Posted: December 22, 2011

Bizspeak: To say what you mean…

...know the meaning of what you're saying

By David Sneed

Whenever I hear someone say "We need to raise the bar," my first thought is: "Won't that make it easier?" I guess not everyone is a limbo dancer.
Another expression that gives me pause is: "Thinking outside the box."

Last week a surly, neon tressed barista clubbed me with this one when I asked her why the smallest drink they have is a medium. "I can tell you aren't creative," she said art majorly, "You aren't thinking outside the box." Hoping to avoid further abuse, I ha-ha'd softly and slid over to the register to pay for my medium coffee.

I was fatigued by all the banter so I didn't have the strength to tell her that using a cliché to describe creativity makes less sense than telling someone to "shut up when you're talking to me."

Clichés aren't always bad of course, but some of our speaking habits are and they can cause us to lose credibility with our bosses, or worse - our customers. A couple of years ago my company was building a fence for a guy I know, and he asked if we could paint it white. "White as a sheep," I assured him.

This guy laughed me out of his yard, down the street and around the corner. I should have said sheet. If you've ever heard Stewie Griffin mocking Brian for his novel "Faster than the Speed of Love," you'll understand the ridicule I suffered.

None of us wants to seem stupid, and that's plenty of reason to make sure we know what we're saying before our lips start flapping.
Here are some of the words, phrases and ideas you've probably heard misused. They're all worth looking up, especially if you aren't sure of their meanings:

 Raises the Question/Begs the Question
 Regardless /Irregardless
 Moot/Mute
 Jibe/Jive
 360/180 degrees
 Literal/Figurative
 Table a topic/Bring up a topic
 Voila/Wa-Lah
 Founder/Flounder
 Decimate/Devastate
 Pike/Pipe (coming down the)
 Granted/Granite
 Penultimate/Final
 Flaunt/Flout
 Supposedly/Supposebly
 Either/Each

(If you can think of other misused words or sayings, please add them to the comments.)

While I'm thinking about ambiguity and catchy expressions, Waterloo is another one that slows my end of a conversation when I hear it, as in: "She fought City Hall and met her Waterloo."

The way I understand it, Waterloo was Napoleons final defeat (and not a British plumbing system as I originally believed.) Okay, but Waterloo was also where the Duke of Wellington chalked up his greatest victory. So to me, hearing "Super Bowl XXXII was John Elway's Waterloo" tells me the Broncos won the game - not that they suffered a crushing defeat. Maybe I'm just the kind of guy who always sees the glass as half greener on the other side of the silver lining.

I didn't mean to write a pedantic article, but I guess I did. In any case, these kinds of verbal fumbles hurt our image and they're worth knowing about. After all, if you have a smart boss and he hears you say something like "We lost our shirt on that deal - we need an escape goat," he may just think you're the perfect goat for the job.

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