Murray Williams lives and works in Northwest Arkansas. He tries to keep his blog up-to-date, but the pressures of life squeeze in and sometimes he just doesn't have the time. You can check out his full site at www.murdog.com.

8.27.2005

2005's Most Overused Corporate Term

Alright, every year a word rises to the top of the Corporate lingo ladder. This year the winner of that dubious title is "vet/vetting/vetted". (Obviously there are different tenses and so forth, the the root word is "to vet". It is a verb, and here is the definition from Dictionary.com:
  1. To subject to thorough examination or evaluation: vet a manuscript.
Can I begin to explain how tired I am of hearing that word. If you listen to any technology news or game news, you will hear that word at least 12 times a day.

The problem I have is this. Where was this word 12 months ago or even 6 months ago? There is nothing like the corporate community and their word fads. From the people who brought you "ramp up", another favorite of mine, comes vet.

"We're not ready to release this program from beta, it hasn't be fully vetted." "The fuel cell won't be ready for public consumption until it has been completely vetted." Vetted? Give me a break! What is wrong with tested? Some goof ball in a cubicle in San Francisco got out a Thesaurus and found some defunct word, it got legs and now my skin is crawling.

MurDog
I don't know if there are any typos in this blog, it hasn't been completely vetted. It is still in beta.

2 Comments:

Blogger John Nelson said...

I got tired of the "champion" corporate word that I noticed over the past year.

"I want you to 'champion' this project."

My boss is the KING of the corporate lingo and using it as much as possible.

I also got really, REALLY tired of the word "download" when used outside of true, Internet downloading.

"I want to have a meeting so I can 'download' all this information."

It makes more sense than Champion, but the word still aggravates me to no end.

3:20 PM

 
Blogger Murray Williams said...

Bingo! Nelson gets it!

3:55 PM

 

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