I think you might enjoy Guffipedia – a “dictionary of business jargon and corporate nonsense”. It is published by the Financial Times newspaper from a column by Lucy Kellaway, in which she has been “prosecuting corporate crimes against the English language for two decades”. There are also annual Guff/Golden Flannel Awards. 🙂
Here are a few of my favourites.
Affordable portable lifestyle beverage
- Translation into plain English: Bottle of water
- Perpetrator: Food industry analyst
- Usage example: “It has become an affordable portable lifestyle beverage in the last 20 years”.
Bilateral telephonic meeting
- Translation into plain English: Telephone call
- Perpetrator: From an internal memo
- Usage example: “We need to set priorities for the next bilateral telephonic meeting”.
Oven-ready projects
- Translation into plain English: Almost-finished projects
- Perpetrator: CEO, Legal & General
- Usage example: “Liquidity isn’t a problem. There are not enough ‘oven ready’ infrastructure projects”.
To whet your appetite…
- “Chief manifesto catalyst”
- “the hair-involved consumer”
- “to language it”
- “Robustify learnability”
You can find the Guffipedia here. Enjoy! 🙂
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