Every year Lake Superior State University publishes a list of words that should be banished because they are so overused. It’s based on thousands of submissions from around the world.
As reported in CNN. The 2021 list includes an interesting mix of words, from Gen-Z speak (“Wait, what?”), to work and biz-oriented terms:
“No worries,” “at the end of the day,” “you’re on mute,” and the dreaded “supply chain”: These are the phrases thousands of English speakers have finally heard enough of.
CNN
I get it, people are done with these words. But can we really get by without “you’re on mute?” Or should we find another phrase for “supply chain?”
So, I thought it might be fun to see what the Fusion PR team thinks about overrused words and phrases in tech. I asked – and got a lot of venting.
Which is not surprising, as we tend to obsess over words in PR. We have to deal with jargon coming from many different areas of tech and business, and yes, sometimes regrettably get caught up in the buzzword cycle ourselves (don’t waste your time scouring our blog, website and press releases because yes, you will find some of the very same words reported below. Please, cut us some slack and give us time. Curing the buzzword addiction is a process).
See below for our choices of the word and phrases to be banished in tech PR and media this year (for no extra charge I include lists for other kinds of irritants):
- Digital transformation
- Metaverse
- Unicorn
- Disrupt
- Cloud journey
- Data lake / data swamp
- Revolutionary
- AI operationalization
- Bandwidth
- NFT
Weird or Irritating Words
- De-risk: Sounds like solving a vermin problem
- Headless CMS: Yikes, that’s gotta hurt
- Bad actor: We need a Geico commercial about hackers who are bad actors (in the movie sense)
- On premise, or On Prem: At least “on prem” makes sense as being short for ‘on-premises.’ “On-premise” just makes no sense at all.
- At scale: So where, exactly is this wonderful, mythical place of “scale?” So many great things happen there, “at scale.”
Not Tech, Still Irritating
- Cheers (as a sign off, if you’re not Aussie)
- I’m not going to lie
- To be honest
- Unprecedented times
- I can’t stand when people say “rock” when they mean “wear” (i.e. she was rocking 10-inch platform heels)
I still reserve the most contempt for “has gone viral”……Especially these days when the literal phrase is so fraught.
But boy, I really can’t argue with “Headless CMS” or “rock” over “wear”…….
It’s all good.
Back in the day.
A friend told me.
BLANK is the new black.
Wazzup?