Buzzword Compliant

Affectionately derogatory term for someone with a tendency to be a bit of a BuzzwordMasochist. Or for a product whose FourColorGlossies? are slathered with whatever technology/standard/methodology/etc. is in vogue that month; regardless of whether said feature is well-implemented or relevant to the product's purpose.

Many managers seem to have a radio receiver installed in their bridgework. Every couple of weeks, the Central Buzzword Agency sends out a transmission to tell them what trendy buzz-phrase is for this fortnight. Then they use it incessantly until it drives you nuts.

The best buzzwords are completely superfluous, but sound ever-so-professional when thrown randomly into sentences. My favorite is "going forward". This is nonsense. Spot the semantic difference:

How are we going to address this going forward?
How are we going to address this?

Or:

How are we going to deal with this?

Buzzwords are only really fun when you several in quick succession. With this strategy, we can at this point in time leverage our core buzzword-delivery competencies across multiple streams and focus on adding value with enterprise-class solutions.

The scary thing is that I understood this on first reading. Time to quit and do something else.

That question is not operative at this point in time.

Some funny and informative pages about controversial phrases:

Which reminds me, not enough people play BuzzwordBingo.

--RichardEmerson, ranting.

Some of the technical hurdles that Apple have been trying to overcome for years are the big three buzzwords in the computer OS universe. ProtectedMemory, PreemptiveMultitasking? and SymmetricMultiprocessing. It appears that they are on the verge of success by slipping a MachMicrokernel underneath their GUI in MacOS X (ten). Instead of going through the entire litany, people just call it BuzzwordCompliant. --DonaldMcLean

Recently, I heard a radio piece where the FAA was talking about two airplanes 'experiencing a loss of separation event'. In other words, a near miss. --JavaSchrod

Sounds more like a euphemism.

As GeorgeCarlin says, it should be called a near hit.

Carlin is mistaken. "Near" is an adjective that describes the miss. To extrapolate, a "far miss" is what happens when two planes fly away from each other.

In that context, "near" (meaning "not distant" or "almost happening") implies that the miss was "not distant" and "almost happened." The language is not clear, and Carlin's point was that it is the collision that almost happened. Using "hit" as a noun rather than as a verb also creates confusion. Compare:

The two planes experienced a near miss.
The two planes nearly hit each other.

TheElementsOfStyle might suggest "Two planes nearly collided." -- ChrisFay

That's not a euphemism, it's a TermOfArt?. They exist for a reason. "Near hit", "near miss", and "nearly collided" all carry connotations that may not be true. Separation requirements for airplanes flying in controlled airspace are (simplified) 1000 feet vertical or three miles horizontal. An airplane flying along at a constant 2.9 miles behind another would be a "loss of separation event", but nobody in their right mind would say the two airplanes "nearly collided"

Fluffy words are everywhere. In newscasting, what does "thunderstorm activity" tell you that "thunderstorms" does not? What does "accident situation" tell you that "accident" does not? In the office, what does "utilize" tell you that "use" does not? What does "finalize" tell you that "finish" does not? We seem bent on using as many syllables as possible.

Check out this list of English-language redundancies at: http://www.topskills.com/redunt.htm But make sure that you have your critical senses turned on while you do. I second that! So many of the alledged redundancies in that list are frequently necessary for disambiguation...

Weather forecasters are now fond of saying "during the overnight period", or "in the afternoon hours". Why not say "overnight" or "afternoon"? --DavidPlass

The longer wording buys them time to remember what they were going to say next. People who use a lot of buzzwords may talk fast, but think slow. --KadeLarsen

Well, in northwest Florida, the weather changes very rapidly. We might well break our weather into 'afternoon minutes'.

You are not done editing until you are left with a blank page.

Or, OmitNeedlessWords.

Also, KillYourDarlings.

Java is more or less explicitly buzzword-compliant. The JavaWhitePaper? lists a number of adjectives which are supposed to apply to Java and then says "Together, the above requirements comprise quite a collection of buzzwords, so let's examine some of them and their respective benefits before going on.".

Internet sites relating to Java and the DotNetArchitecture? are usually always buzzword-compliant.

Working on projects where some web technician who spent two weeks getting certified at the local community college gets to dictate what programming tools you use. "We use YetAnotherWebScriptingLanguage here." Yeesh!

Heh, heh. OnceAndOnlyOnce. Oh, boy. "Exactly once," but if one would just "let your 'yes' be yes and your 'no' be no," then the word "once" would suffice.

A good amount of BuzzWord compliant people or projects often never have enough real world examples of how technology X is going to, in the real world, solve a real concrete problem. If they'd just give us more real world problem-solution incidents, the reality to buzzword ratio would improve. Often a buzzword technology may infact actually solve a problem, but we can't see the light with a high buzzword to real world example ratio. Buzzwords can also ruin documentation attempts. Too much time spent with buzzwords describing X can reduce the amount of time spent documenting and proving X.

Dilbert Random Mission Statement Generator:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/career/bin/ms2.cgi

See BuzzwordBingo