebel]

Lawyers really are terrible, terrible writers. There are the occasional exceptions, but if you become a lawyer it will take you years to overcome the side effects. Physicians probably don't have to write at such length and so often, but given their specialized vocabulary, do they tend to write like lawyers? Or is it just their handwriting that became notorious?

[AcePylut]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Words to hate that you’ll never “unhear”, used in common everyday communication?

“Exactly”

Just listen for it… and you’ll hear it, and when you do, you’ll never “not” hear it. In fact, sometimes you’ll get a ‘double – exactly’… as in “exactly EXACTLY!”

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Exactly EXACTLY!

[AcePylut]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Lawyers really are terrible, terrible writers. There are the occasional exceptions, but if you become a lawyer it will take you years to overcome the side effects. Physicians probably don't have to write at such length and so often, but given their specialized vocabulary, do they tend to write like lawyers? Or is it just their handwriting that became notorious?

My dad's a doctor. i think it's a combination of the 'older generation' learning to write in cursive, and then trying to write out 500 letter latin words in cursive, tends to make bad handwriting. It wasn't his strong suit, but that was not indicative of "carelessness", for when it came to the details of the prescriptions, or medical stuff, his handwriting was crystal clear.

Me, I'm an engineer - so I was "untaught" cursive and learned to write everything in uppercase print letters.

I was also taught to put a "dash" in my Z, and a dash in my "7"'s lest one be confused if the letter is a 1, 2, Z, 7, or "lowercase l" (which was a no-no - no lowercase letters).

BUT THAT TYPE OF WRITING DOESN'T TRANSLATE WELL TO AN INTERNET FORUM BECAUSE EVERYONE THINKS YOU'RE YELLING AND SHOUTING.

But it's clear to understand - especially since "math" truly is the one language that transcends all "spoken" language. 1+1=2 can be understood by pretty much anyone, anywhere. One plus One Equals Two - not so much.

[Cap Mandrake]

With the advent of the electronic medical record physician notes become templated (probably not a word) to satisfy nimrods in Washington. There is a numerical diagnosis scheme imposed by the black helicopter guys in the WHO (ICD-10)


Not only is it not common English it seems purposely designed for-self parody.

Eg:

Burn due to water-skis on fire – V9107XA
or
Stabbed while crocheting – Y93D1

I have scribes now, mostly Asian pre-med students...so we have come full circle. It's like the Moravians teaching the Cherokee English.

[Canoerebel]

The Forum is a wonderful place.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Anachro

Heard a professor use the term "palimpsest" when giving a lecture on Greek tragedy.

I've known palimpsest a long time; I actually wrote the first chapter of a novel once whose plot was based on a palimpsest. I was surprised to learn it is a Greek-root word. I had thought it was invented in corrupted Medieval Latin out of whole cloth.

[Cap Mandrake]

I'll play. A word I hear that is misused quite commonly by business people is methodology when the proper word is method.

[:D] Great story. I am going to giggle whenever I hear anyone say "methodology".

One time, after an acquisition, the board of the medical group had to meet every morning at 6AM with the bean counters to work out a difficult staff "right-sizing" (this mostly means firing someone)

It was painful..6 AM daily for 2 weeks, tough subject matter and crappy coffee...and..after about the first 5 minutes I couldn't stand all the GD business jargon. "Right-sizing", "drill down", "trial balloon", "outside the box" etc., etc. I jotted all of the jargon down and made up a secret dictionary with funny definitions and some sexual references to some of the bean counters (male and female). Then I handed it out to the board and had them memorize the list. Next meeting whenever one guy would say "drill down" (examine in detail) our side of the table would start snickering like middle-schoolers. It made the exercise more tolerable and the most amazing thing is we conducted our own "Little Albert" experiment without even trying. In 2 days NOBODY on the bean counter side was saying "drill down" anymore.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Me, I'm an engineer - so I was "untaught" cursive and learned to write everything in uppercase print letters.

As an old school architect who spent 15 years drawing professionally by hand before transitioning to computers I can say a big "Amen" to that.

Every time some one tells me I have very nice "printing" I feel compelled to correct them by pointing out that printing is what a press does and that what I am doing is properly called "lettering".

Invested so much time in lettering that I have forgotten how to write anything cursively except my signature.

My checks are filled out with all caps block lettering and a cursive signature.

Even though we draw with computers now the all caps annotation carried over from the old days and it's always tough jumping from AutoCAD to Word or Outlook without first starting whatever I am typing in all caps.

Even do it sometimes on my forum posts.

[Canoerebel]

What about the media's sudden rapture over the word "pivot": "Today, John Kerry took a break from the value of the Yen and pivoted to foreign relations."

And when Al Gore was a candidate for president, the media became enraptured with "gravitas."

I hate both words now.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The French seem to have more than their share. "Ennui," for instances. There are some English synonyms, but do any really do it justice?

I've been reading a great book called "Lingo." Written by an academic linguist, it is 60 of Europe's languages (not even close to the total available) done in short vignettes of 3-4 pages each. I've learned so much. At the end of each he has a note of common loanwords into English, if any, as well as a note on words in the subject language that English could stand to have. Many express quite complex thoughts or situations in one short, easy word where English needs a phrase or even multiple sentences. The German "schadenfreude" is an example. Many languages also contain a single word meaning "a day, including its night" which English could use.

The book has helped me in my ESL volunteer work, to look at English as they see it. I used to think English was a fairly easy language: three cases (Finnish has 15), no gender except in pronouns, only twelve active voice tenses. My students continually tell me it's a vast swamp of difficulty though. After seeing how Europe works I see how English is very, very difficult to come to as an adult. It's massive in size, both in formal vocabulary as well as idioms, and the pronunciation non-rules are myriad.

[Lecivius]

Gawds, it's great to just be a hillbilly [:D]

[AcePylut]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Invested so much time in lettering that I have forgotten how to write anything cursively except my signature.

My checks are filled out with all caps block lettering and a cursive signature.

LOL. Me too. When I try to write in cursive, it just looks like a bunch of slashy lines going up and down. I have no clue how to write in cursive anymore. To me, learning how to write in cursive was the biggest waste of time in school. The 9 weeks I spent learning how to type on a keyboard was, far and away, a better use of time. (I still giggle on the inside when I see my boss type with "two-fingers")

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I suppose most of us add to our vocabulary occasionally throughout our lives. But I do have a very sharp memory of the last time I read a book that introduced me to a word I hadn't previously seen but that became an important part of my vocabulary: paradigm. I read the word in my fourth year of college in a collection of essays about the environment. I had no idea what it meant. I pronounced it very oddly: pair-at-uh-jim. I had to look it up. But since then I've seen it in print fairly often, heard it used in speech on occasion, and I use it from time to time in speech )but never in writing, I think).

I've always liked (lower case) "myrmidons." In upper case it's an honorable proper noun. In lower, it's yes-men/hatchet-men, used often in a political context.

It comes from the Greek word for "ant."

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

Gawds, it's great to just be a hillbilly [:D]

A lot of "hillbilly" jargon and slang comes from Scots-Irish, which isn't really a thing, except in the US. Scots-Irish were pretty much "Irish."

You'd enjoy the book. [:)]

I got a copy for my ESL teacher, who is a native Czech speaker, and who learned Russian and German before becoming an adult ESL student. Now she earns her living teaching English, although in the past she also taught German and Czech for a paycheck. I can't begin to understand how a brain does that. I took ten months of Spanish forty years ago and it nearly killed me.

[Canoerebel]

Years ago while researching a story about Lee & Gordon's Mill at Chickamauga, I came across a story in an 1864 issue of the Memphis Commercial Appeal noting that "Lincoln's ruffians had capturered the mill owner and he was hung by his minions." That threw me - the Commercial Appeal had used poor grammar and I thought a "minion" was a reference to some part of the body. Then it hit me: "Oh, they're referring to Lincoln's minions."

[AcePylut]

When I hear the word "minions".. anymore, thanks to my 3 year old and 10 year old, I can't help but shout "BA-NAN-A"

Laugh if you get the reference.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Years ago while researching a story about Lee & Gordon's Mill at Chickamauga, I came across a story in an 1864 issue of the Memphis Commercial Appeal noting that "Lincoln's ruffians had capturered the mill owner and he was hung by his minions." That threw me - the Commercial Appeal had used poor grammar and I thought a "minion" was a reference to some part of the body. Then it hit me: "Oh, they're referring to Lincoln's minions."

They were, but a particularly tortured use of pronouns. Using two (same gender) in one sentence is dangerous.

[fcharton]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth
And don't even get me started on turning nouns into verbs.

Is it so bad? "he elbowed his way", "don't fence me in", "I'm rooting for"...
I always thought it was a nice feature of the English language.

Francois