Buzzwords: What People Say and What They Mean
The guide to jargon you wish you’d had when you graduated
If anyone has been around a toddler, there’s a great sense of pride when a child learns a song. Yet, there’s also a deep sense of sympathy for their unfortunate relatives when they begin to sing it non-stop. The employees of Theranos had a similar game where they’d mention a technical term out of context and wait for Elizabeth Holmes to repeat it. Having encountered someone eerily similar early in my career, I learnt to be very cautious about repeating buzzwords as what people intend to say and what the textbook definition of a word is can often be diametrically opposing.
There are three spheres this seems to affect the most — or work, our health and our planet. This is why I’ve separated buzzwords and what they actually mean into these categories below.
Work
- Entrepreneur
What you think it means: running a business of some kind.
What it actually means: I didn’t want to say I was unemployed on Tinder.
- Diversity and Inclusion
What you think it means: ensuring immutable characteristics don’t prevent people from having opportunities.
What it actually means: We’re a diverse team — my name is John, his is Johnathan.
- Delegation
What you think it means: allocating tasks in a sensible way.
What it actually means: arranging work around the partners golf game.
- Bias for action
What you think it means: taking the appropriate steps in a timely manner.
What it actually means: we will be taking action in the next 5 years.
- NFT/Blockchain/AI
What you think it means: a technical term of some kind.
What it actually means: a buzzword to suggest when someone asks you to do something tedious.
Health
- Mental Health
What you think it means: how the state of our minds affects our overall health.
What it actually means: having a celebrity, often Californian, propose a one-size fits all solution for the infinite complexity of the human mind.
- Resilience
What you think it means: showing fortitude in the face of life’s inevitable curveballs.
What it actually means: enduring a 12 hour team-building session without complaint.
- Wellbeing:
What you think it means: the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.
What it actually means: an excuse to sell your wellness retreats with lacklustre menu options.
- Thrive:
What you think it means: something a plant does with the right levels of sunlight and water.
What it actually means: an excuse to quit if anything gets remotely difficult.
Planet
- Sustainability
What you think it means: making sure we can survive in the long term by not killing the planet.
What it actually means: a word to use intermittently when waiting for the buffet at Davos.
- Green
What you think it means: something that is good for our planet in a general sense.
What it actually means: a word for the London Mayor’s office to use to justify introducing cycle lanes without considering the flow of traffic.
- Amazon
What you think it means: the most important ecosystem on our planet.
What it actually means: a place where you have to work under the supervision of robots.
- Ecosystem
What you think it means: a natural environment that contains plants and animals.
What it actually means: something vague tech companies say they contribute to without the need for regulation or taxation.
To conclude, like maintaining a sense of zen after your child has sung Baby Shark for the five hundredth time, it can be tricky to remain calm when people use buzzwords without regard for a word’s actual definition. Hopefully this guide has provided a semi-useful translation service, but if you find words used in common parlance divorced from their original meanings — you’re not alone.