I love working in the medical field - oh, no, wait, I hate it! - because everything’s abbreviated, and half the time, the abbreviations are inconsistant. For Example:
Auditory Brainstem Response (a hearing test) is invariably referred to by abbreviation, but I have encountered no less than 4 of these: AER, BAER, BASR, and ABR. This can be very confusing.
Not nearly as irritating as the confusion between nouns and verbs that happen in the business world - “Let’s conference on this,” for example.
My personal favorite: “at this point in time”. Half the time, you can just say “now” instead, and the other half of the time you can just drop the phrase entirely. Compare: “That feature isn’t working” vs “That feature isn’t working at this point in time.”
I also haven’t seen “drill down” mentioned, as in “let’s drill down on that issue*,” meaning to go into more detail. In the computer industry, there was a brief time when truly hip dumbshits said, “let’s double-click on that issue” right before being beaten to death with conference room chairs (sorry, was I fantasizing again?).
*always use “issue” instead of “topic” or “problem”. It’s more proactive and forward-thinking.
Number Six how do you like this one… headcount. You don’t hire and fire, you add or reduce headcount. One lady came in with her new (3wk old) baby, and jokingly announced “Look, a new headcount!”
I’m an audiologist, so I know what you’re talking about here. Maybe I can help clear up the confusion.
ABR=auditory brainstem response AER=auditory evoked response (this is considered a more general term than ABR…ABRs refer to a specific type of AER…other types of AER are ECochG, AMLR, ALR, and P300) BAER=brainstem auditory evoked response; synonymous with AER BASR=I don’t know; haven’t encountered this one yet, and none of my ABR books have this abbreviation in them…maybe it means brainstem auditory stimulated response; this must be a term that is seriously out-of-date…however, I have seen BSER, which refers to brainstem evoked response, and that particular term is considered synonymous with ABR
The best explanation I have for this plethora of abbreviations is that there was no agreement on what to call this phenomenon in the early days of investigating it. Lately, though, the trend seems to be favoring ABR. My impression has been that only the older audiologists nowadays call it BAER, BSER or AER…the vast majority of audiologists I know call it ABR, and I prefer ABR myself.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”, when referring to something that the person hadn’t been talking about.
And yes, I’ve encountered “headcount”. And “purposes” tacked on to the end of a phrase that doesn’t need it. For example, on the first day of school, teachers are supposed to write the headcount on the board for class size balancing purposes.
Unfortunately, mblackwell, I doubt that anyone is joking in this thread. In my opinion, buzzword insanity exists because of corporate management culture. There are 2 basic emotions that dominate the management world in large corporations - greed and fear (if you wish to be kind, you can substitute “ambition” for greed). In an extremely competative corporate environment, the ambitious strive for anything that they can do to stand out. They latch on to buzzwords and pepper their speach with them so that the people they are interfacing with know that they are results oriented and working smarter and not harder. With vision (musn’t forget the vision). The managers that operate out of a sense of fear just know that if they don’t utilize available resources to facilitate synergy in the face of shifting paradigms, someone who is thinking outside the box will leverage core competancies as they access their robust knowledge base to streamline processes and evolve diverse, dynamic markets opportunities. And when that happens, they know that they are sure to be out-tasked or right-sized.
What’s really scary is that I am not IN the corporate world, and I understood every word of Linus Van Pelt’s post. Which means a good portion of this crapola has shifted into every day conversation.
Nothing wrong with robust as traditionally used by programmers. It describes a well-planned design or application that can handle the contingencies it’s designed for.
…is that they can bring in new jargonese. I’m working on a project now with consultants who have given us the wonderful phrase parking lot issue, meaning something deferred to the end of a meeting after the scheduled business has been completed. Why do I detest this term so much? I"m not sure, unless it’s that if I actually have to drive off site for a meeting, by the time I’m once again outside in the real parking lot, I need to get home, or back to my office so I can accomplish actual work.
