17 ms·

I think I could be alone, but one of my biggest office-speak pet peeves is using verbs as nouns. Like “ask” (I hear this one all the time), “(value) add”, and

I think I could be alone, but one of my biggest office-speak pet peeves is using verbs as nouns. Like “ask” (I hear this one all the time), “(value) add”, and “solve” (used in this article - I cringed). I see this a lot on HN too, so again, many others here will obviously not agree. But I’ll intentionally use “request” or “question” over “ask” just in protest. I know the English language has been using some verbs as nouns for millennia, but there are particular ones (like the ones above) that I mostly hear at the office (or outside the office, but spoken by “office folk”), and it’s definitely an annoy. EDIT: Turns out I'm not alone. Thanks for the validate.

alterom 2y ago
>and it’s definitely an annoy. You didn't have to do it to drive the point home, but boy did this do the job.
- el_pollo_diablo 2y ago
  > boy And nouns as interjections.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    I think of the interjection "boy" as being some 1930s-1950s movie speak for earnest young people expressing surprise or excitement about something, not office related at all.
  - moi2388 2y ago
    Whenever you are about to say “boy”, say “sport” for immediate value add
  - alterom 2y ago
    >And nouns as interjections. Nouns? "Boy" as an interjection, used for emphasis, has been used for over a century. From Oxford English Dictionary[1]: >boy: interjection (colloquial, originally U.S.). 1894– >Expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Frequently used to give emphasis to the following statement. You also say it as if it were unusual for interjection to be nouns. Spoiler alert, that's not the case. God is an obvious example (God is it tiring to see falsehoods online); so is surprise!, and many others. All of that has nothing to do with office jargon. [1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734
    - el_pollo_diablo 2y ago
      My comment was meant as a joke, given the context. I am familiar with these interjections, even as a non-native anglophone. Sorry for the time you took to write a good reply.
      - alterom 2y ago
        What's there to be sorry about? It was fun for me to dig in and find out just how long boy as an interjection has been around for (which is, by far, not an obvious thing regardless of whether one speaks English natively or not). Same goes for trying to think of other nouns which are used as interjections (the Wikipedia article on interjections lists very few, if any, nouns). So it was fun to think (and write) about. FWIW, English isn't my first language either — so I hope we both learned something. By the way, I couldn't find out why or how "boy" came to be used as an interjection — it doesn't readily appear to be a minced oath — like gosh — or a euphemism (like darn). It remains a mystery to me. So familiarity with these interjections doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss or explain :) (I don't think I'm getting what the joke was even now, but that's beside the point)
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  Or in this generation's words: it's giving annoy
  - alterom 2y ago
    Yeah. It's definitely a fail rather than a win. insert angry react
savanaly 2y ago
I find that happens to me too (getting annoyed), but it's a good reminder to introspect when it happens. Clearly, there's nothing objectively wrong with actually using these words in their new meanings-- they're completely serviceable in their new usages, and clear too. There's some degree to which all people get annoyed with language changing and feel a conservative impulse to put a stop to it, but the annoyance with office jargon in particular seems to go beyond that. The source of our annoyance is thus revealed to be something else. I have a feeling it comes back to, like so many things, status games. Someone using new terminology that was just invented is (probably incidentally) asserting some kind of status one-upsmanship over you, demonstrating in passing they are more familiar with cultural norms. I wonder if my annoyance is actually stemming from insecurity that the other person is exactly right-- I am falling behind in the invisible status games. I can either accept my loss, try to adapt to it by using it myself, or remind myself of how little I really care about these status games.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Most of these words seem to be intentionally ineloquent. It's almost as though they were invented or first used by someone who is rich but illiterate. Or that the words were invented specifically to be "accessible" in some way. Imagine getting a degree in English and then learning as an adult that an "ask" is modern jargon for a request, that a "learning" is a lesson, and an "add" is a differentiator. Business English always seems to involve a narrowing of the lexicon.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    I feel like modern office setting gives us unprecedented linguistic situation. On one hand, you want to use complex language to sound official and very important. On the other, most likely your room is full of non-native speakers, so they might not be familiar with particularly uncommon words. This creates a situation where you're looking for words that are, at the same time, simple and fancy.
  - susiecambria 2y ago
    It just occurred to me that I use "ask" as a noun when talking about development/fundraising in nonprofits. And it's been used that way going back to when I was in high school (1978-1982), at least. (I went to prep school so development was a thing.) Outside of nonprofit fundraising land, however, ask is a verb. And only a verb.
dymk 2y ago
This point come up in every thread about office speak, so rest easy that you are not alone
stevage 2y ago
To me there are semantic distinctions. If I say there was a request, it's neutral. If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable. If I say there was a question, you know it's just information being sought. The article here points out the more annoying characteristic, which is using lots of stock phrases that don't contribute meaning over single words.
- christophilus 2y ago
  > “There was an ask.” This communicates nothing to me other than that the speaker probably is going to continue to annoy me.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    same. and actually A LOT less serious in my mind than a request. If you used request I would think you are really in need of my assistance and I am paying attention. I hear “ask” and I think totally not important and ignorable
- jader201 2y ago
  Yeah, I'll still just say "large, possibly unreasonable request". :) (And I've never inferred that distinction anyway -- in all the cases I've heard it, I could've replaced "ask" with "request"/"question", and it would've meant the same thing, especially with any additional context.)
- VincentEvans 2y ago
  > If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable. That’s the point - it isn’t any of those things. It’s made up by you (nothing personal, waving in general direction) on the spot and is not in any way a part of some imagined shared lingo. It’s all complete and utter meaningless bs that some people like to imagine to be loaded with contextual depth. It’s not.
  - stevage 2y ago
NoboruWataya 2y ago
Totally agree. Before I clicked into these comments I was actually just thinking about the single example that irks me the most is "the understand".
- jader201 2y ago
  Oh wow, that's a new one. Have you really heard that in conversation? I'm so sorry.
drewcoo 2y ago
Learnings. Reminds me of Gurgi from Lloyd Alexander's Taran books (The Black Cauldron). Makes me giggle.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mwigdahl 2y ago
  I always make that connection too, with just that one word. Not sure why that one in particular, but it's consistent...
- frereubu 2y ago
  This one grinds my gears in particular because there's a common word specifically for that - lessons.
vikingerik 2y ago
It goes the other way too, nouns as verbs, and just as cringy: "you can solution this", "we need to action that". Both ways come from subtle manipulation of language. "Ask" sounds like a polite word while "request" sounds demanding, so the former gets used even if it's the wrong word class. "Lesson" sounds harsh while a "learning" sounds positive. The word that gets used is whichever frames the speaker or conversation better, making them sound more courteous or cooperative and nudging the recipient towards complying.
- abecedarius 2y ago
  > "request" sounds demanding I wonder if this is a kind of euphemism treadmill. When the feds demand the records on a user from a service, it's an "access request", as if you could politely say no, I would prefer not to. So connotations from "demand" leak onto "request" over time?
  - moi2388 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure this is exactly what’s happening. Also, I’ve noticed that for some reason more and more people care about the words rather than the intention.
- DennisP 2y ago
  And the more unpleasant the idea, the more they pile on the jargon. Once I was at a meeting between a bunch of companies, discussing a move to some common standard, and one guy used five minutes of dense jargon just to say "what's in it for us?" I'm not convinced though that it's just about sounding polite and positive. Normal english is quite capable of that. Using this odd jargon has a kind of distancing effect, emphasizing that you're just playing your part in the corporation, not acting as an individual human being. I wouldn't be surprised if the most morally questionable actions in corporate America were hashed out with the heaviest jargon, with the perpetrators going home feeling like they personally didn't do anything wrong.
mwigdahl 2y ago
These are awful, but the worst one for me is referring to "people" or "employees" as "resources". I feel a sharp surge of irritation every time someone does that.
- mongol 2y ago
  I use to say "colleagues". That should be ok I hope.
  - fghorow 2y ago
    I used to work as a scientist in a large research org. I once had the director of HR address an email to us as "Colleagues". Talk about cringe. (Colleagues in my world connote someone who might be considered as a research collaborator. Definitely NOT HR bureaucrats.)
    - mongol 2y ago
      How would you have preferred the HR director to address you in the email then?
    - benhurmarcel 2y ago
      I find more "cringe" to not consider HR employees to be worthy of being called colleagues.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  Yes, or "talent"
- anon84873628 2y ago
  Agreed! I've been deliberately substituting "personnel" instead.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  We have switched over to "bodies."
kazinator 2y ago
Almost literally every noun in English can be verbed, and verbs can often be nouned.
stavros 2y ago
My pet peeve is "utilize" when it means exactly the same thing as "use".
sangnoir 2y ago
How about nouns as verbs? "The new dashboard will surface potential issues. If we find any ,I will calendar a meeting for the cross-functional group to workshop the list, and task the relevant partner-teams to resolve"
- dingnuts 2y ago
  surface as a verb isn't office jargon. Submarines and whales surface.
  - f30e3dfed1c9 2y ago
    That's different: in "the whale surfaced," "surfaced" is an intransitive verb with no object. In "the dashboard surfaced potential issues," "surfaced" is a transitive verb with an object. The transitive verb is definitely business jargon.
- bityard 2y ago
  "Surface" has been a verb for a long time, particularly relevant to marine biologists and submariners, although obviously it's just a metaphor in an office setting, like "bubble up" would be. The others are on firmer ground as probably not good verbs.
- ilya_m 2y ago
  _Workshop_ is definitely a verb, as in "workshopping a play". Its meaning in performance arts is different from office use, but they are not too far apart.
  - jfactorial 2y ago
    What's your opinion of "architect" as a verb? I was in a workshop once wherein the instructor paused everything to beratingly correct someone for 5 minutes on how you can't "architect" something because, he insisted, that word must only ever be a noun.
    - chairmansteve 2y ago
xbar 2y ago
You deserve an invite to our discord server.
depressedpanda 2y ago
Verbing weirds language. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
thefz 2y ago
Not an english native, but I have the same with "win" -> "victory". Like, "congrats for the win" or "big win".
- istultus 2y ago
  Well, "win" as a noun is a word from Old English attested before 1150 [1]. And as a word firmly in the language it has its own specific uses in comparison to "victory". It would be silly or pompous to call a win in a sports game a "victory," for example. It would similarly be out of place to call a victory in a battle a win. "Congrats *on the big win" doesn't sound out of place. [1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168
  - wink 2y ago
    "Team A was victorious" doesn't sound out of place to me (ESL) though. Also pretty sure I've seen victory being used in a sense of "destroying the other team" - but I'm not defending its use.

alterom 2y ago

>and it’s definitely an annoy. You didn't have to do it to drive the point home, but boy did this do the job.

el_pollo_diablo 2y ago
> boy And nouns as interjections.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  I think of the interjection "boy" as being some 1930s-1950s movie speak for earnest young people expressing surprise or excitement about something, not office related at all.
- moi2388 2y ago
  Whenever you are about to say “boy”, say “sport” for immediate value add
- alterom 2y ago
  >And nouns as interjections. Nouns? "Boy" as an interjection, used for emphasis, has been used for over a century. From Oxford English Dictionary[1]: >boy: interjection (colloquial, originally U.S.). 1894– >Expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Frequently used to give emphasis to the following statement. You also say it as if it were unusual for interjection to be nouns. Spoiler alert, that's not the case. God is an obvious example (God is it tiring to see falsehoods online); so is surprise!, and many others. All of that has nothing to do with office jargon. [1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734
  - el_pollo_diablo 2y ago
    My comment was meant as a joke, given the context. I am familiar with these interjections, even as a non-native anglophone. Sorry for the time you took to write a good reply.
    - alterom 2y ago
      What's there to be sorry about? It was fun for me to dig in and find out just how long boy as an interjection has been around for (which is, by far, not an obvious thing regardless of whether one speaks English natively or not). Same goes for trying to think of other nouns which are used as interjections (the Wikipedia article on interjections lists very few, if any, nouns). So it was fun to think (and write) about. FWIW, English isn't my first language either — so I hope we both learned something. By the way, I couldn't find out why or how "boy" came to be used as an interjection — it doesn't readily appear to be a minced oath — like gosh — or a euphemism (like darn). It remains a mystery to me. So familiarity with these interjections doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss or explain :) (I don't think I'm getting what the joke was even now, but that's beside the point)
ranger_danger 2y ago
Or in this generation's words: it's giving annoy
- alterom 2y ago
  Yeah. It's definitely a fail rather than a win. insert angry react

savanaly 2y ago

I find that happens to me too (getting annoyed), but it's a good reminder to introspect when it happens. Clearly, there's nothing objectively wrong with actually using these words in their new meanings-- they're completely serviceable in their new usages, and clear too. There's some degree to which all people get annoyed with language changing and feel a conservative impulse to put a stop to it, but the annoyance with office jargon in particular seems to go beyond that. The source of our annoyance is thus revealed to be something else. I have a feeling it comes back to, like so many things, status games. Someone using new terminology that was just invented is (probably incidentally) asserting some kind of status one-upsmanship over you, demonstrating in passing they are more familiar with cultural norms. I wonder if my annoyance is actually stemming from insecurity that the other person is exactly right-- I am falling behind in the invisible status games. I can either accept my loss, try to adapt to it by using it myself, or remind myself of how little I really care about these status games.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Most of these words seem to be intentionally ineloquent. It's almost as though they were invented or first used by someone who is rich but illiterate. Or that the words were invented specifically to be "accessible" in some way. Imagine getting a degree in English and then learning as an adult that an "ask" is modern jargon for a request, that a "learning" is a lesson, and an "add" is a differentiator. Business English always seems to involve a narrowing of the lexicon.
- anal_reactor 2y ago
  I feel like modern office setting gives us unprecedented linguistic situation. On one hand, you want to use complex language to sound official and very important. On the other, most likely your room is full of non-native speakers, so they might not be familiar with particularly uncommon words. This creates a situation where you're looking for words that are, at the same time, simple and fancy.
- susiecambria 2y ago
  It just occurred to me that I use "ask" as a noun when talking about development/fundraising in nonprofits. And it's been used that way going back to when I was in high school (1978-1982), at least. (I went to prep school so development was a thing.) Outside of nonprofit fundraising land, however, ask is a verb. And only a verb.

dymk 2y ago

This point come up in every thread about office speak, so rest easy that you are not alone

stevage 2y ago

To me there are semantic distinctions. If I say there was a request, it's neutral. If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable. If I say there was a question, you know it's just information being sought. The article here points out the more annoying characteristic, which is using lots of stock phrases that don't contribute meaning over single words.

christophilus 2y ago
> “There was an ask.” This communicates nothing to me other than that the speaker probably is going to continue to annoy me.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  same. and actually A LOT less serious in my mind than a request. If you used request I would think you are really in need of my assistance and I am paying attention. I hear “ask” and I think totally not important and ignorable
jader201 2y ago
Yeah, I'll still just say "large, possibly unreasonable request". :) (And I've never inferred that distinction anyway -- in all the cases I've heard it, I could've replaced "ask" with "request"/"question", and it would've meant the same thing, especially with any additional context.)
VincentEvans 2y ago
> If i say there was an ask, you know I think it's something a bit bigger, possibly a bit unreasonable. That’s the point - it isn’t any of those things. It’s made up by you (nothing personal, waving in general direction) on the spot and is not in any way a part of some imagined shared lingo. It’s all complete and utter meaningless bs that some people like to imagine to be loaded with contextual depth. It’s not.
- stevage 2y ago

NoboruWataya 2y ago

Totally agree. Before I clicked into these comments I was actually just thinking about the single example that irks me the most is "the understand".

jader201 2y ago
Oh wow, that's a new one. Have you really heard that in conversation? I'm so sorry.

drewcoo 2y ago

Learnings. Reminds me of Gurgi from Lloyd Alexander's Taran books (The Black Cauldron). Makes me giggle.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mwigdahl 2y ago
I always make that connection too, with just that one word. Not sure why that one in particular, but it's consistent...
frereubu 2y ago
This one grinds my gears in particular because there's a common word specifically for that - lessons.

vikingerik 2y ago

It goes the other way too, nouns as verbs, and just as cringy: "you can solution this", "we need to action that". Both ways come from subtle manipulation of language. "Ask" sounds like a polite word while "request" sounds demanding, so the former gets used even if it's the wrong word class. "Lesson" sounds harsh while a "learning" sounds positive. The word that gets used is whichever frames the speaker or conversation better, making them sound more courteous or cooperative and nudging the recipient towards complying.

abecedarius 2y ago
> "request" sounds demanding I wonder if this is a kind of euphemism treadmill. When the feds demand the records on a user from a service, it's an "access request", as if you could politely say no, I would prefer not to. So connotations from "demand" leak onto "request" over time?
- moi2388 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure this is exactly what’s happening. Also, I’ve noticed that for some reason more and more people care about the words rather than the intention.
DennisP 2y ago
And the more unpleasant the idea, the more they pile on the jargon. Once I was at a meeting between a bunch of companies, discussing a move to some common standard, and one guy used five minutes of dense jargon just to say "what's in it for us?" I'm not convinced though that it's just about sounding polite and positive. Normal english is quite capable of that. Using this odd jargon has a kind of distancing effect, emphasizing that you're just playing your part in the corporation, not acting as an individual human being. I wouldn't be surprised if the most morally questionable actions in corporate America were hashed out with the heaviest jargon, with the perpetrators going home feeling like they personally didn't do anything wrong.

mwigdahl 2y ago

These are awful, but the worst one for me is referring to "people" or "employees" as "resources". I feel a sharp surge of irritation every time someone does that.

mongol 2y ago
I use to say "colleagues". That should be ok I hope.
- fghorow 2y ago
  I used to work as a scientist in a large research org. I once had the director of HR address an email to us as "Colleagues". Talk about cringe. (Colleagues in my world connote someone who might be considered as a research collaborator. Definitely NOT HR bureaucrats.)
  - mongol 2y ago
    How would you have preferred the HR director to address you in the email then?
  - benhurmarcel 2y ago
    I find more "cringe" to not consider HR employees to be worthy of being called colleagues.
nicoburns 2y ago
Yes, or "talent"
anon84873628 2y ago
Agreed! I've been deliberately substituting "personnel" instead.
datavirtue 2y ago
We have switched over to "bodies."

kazinator 2y ago

Almost literally every noun in English can be verbed, and verbs can often be nouned.

stavros 2y ago

My pet peeve is "utilize" when it means exactly the same thing as "use".

sangnoir 2y ago

How about nouns as verbs? "The new dashboard will surface potential issues. If we find any ,I will calendar a meeting for the cross-functional group to workshop the list, and task the relevant partner-teams to resolve"

dingnuts 2y ago
surface as a verb isn't office jargon. Submarines and whales surface.
- f30e3dfed1c9 2y ago
  That's different: in "the whale surfaced," "surfaced" is an intransitive verb with no object. In "the dashboard surfaced potential issues," "surfaced" is a transitive verb with an object. The transitive verb is definitely business jargon.
bityard 2y ago
"Surface" has been a verb for a long time, particularly relevant to marine biologists and submariners, although obviously it's just a metaphor in an office setting, like "bubble up" would be. The others are on firmer ground as probably not good verbs.
ilya_m 2y ago
_Workshop_ is definitely a verb, as in "workshopping a play". Its meaning in performance arts is different from office use, but they are not too far apart.
- jfactorial 2y ago
  What's your opinion of "architect" as a verb? I was in a workshop once wherein the instructor paused everything to beratingly correct someone for 5 minutes on how you can't "architect" something because, he insisted, that word must only ever be a noun.
  - chairmansteve 2y ago

xbar 2y ago

You deserve an invite to our discord server.

depressedpanda 2y ago

Verbing weirds language. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25

thefz 2y ago

Not an english native, but I have the same with "win" -> "victory". Like, "congrats for the win" or "big win".

istultus 2y ago
Well, "win" as a noun is a word from Old English attested before 1150 [1]. And as a word firmly in the language it has its own specific uses in comparison to "victory". It would be silly or pompous to call a win in a sports game a "victory," for example. It would similarly be out of place to call a victory in a battle a win. "Congrats *on the big win" doesn't sound out of place. [1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/win_n1?tab=factsheet#14538168
- wink 2y ago
  "Team A was victorious" doesn't sound out of place to me (ESL) though. Also pretty sure I've seen victory being used in a sense of "destroying the other team" - but I'm not defending its use.