{"id":4318,"date":"2015-04-01T10:35:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T14:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/?p=4318"},"modified":"2015-04-01T10:35:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T14:35:17","slug":"words-that-i-dont-like-to-use-on-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2015\/04\/01\/words-that-i-dont-like-to-use-on-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Words that I don&#8217;t like to use on principle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While I&#8217;m talking about words, I should mention some that I don&#8217;t like to use on principle, mostly business jargon:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Issue.&#8221; At some point in the recent past, &#8220;problem&#8221; disappeared as a perfectly acceptable word to be replaced by &#8220;issue.&#8221; I mostly see it in the wild as a snide, judgmental term for &#8220;difficulties.&#8221; For example, our upstairs neighbor throws temper tantrums, complete with stomping, banging and yelling, despite the fact that he&#8217;s in his twenties. He clearly has &#8220;anger issues.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Liaise.&#8221; A back-formation from &#8220;liaison,&#8221; this means &#8220;to act as a liaison.&#8221; It sounds, though, like a chronic skin condition&#8230;or maybe a rancid condiment. I prefer &#8220;connect&#8221; or &#8220;coordinate.&#8221; However, in my capacity as the vice president for the Friends of the Winooski Library, I am the liaison between the library board and the Friends, so I always use &#8220;liaise&#8221; to describe what I do because it cracks me up.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Bandwidth.&#8221; This means &#8220;something akin to time\/energy\/availability.&#8221; Interestingly, I mostly hear it in a negative context, i.e., people insisting that they do <em>not<\/em> have the bandwidth for more work. I find other terms serviceable for the same concept, and I don&#8217;t wish to use a technical IT term.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Contact&#8221; and &#8220;reach out.&#8221; These terms are useful because they cover a variety of means of communication [E-mail, phone, in-person]. I still prefer &#8220;talk to.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Pushback.&#8221; This, of course, is a synonym for &#8220;resistance.&#8221; This one really irritates me, as it seems to reflect a euphemistic tendency to avoid calling out conflict and disagreement for what it is.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In other news, I&#8217;ve gotten over my revulsion for <a href=\"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2008\/12\/10\/stupid-word-of-the-day-webinar\/\">&#8220;webinar,&#8221;<\/a> if only because of its ubiquity. I&#8217;m also much more of a descriptivist these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I&#8217;m talking about words, I should mention some that I don&#8217;t like to use on principle, mostly business jargon: &#8220;Issue.&#8221; At some point in the recent past, &#8220;problem&#8221; disappeared as a perfectly acceptable word to be replaced by &#8220;issue.&#8221; I mostly see it in the wild as a snide, judgmental term for &#8220;difficulties.&#8221; For&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/2015\/04\/01\/words-that-i-dont-like-to-use-on-principle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Words that I don&#8217;t like to use on principle<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[639],"class_list":["post-4318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4319,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions\/4319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddpla.net\/modernwizard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}