language rant: annoying word usage

I think I’m overdue for a language rant. So here is a language rant.

I love the weekly newsletter from grammarbook.com. I don’t agree with everything they say, but I like a lot of their material. One recent newsletter brought up the use of the words “optic” and “pivot” being used as jargon words. That got my attention.

I had a manager who all of a sudden out of nowhere started using the term optic. Something like: “With this new product being released we’ll need to consider the product line through that optic.” Horribly annoying.

I also heard pivot used with some regularity. According to the newsletter, in the high tech world “pivot means ‘to adopt a new strategy when your startup is floundering.’” But I heard it in the Fortune 100 high tech company for which I worked. “They really pivoted in their marketing message.”

Here’s one of my own: over-rotate. One marketing manager in particular loved the term. When the boss said to do this instead of that and the staff responded accordingly, “We really over-rotated on that one.”

I feel better. End of rant. Thanks.