New Business Buzzwords

When you report to your corporate masters, you have to know that no one's impressed anymore by "synergy" or things being "proactive". Even a cross-functional multi-brand meeting is getting to be old hat. What you need to make it to the top of the corporate heap is a pocketful of new buzzwords. Remember: if people can't tell what you're talking about, there's a good chance they'll think you're smart.

Most of this is actively ungrammatical or meaningless. It's important to use the words as though you use them all the time; that way people are less likely to call you on them. If someone does say something along the lines of "What the heck are you talking about?" I recommend claiming that it's a phrase you heard in a meeting with the CEO. This gives the buzzword a strong pedigree, and also makes you look important, since you had a meeting with the CEO. This even works if it's the CEO who's challenging you, since CEO's tend to be busy people who can't keep track of all the nonsense they say.

Consult - Okay, people already use this one a lot. But that's as a verb. I suggest using it as a noun, as in "Hey, Bob, can I get a consult on this?" This might be too comprehensible to be a proper buzzword, because people will still be able to understand you, sort of. But if you emphasize the first syllable (to make it sound more noun-like), it will sound properly jarring and dissonant.

Rhematic - Use this to try to make a bad idea sound like a good idea whose merits aren't immediately apparent. "Ted, that's a terrible idea." "No, no, no. It's rhematic, you know." "Um . . ." and then you make your escape while they're figuring it out. "Rhematic" actually means "pertaining to early forms of expression", so you can claim that it sort of means the same thing as "primitive" or "naturalistic".

A Nascent Issue - This is based on the old Microsoft Technical Support phrase "A Known Issue" to describe a bug that no one feels like fixing. This one roughly means "I don't know". So, say someone asks you for your travel budget, and you completely forgot to factor that in. Tell them that the travel budge is "a nascent issue", and that sounds almost like an answer. It's important to always have a phrase that's code for "I have no idea what the answer is".

Fossarian - According to Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, this means "a clergyman moonlighting as a gravedigger." I don't know what to do with that, but it seems like a word that probably hasn't seen a lot of use over the years, so it might be ripe for a comeback.

Okay, I'm out of ideas. It seems like there ought to be a verb in there. Possibly "enumerate", or "reify", both of which could probably be used in almost any circumstance and not be 100% wrong.