“Whenever I heard the word culture, I reach for my gun”.
That is a phrase that I had always attributed to Nazi grand fromage Hermann Goering. I have no idea when he said it or under what circumstances but, somehow, it seems to suit him. I can just imagine his pudgy hand fumbling around for a Walther while some petrified underling who realises that he has just put his foot in it urgently seeks a window to jump out of. However, according to this wiki, the quote was actually penned by a pro-Nazi playwright in the 1930’s.
But whatever the distasteful provenance, it should not blind anyone to value of the quote as an expression of inveterate grouchiness. In fact, as far as I am concerned, it succinctly and perfectly conveys my own sentiments in response to hearing or reading certain words or phrases. Examples are:
- Sustainable development
- Social justice
- Fairtrade
- Ethical anything
- Eco-friendly
- The anything community
- Ken Livingstone
Of course, the above list is nowhere near exhaustive and is subject to constant updating and review.
Now the problem here is that I have to make do with reaching for my metaphorical gun because I live in the UK where having any sort of real, actual gun is pretty much prohibited, thanks largely to the indefatigable efforts of the same people who conjured up the words and phrases that appear in my list. I suppose that they must have known in advance the effect they would have on me and so combined their lexical work with a programme of self-preservation. A pox on them.
“A pox on them.”
They’ve eradicated that too, the bastards.
The particular thing which annoys me about “fairtrade” – one word, to somehow emphasise that it is some great moral good that they are promoting – is that if you go back and read 19th century pamphlets you will will often find “freetrade” written in the same way. The 19th century proponents of free trade understood that free trade was and is a great moral good both from the sense that free trade is about freedom and freedom is good, and because there is no force on earth that is better at eliminating poverty. Somehow we lost this. Supporters of free trade are on the side of the angels, and yet appreciation of this is way behind where it was 150 years ago.
Any mention of children in a political discussion sets off my warning buzzer.
Anyone who uses the words:
Customer service (in UK = oxymoron)
Instant classic (normally estate agent use – another oxymoron)
anything ending in ‘choice‘ – e.g ‘Lifestyle Choice’
anything starting with ‘consumer‘ (ref, ‘choice’ above – usually means the exact opposite)
Deconstruction
Non-specific (the mot du jour of the NHS when dealing with ‘treatment-resistant‘ infections due to their inability to carry out basic Florence Nightingale levels of hygiene in our hospitals.
Pencil-in – If I book someone in as a provisional date then I say that. If I stick a sharpened HB pencil through someone’s eye and into their left brain lobe then that is what I mean by ‘pencil-in’.
detox being used away from its normal meaning, i.e. when applied to drug addicts or alcoholics.
iconic – especially when used to describe Richard Rogers’ buildings instead of Russian religious pictures.
Hot-desking– used by cheap sales reps as a way of not buying enough desks for all the office. Presumably from the expression ‘hot-bunking’ in the US Navy.
Downshifting – truck drivers downshift their gears, not Peter Mayle types escaping from the stress of working for a living.
With me its passionate e.g “I’m passionate about Bolton”. If you look in any newspaper advert or political speech these days odds it will contain that word. Still its better than “adding value” which seems to be going to where all buzz words and phrases eventually go.
TT- a bit of synchronicity – I am planning to redefine/loath a few words on my blog over time.
deprived
disadvantaged
social exclusion
progressive
outreach
regeneration
A successful radio station manager once explained to me that some words are “turn-offs”. When people hear them on the radio, they turn the radio off because they’re sick and tired of hearing them. There are some words or phrases which are turn-offs to me because as soon as I hear them I conclude somebody is trying to fool me.
“Mean-spirited”. “Non-“, as in non-sexist, non-imperialist, “non” fill-in-the-blank.
Most of the turn-offs I can think of are exaggeration. “Ultra”, except in scientific context, and “arch-“, as in “ultra-liberal” and “arch-conservative”. “Super” and its German cousin, “Uber”. We used to have stars, now we have super-stars. We used to have models, now we have super-models. We used to have celebrities, now we have uber-celebrities. What was once “the essential (you name it) is now “the quintessential (you name it).” I’ve already gotten tired of hearing anything called “the ultimate” this or that; worse, some nitwits have taken to calling things “the penultimate” this or that. They don’t know what it means, but the more syllables they use the more important they think they sound. I’m sorry to say that the worst offenders in this inflationary language which has become hyperinflationary language are my fellow citizens of a country which was once a world power, became one of the super-powers, and is now called a hyper-power.
Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’, I reach for my petri dish.
‘Investment’ by politicians in ‘our’ community, education, health, ‘our’ children, ‘our’ … …
Any kind of ‘investment’ in consumables.
Whenever I see a misattribution, I reach for Google.
About fifteen seconds worth of work would have revealed the actual origin of the quotation. Quoting Wikipedia:
Other sources confirm the attribution.
There’s a word that isn’t even a word which really gets my back up: Panetinted. They use it in hair dye ads (Loreal or some such) because it sounds like patented. They obviously don’t have a patent or they’d be able to say it in their ads, so they make a word up. I hate it, its like the ad boys are saying “Nah, they won’t notice, our good friends at NuLabour have wrecked the education system so most of them can’t speak english anyway.” If I ever meet the adman who came up with that I’m going to seriously….[self censored for legal reasons].
That and freedom, but only when uttered by a politician or civil servant.
A couple mins Googling show there are also dozens of sites attributing it to Göring… but frankly who cares? The attribution is not really central to the article. “Some Nazi” would have worked just fine too.
My current annoying word is ‘tackle’. Everyone’s busy ‘tackling’ all manner of things – and you know it’s cant.
The phrase “speak truth to power.”
The bumpersticker “Stop bitching start and revolution.”
“institutional”
“computer fault”
They’re both weasel ways of blaming the ethereal for the faults of real, incompetent, human beings. Worst of all this stupidifying phrasing seems to work on the moronic MSM.
Czar. A quick google reveals a drugs czar, a children’s czar, a homeland security czar, a cyber-terrorism czar, a crime czar, a call-centre czar and a supermarket czar.
And apparently, the Emperor of Russia, too…
Hey, those words should indeed raise alarm bells, I posted about them in detail recently, and how they seem to have deliberately deceptive and Orwellian meanings whenever they are invoked.
Heres the post about “Meaningless words, empty rhetoric”:
http://doublethinkblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/meaningless-words-empty-rhetoric.html
Mostly things that end in ism
“Community-oriented” grinds my gears.
I’m a little tired of hearing about “outreach” as well.
And people who use “interface” or “dialogue” as a verb should be deported to Yemen.
Inappropriate – A word “they” use to stop you doing something they disapprove of. The mere projection of the word renders you immediately guilty as “inappropriate” is never defined and therefore not amenable to any reason or logic.
I was trying to think of the term that I dislike most at the moment, then a colleague said he had “issues” with something I asked him to do last week. Was the request published in a magazine? Is it the mother of his children (I have issue with my wife, but no problems)?
If you have a problem, be honest enough to admit as much. And don’t try to tell me “we don’t have problems, only opportunities” as I’ll laugh at you (which is why I never made it in management consultacy – I couldn’t spout the BS with a straight face).
I don’t have problems – I am your problem!
Global warming.
Recycling.
Anything Workshop.
Sunfish, if the people who interface and dialogue were exiled to Yemen, expect them to tell the Yemenis that they have come to serve as a resource which will add value by leveraging their knowledge assets.
“Consumer protection” – usually means stopping me from buying something because some bureaucrat thinks I’m a moron who might buy the wrong thing.
Speaking of management consultacy … well: “management consultacy”.
Also: “Business organization”.
“Aliance for Progress” (JFK). (and every second word in any State Department documanet).
Stumpy, the word “inappropriate” has a very specific meaning in modern media-ese. It means true but embarrassing to the speaker.
And the big one: “root causes”.
“set-aside” = paying farmers not to farm.
“carbon-neutral” = meaningless gibberish from the Goreacle.
“hate-crime” = social engineering via the criminal justice system.
“community-leader” = self-appointed gobshite.
“five-a-day” = eat your greens, or else!
“traffic management” = making it difficult to get from A to B.
“respect” = nothing, now.
“proportionate response” = doing fuck-all other than asking the UN to send a strongly worded letter.
“sustainable development” = going back to the stone age.
“free” = the NHS is delivered by the tooth-fairy (ought to be considering the shortage of NHS dentistry).
“blue sky thinking” = God knows what.
“taking onboard” = yeah, whatever (except in a nautical or aviation context).
“diversity training” = idiots being paid for doing less than zero.
“size zero” = tabloid pandemonium over the fact some women are quite small, actually. Utterly disingenuous in the context of UK dress sizes.
“racial realism” = attempting to prove that one race is smarter than another whilst demonstrating you’re the one from the shallow-end of the gene-pool.
“raising awareness” = hectoring people about something they already know about.
“children are our future”/ “future generations” (as in “preserving for future generations” – sounds like laying down heirloom jam) also wind me up because well, shouldn’t children kinda be their own future?
But, I have one real bugbear over all others: “physically”. As in “It’s not physically possible for me to make the 10am meeting”. This gets me more than anything because “physically (im)possible” actually has a proper meaning amazingly enough in the field of physics. As a former physicist I used to use it correctly and when I hear people use it to wriggle out of an appointment or because they’re delaying payment it makes me reach for my metaphorical pistol. Actually, I think in the specific quote it was a Browning.
You Brits are masters of the inappropriate!
Now, see… I can tell that some of you are just kidding. Well, I’m not. Take a good look at that image. That’s my desk. At the lower right corner of my monitor, that’s my Beretta 92FS. It’s always on that desk, and it’s always got a magazine filled with snap-caps. I run satellite TV to my XP desktop, and I get excellent dry-fire practice the whole time when I’m doing anything with that TV window burning. An AuoCAD drawing? “Waitaminnit…there’s a fucking dumbass right there on the screen…” [ReachForMyPistiol] “Holy shit…look at that astounding malicious asshole of a politician!” [SqueezeTechniquePractice] “Christ, here’s a propellor-beanied acanemic…” [SightPicturePractice] On & on.
Right now, I’m watching the insipid Rutgers basketball team Imus presser, and some trigger-terms include:
“Human face”
“At risk”
“Play a role”
“Our children”
“As a society”
On & on.
The fact: I “reach for my pistol” just about every goddamned day.
Child poverty and the word Challenge when someone means problem
lights my blue touch paper every time.
Like it says on the box
retire immediately!
“Are you done working on that?”
At a restaurant having a meal it shouldn’t be called work. It should be an enjoyment. One doesn’t “work” on their food one eats it or one doesn’t. One is either finished eating or not.
A work ethic is fine, but leave it out of my meals please.
Manchester United are on a roll.
Oh, are it?
And am they good at football?
I’ll second “speak truth to power” and then throw in my least favorite bit of activist jargon:
“Empowerment.”
*cringe*
Here’s a very USA-centric trigger word: “customer” – when used synonymously with “taxpayer.” The box at the top of Page 6 of the 2006 1040 income tax instruction manual is titled headlined “IRS Customer Service Standards.”
RAB,
I am challenged by child poverty – I don’t have a single one! Their little fingers would be very handy with fiddly computer fixes.
Jack Olson says,
That would certainly allow them to implement a new paradigm of synergies, allowing them to actualize an above-average performance metric across the board.
“Community” does it for me – BIG TIME!
“Key worker”. Apparently, working hard to further my evil capitalist career, providing gainful employment for others, having a substantial proportion of my gross income misappropriated by the government and contributing actively to the wealth of others by buying their goods and services makes my contribution to society merely incidental?
Otherpeople, that is legally true. You are a “key worker” to the extent that it would cost your employer to replace you. You cannot insure anybody’s life unless you have an insurable interest. If you employ a professional athlete to whom you have just paid a million dollars for his services, you have an insurable interest in his life. He is a key worker since to replace him you would have to hire another million-dollar athlete. If he’s a minimum wage ticket taker you can replace with another minimum wage ticket taker, your insurable interest in him is little or none.
This is how Wal-Mart lost a lot of money when a judge ruled that its “dead janitor” life insurance policies could pay dead janitors’ families, who had an insurable interest in them where Wal-Mart did not–even though Wal-Mart owned the policies and paid the premiums.
Here’s some more:
Bipartisanship (its real meaning: surrendering to leftists)
Consensus (see above)
California (everything wrong with Western culture, all in one state)
Racist (refer to the fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf“)
I feel nauseous when people start detailing “their truths”.
“Vibrant.”
Jack Olson, I think you misunderstand… in the UK a ‘key worker’ is a nurse or policeman or some other government employee judged worthy of things like subsidised housing and transport etc., because their roles are ‘key to society’ and therefore are valued more by the state (natch) than a mere shop worker or banker or delivery driver or computer repair technician or cook or architect or web designer or baby sitter or plumber or builder or publisher … in other worlds, the rest of us whose mouths are not completely glued to the tax funded public teat.
Jack Olson, I don’t disagree with you in your explanation of the phrase – not sure where you’re based but I was referring to its use in the patronising UK sense (e.g.(Link)).
Add (in a strategic and geo-political context) “open dialogue” to that.
Ever notice that whenever someone advocates (rather demands) we have a “open dialogue” with a tyrant on something nearly to the last it’s someone who is a hard core PC’nik or peacenik who somehow thinks that if one “talks it out” long enough that the worst of the world will somehow swoon and repent from their evil ways? (Is this chapter one from the Neville Chamberlain handbook on diplomacy?)
The behaviour rules of a creche applied to geo-politics, with concrete detrimental results for the west!
facilitator (instructor or teacher)
ongoing (in progress)
event (rain, snow, etc.)
externalities ( outside influences)
cascade (pass the memo, note, whatever around)