Some coworkers and I compiled most of the words in this list while listening to people speak over the course of one month at one of my jobs. After about one month we were ready to kill ourselves so we had to stop.
When using these terms, it is important that you never use their actual English equivalent. For example, never say “talk” or “meet” when you could say “touch base” instead, because people might not understand you. I’m not kidding here. Sometimes it makes communicating difficult. I avoid talking like this whenever possible so as not to sound like a giant tool, but sometimes you have to use buzzwords or people will not understand you, as illustrated by the following actual conversation that took place one day at my first corporate job:
Me: “Hey, I need to meet with you for a few minutes when you have a sec.”
Them: “What?”
Me: “I have to ask you like two questions.”
Them: “…”
Me: *sigh* “We need to touch base for a sec.”
Them: “Ohhh! Sure! What did you want to touch base about?!”
The following is the beginning of a very long list of corporate buzzwords that will help you communicate with corporate drones when normal English fails.
| Word | Definition/examples |
| Touch base | Verb – to communicate/talk/email/discuss
Ex: “Please touch base with Matt and find out how that |
| Connect | Verb – to commuicate/talk/email/discuss
Ex: “Please connect with Matt and find out how that activity |
| Reach out | Verb – to put forth effort (in order to communicate with someone)
Ex: “Please reach out and touch base with Matt and find |
| Disconnect | Noun – Misunderstanding
Ex: You think a and I think b. It seems we’ve |
| Same page | Noun – Where you are when you have a common understanding.
Ex: Person 1: “A, B, and then C, right?” Person 2: “Right. A, B, then C.” Person 1: “Ok, we’re on the same page, then. Ex. 2 Person 1: “Let’s touch base and make sure we’re on the Person 2: “Ok” |
| Offline | Noun – outside of/after the current meeting/situation
Ex. “What you are talking about is outside the scope of |
| Take-away | Noun – information gained from a meeting
Ex. Person 1: (during meeting) “This affects 1000 participants.” Person 2: (at the end of meeting) “So the take-away is Person 1: “Yes“ |
| Go grab | Expression – “go get lunch.” It implies that you’re going to bring it back and eat it at your desk while you work. Ex. Person 1: “I’m gonna go grab!” Person 2: “I’m hungry, too! Let’s go grab!” |
| Working lunch | Noun – Eating at your desk. (aka. the expected norm)
Ex. Person 1: “Wanna go out for sushi?” Person 2: “No, I’m taking a working lunch“ |
| Own | Verb – to be responsible for a project
Ex. Person 1: “This process doesn’t work. I need to yell at Person 2: “Joe Schmoe owns it.” |
| On your plate | Expression – where work is that is currently assigned to you
Ex. Person 1: “What’s on your plate right now?” Person 2: “Three issues I’m trying to debug.” Person 1: “Ok ok. I had something to assign and I just |
| Capacity | Noun – the ability to take on more work. It is important that you never use this word with the article “a” or “the.” Ex: Person 1: “Do you have capacity to look at some of these Person 2: “No, I already have a lot on my plate.” Person 1: “Well I’m going to assign them to you, anyway.”
Ex 2: Person 1: “Do you have capacity to look at some of these Grammar Police: “Did you just leave out an article??” |
| Leverage | Verb – to use. In the corporate world you can pretty much “leverage” anything you want Ex. Person 1: “We need to leverage our resources more effectively Person 2: “I’m going to leverage my lunch while you keep |
| Do you have a sec / minute for a quick question? | Expression – “I need to talk to you for 30 minutes about something” Ex. Person 1: “Do you have a second?” Person 2: “(uh-oh…)” |
| Bulletproof | Adjective – “well-constructed,” “not likely to break” Ex. Person 1: “We need this program to be bullet proof. No |
| State of the state | Rhetorical Expression – “Condition/progress.” There are no situations in which simply saying “state” wouldn’t suffice equally as well, unless you are talking about an actual state, like California. Ex. Person 1: “Let’s kinda get the state of the state on this Person 2: “We’re almost done.“ |
| Shoot | Verb – “send” (an email, sametime, instant message, etc.) Ex. Person 1: “I have to run to a meeting now.” Person 2: “Well shoot me an email when you get back. I Person 1: “Ok. Thanks!“ |
Be sure to check out part II. It gets worse!
Great site. Saw a reference for it on learnings.org, my favorite corporate buzzword dictionary. Keep it up guys.
FORGOT word OPPORTUNITY.. that is the worst buzz word of them all
Action Items
Need “let me kick this off”… By saying blah blah.
What i think when hearing this:
Id like to kick you in the mouth for talking like that.
“Going Forward” – replaces “from now on”, or “henceforth”.
Synergize – To work with (someone else, something else)
Challenge – Problem, fuck-up, an issue.