Like “ask” (I hear this one all the time), “(value) add”, and “solve” (used in this article - I cringed).
I see this a lot on HN too, so again, many others here will obviously not agree. But I’ll intentionally use “request” or “question” over “ask” just in protest.
I know the English language has been using some verbs as nouns for millennia, but there are particular ones (like the ones above) that I mostly hear at the office (or outside the office, but spoken by “office folk”), and it’s definitely an annoy.
EDIT: Turns out I'm not alone. Thanks for the validate.
You didn't have to do it to drive the point home, but boy did this do the job.
And nouns as interjections.
Nouns?
"Boy" as an interjection, used for emphasis, has been used for over a century.
From Oxford English Dictionary[1]:
>boy: interjection (colloquial, originally U.S.). 1894–
>Expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Frequently used to give emphasis to the following statement.
You also say it as if it were unusual for interjection to be nouns.
Spoiler alert, that's not the case.
God is an obvious example (God is it tiring to see falsehoods online); so is surprise!, and many others.
All of that has nothing to do with office jargon.
It was fun for me to dig in and find out just how long boy as an interjection has been around for (which is, by far, not an obvious thing regardless of whether one speaks English natively or not).
Same goes for trying to think of other nouns which are used as interjections (the Wikipedia article on interjections lists very few, if any, nouns).
So it was fun to think (and write) about.
FWIW, English isn't my first language either — so I hope we both learned something.
By the way, I couldn't find out why or how "boy" came to be used as an interjection — it doesn't readily appear to be a minced oath — like gosh — or a euphemism (like darn). It remains a mystery to me. So familiarity with these interjections doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss or explain :)
(I don't think I'm getting what the joke was even now, but that's beside the point)
Imagine getting a degree in English and then learning as an adult that an "ask" is modern jargon for a request, that a "learning" is a lesson, and an "add" is a differentiator. Business English always seems to involve a narrowing of the lexicon.
Outside of nonprofit fundraising land, however, ask is a verb. And only a verb.
If someone asks you for something, it could be something with undefined scope or priority. An "ask" signals "this is official". Same thing with learnings: lesson is personal, learnings means ways things are changing.
Are there dumb business terms, absolutely, but these aren't bad IMO.
I don't understand what "an ask" means. I don't know what the speaker intended with it, and I wouldn't know how a receiver would understand it.
It's just communicating badly, using words with no fixed shared meaning. Or somebody too afraid to be confrontational to phrase a demand as actually demanded.
And "learnings" is just somebody too lazy to say "lessons learned".
That said, I've never considered "an ask" to have any stronger meaning than a request. If I hear "an ask", I'm assuming I can push back the same amount I would to any other request.
In searching for the origin of this usage, I found this blog post[1] which attempts to explain arguments both for and against. But, to me, the arguments it lists under the heading "Why referring to people as resources is okay" are actually stronger arguments against. They're all about making certain management tasks easier by simplifying what's being managed. Unfortunately, this goes past simplification to homogenisation.
I've lost count of the times that I've seen management treat a big set of developers as equivalent resources, free to be reallocated to projects as needed. This approach never factors in how well certain people work together or the disruption caused by splitting up a well-functioning team.
It's not just that people aren't the same as objects; it's that people aren't even the same as each other.
[1] https://www.retaininternational.com/blog/why-are-people-call...
Talk about cringe.
(Colleagues in my world connote someone who might be considered as a research collaborator. Definitely NOT HR bureaucrats.)
Whowever decided HR being less offensive shouldn't make judgement calls like that at all.
Both ways come from subtle manipulation of language. "Ask" sounds like a polite word while "request" sounds demanding, so the former gets used even if it's the wrong word class. "Lesson" sounds harsh while a "learning" sounds positive. The word that gets used is whichever frames the speaker or conversation better, making them sound more courteous or cooperative and nudging the recipient towards complying.
I'm not convinced though that it's just about sounding polite and positive. Normal english is quite capable of that. Using this odd jargon has a kind of distancing effect, emphasizing that you're just playing your part in the corporation, not acting as an individual human being. I wouldn't be surprised if the most morally questionable actions in corporate America were hashed out with the heaviest jargon, with the perpetrators going home feeling like they personally didn't do anything wrong.
I wonder if this is a kind of euphemism treadmill. When the feds demand the records on a user from a service, it's an "access request", as if you could politely say no, I would prefer not to. So connotations from "demand" leak onto "request" over time?
Also, I’ve noticed that for some reason more and more people care about the words rather than the intention.
Reminds me of Gurgi from Lloyd Alexander's Taran books (The Black Cauldron). Makes me giggle.
The others are on firmer ground as probably not good verbs.
The article here points out the more annoying characteristic, which is using lots of stock phrases that don't contribute meaning over single words.
This communicates nothing to me other than that the speaker probably is going to continue to annoy me.
and actually A LOT less serious in my mind than a request. If you used request I would think you are really in need of my assistance and I am paying attention. I hear “ask” and I think totally not important and ignorable
That’s the point - it isn’t any of those things. It’s made up by you (nothing personal, waving in general direction) on the spot and is not in any way a part of some imagined shared lingo. It’s all complete and utter meaningless bs that some people like to imagine to be loaded with contextual depth. It’s not.
(And I've never inferred that distinction anyway -- in all the cases I've heard it, I could've replaced "ask" with "request"/"question", and it would've meant the same thing, especially with any additional context.)
I'm so sorry.
Like, "congrats for the win" or "big win".
[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168
Just simply state what you mean. Let the other person ask questions if they need clarification.
For example, "I would like one head of lettuce" is a kind of jargon-lite for "I would like one portion of the fully-grown plant known as lettuce which is found above-ground as a connected unit in nature." Which one leads to a "simpler" exchange will depend on your assumptions about the recipient.
Most of this business-speak jargon is incomprehensible to people who haven't heard it before in the workplace. It seems "normal" to people like us here on HN because most of us have interacted with these sorts of business types (or are even one of them), but I would guess that most of the people who know what a head of lettuce represents would have no idea what ROI or noun-form "solve" means.
Just that "simple" is deceptive, non-universal, and sometimes contradictory.
For example you can use P2P to explain how some gossip spread or you can say that your relationship with SO is like UDP recently.
Jargons are shortcuts to pre-agreed ideas. Just a tool.
Certainly someone who gets it will, well, get it. But in general it seems like a lot of effort in most cases to gauge whether or not the recipient will understand at the level you hope. Even the UDP example could be misunderstood by someone who is well-versed. Unreliable? A good low-level thing to build stuff on top of? These are both plausible meanings, but would convey very different things.
Better to just use clear language.
Once I had a physicist friend freak out over my use of "exponential" to loosely explain something because he instantly began thinking about edge cases and obviously using "logarithmic" would have been more precise. We were not on the same page with the jargon, but then again I guess it requires social skills too so that you can pick where the analogy starts and ends.
"Hmm udp, so ...unreliable and...hmm...but high throughput?...hm, good to build stuff on top of?"
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, yet I know exactly what udp is.
If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that?
Also, you use it in context. The jargon becomes illustrative for the analogy, not precise definition. After all, human can't have UDP connection.
It's not. Well, if the person you're talking to happens to get the intended meaning immediately, it's a cute in-joke. To me, that's the only real (dubious) benefit.
Well, not always. Per Webster:
1: the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group
2: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words
It would be great if it were only (1) but I’d often (2)
In some cases yes, but the majority of the time jargon is primarily used as a shibboleth to establish group identity, camaraderie, and a sense of exclusivity.
Even there, however, the line blurs. That is, you have terms with legitimate use that were poorly chosen. Sometimes the poor choice is historical accident, but often it's motivated by a desire to sound more impressive and complicated that it is. Something like "applicative functor" might fall into this category.
But jargon does have value in communication where you know the person you're talking to understands it at the level you do. Jargon, when used well, can let you be simultaneously more precise and more terse.
Think about times you've sent email or even just chat messages to different professional audiences. You're probably going to use different language when talking to a manager vs. a sales person vs. an engineer. I'm not talking about level of formality; the actual language you use to describe the topic at hand will change. Some of that will be a matter of the level of detail you provide, but some of it will likely include jargon (when you're conversing with someone in the same "group" as you), and you might not even realize it.
Wherever 1 or 2 applies just depends on how used you're to the usage of said jargon.
[0] It turns out that in England, upper-class aspirants are likely to use posher phrases and idioms than actual upper-class people, as the latter are aware of their own and others' social status and have no need for verbal affectations to communicate it. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English
With office jargon, I understand everything being said, but the majority of it could be stated more simply and clearly without the use of it. This type of jargon is a social signaling tool, not a useful shortcut or simplification (again, most of the time). It’s also harder to parse for non-native speakers of English.
For office jargon, it's maybe not a practical matter, but I could see a friend being a little put off by someone speaking in office jargon to them. Office jargon is sort of impersonal by design
>Office jargon is sort of impersonal by design
That's one of it's functions. Instead of going over each time that the thing happening isn't personal and shouldn't be taken as such, you can utilize the jargon to keep it clean. After all, it's just a job where everyone tries to play their role to produce something. It hurts much more badly if you confuse the office work for a social interaction and things don't pan out at some point.
Consider Cockney Rhyming Slang, which is intended to be insider-only speech.
Consider the rise and then mass-adoption of Valley Girl.
This is such a magnificent phrase and I don't think it will ever get enough credit
Sorry if it's offensive!
That was bold of you, but even bolder from her to accept.
To be frank: That is among worst possible lines you could've come up with, but glad it still worked out for you XD
> OPERATOR: O.K., Robert, you understand that what you just described isn’t really lunch, right?
> ROBERT: It is lunch. When there are no rules, it is lunch, Cherise!
> OPERATOR: Did you at any point dip the green peppers in the peach yogurt?
> ROBERT: Probably. Sorry.
Reminds me of that Bloodhound Gang song
>As 6:30 P.M. rolled around, she felt sick in the pit of her stomach, like when she looked at a sentence that didn’t contain an acronym.
Regards, AA
are always valuable :D
As a mathematician, both of those terms are common in my technical and, therefore, everyday speech. If it helps, feel free to think of yourself, not as using corporate speech, but as using technical mathematical terms.
So if I were your boss and you came to me casually describing a problem as "nontrivial" I'd be like... "so is the time frame gonna be years or decades?"
In Robert's Rules to address something is to "motion" it, with "call to vote" being a common sub-type of a motion to make. (Generally addressed to "the chair" of the meeting, or asking for wider debate from "the floor", so sometimes something might be "chaired" or "floored" to imply a vote/address, but usually "motion".)
The default vote in Robert's Rules is a show of hands or a verbal "aye"/"nay"/"abstain". It takes extra work to motion for a paper or ballot vote. I'm curious if the UK jargon for "table" is as much a difference/switch in that default among UK parliamentary procedure? More paper votes would involve more tables, if that were the case, so that would maybe explain things.
I’m not sure about performance reporting but I think overall velocity has gone down despite their team size growing in recent years. I think the new members aren’t contributing much yet in the way of story points.
I highly recommend this clip.
We already have a word for that—lessons.
Another is the one about Omega Star (whose team still haven't got their shit together and implemented ISO dates like they said they would!).
Should be "shall we convince the board of directors of your parent corporation to underwrite a merger deal whereby we unite your corporate assets with mine under a single shelter?
As a modern organization, you may continue to operate under the same branding, if you choose, and the value of your stock shall not be diluted.
Employees, when no managers are present, seldom talk to each other like this. Sometimes, the way we actually speak to each other, would get us fired if someone from management was eavesdropping.
But again, this sort of jargon serves a social signalling function. It's metacommunication, not first-order communication. It's intended to suggest "I'm a true and honest member of the business class and should be taken seriously in business affairs."
> true and honest
I agree wholeheartedly.
For those not familiar / context, NewsRadio, Negotiation, S2E8 1995:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660208/quotes/>
<https://breezewiki.pussthecat.org/newsradio/wiki/Negotiation>
I assume that means that she doesn't accept the proposal (lit. she has a meeting at 3:30), but don't quite follow how that.
Can someone reach out and break that down for me.
It was a surprise when I discovered just how much negativity and frustration wells up in me when I see verbs turn into nouns when there are already perfectly serviceable nouns available.
I am motivated to passive aggressively retaliate by turning even more verbs into unnecessary nouns: seeings, helpings, deliverings, discussings, respondings.
Calvin: I like to verb words.
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: I like to verb words I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember When "Access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed.
Calvin: Verbing weirds language.
Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.
CINDY: Yeah, we got some pretty elegant solutions out of that sprint.
GARY: Exactly. That got me thinking: our relationship feels like a system that’s not just functional—it’s optimized.
CINDY: Oh? I’d like to hear your use case for that.
GARY: Well, I’ve run some simulations, and the output is consistent. You’re my primary key, Cindy. The stability and scalability of our relationship are off the charts.
CINDY: That’s a strong endorsement, Gary. I’ve been analyzing our feedback loops, and I feel the same way. You’ve really reduced my latency and maximized my throughput.
GARY: So I figured it’s time to push to production. In addition to all the features we’ve developed, I’d like to add one more. (He takes a knee and pulls out a ring.) Cindy, will you marry me?
CINDY: I will, Gary! This takes our architecture to the next level.
GARY: Marriage is a big commit, but I think we’ve got the bandwidth to make it work.
CINDY: Absolutely. But we need to stay agile, especially during our onboarding phase.
GARY: Agreed. I’ll make sure to stay in sync during our sprints.
CINDY: Good. Because I have one non-negotiable: we need to maintain a clean codebase.
GARY: Let’s unpack that.
CINDY: My last relationship had too many tech debts. Every time I tried to refactor, there was pushback. It was impossible to iterate.
GARY: Sounds like a monolithic mess.
CINDY: It was. But with you, it’s different. You’re modular, efficient, and your logic is rock-solid. I just want to make sure we keep things lightweight and maintainable.
GARY: I couldn’t agree more. We’ll keep our dependencies up-to-date and document everything thoroughly.
CINDY: Perfect. Let’s set up a shared repository to start planning our roadmap.
GARY: Done. I’ll draft an RFC tonight so we can align on our deliverables.
CINDY: Great. Just flag me if you hit any blockers.
GARY: Will do. And Cindy? Thank you for being my forever stack overflow.
CINDY: And thank you for being the solution to all my edge cases.
"Wooden language".
Applies very much to this too.
All over the water? Ducks. It's the ducks. Ducks are the enemy. Unless we defend ourselves, the ducks will sap us of our natural vital fluids!