“Not quite a cliché, not quite a term of art,” writes Olga Khazan, “a buzzword is a profound-seeming phrase devised by someone important to make something sound better than it is.”
That’s a pretty good description—and if that were the end of it, we wouldn’t have a problem. But it’s far more insidious than that, Khazan alludes. “Typically, the buzzword develops a shibboleth status in a given field…to the point where everyone is saying it and everyone feels as if they must say it.”
The thing is, everyone also knows it’s BS. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have, courtesy of the Atlantic, a March Madness-style bracket enabling Twitter voters to decide on “the most nauseating of them all.”
Again, I’m not opposed to buzzwords qua buzzwords.* If your job is such that you feel the need to “dress up [your] otherwise pointless tasks with fancier phrases,” that’s on you. It’s when jargon’s purported benefit—saving time—does more harm than good. To this day, in fact, I have no idea what value added actually means. And I’m guessing the vast majority of those who use it are just as ignorant.
But according to Copenhagen Business School professor Mary Yoko Brannen, it’s not in pursuit of clarity or efficiency. No, it’s all about fitting in with the other office drones. So we blithely go about our business, day in and day out, repeating meaningless phrases in order to blend in? That’s depressing.
*Except for lean in, obviously. I swear to God if I hear that steaming pile uttered even one more time I cannot be held responsible for my actions.
