Thread for words you never bothered to look up & one day you realized "I still don't know what that means"

haha sorry, I could throw daggers at the computer profession as well but instead of being funny it would just be sad and pathetic

"shop talk" >>> technical argot >>> lingo >>>>>>>>> jargon

by the way, I never knew what excelsior was until I came here, and even now I'm still mystified as to why it means what it currently means on this board

itt...wood shavings

i really, really love listening to professionals talkin in their secret pro twin talk

hantavirus intrauterine diuretically excreted relapse emissions, apparently

'quincunx'

i love acronyms

whoah had no idea about excelsior---always associated it with stan lee, tbh

language evolves because people want to express things easily. people who are engaged in a specific activity necessarily end up in their own linguistic sub-world. i don't think anyone comes up with jargon for the hell of it.

excelsior means higher and somebody used to shout it on a mtn? r something, dunno why it means what it means on ilx either

"excelsior" as used on this board means "that witty bon-mot so amused me that I spat tea onto my keyboard and shorted it out, giving myself enough of a shock in the process that I have also soiled myself and now have to explain to my boss why I need to buy emergency underwear and pants in the middle of the day without also tipping him/her to the fact that I waste all day making jokes on the internet instead of doing what they're paying me for"

idiolectal looool xenocentrism

Excelsior: also the motto of NY.

i don't think anyone comes up with jargon for the hell of it.

probably not, but some jargon can be used to conceal meaning from the uninitiated

language evolves because people wanna talk about the same shit in a different way

and i'm trying to think of an example of jargon that makes meaning "easier" for all involved

this thread is very informative btw

probably not, but some jargon can be used to conceal meaning from the uninitiated

boo hoo!

I think you meant "blood diamonds"

also, annoying abbreviations aside, i love the precision of medical language, even if it is dense. kinda have to walk a fine line between colloquial explanations and high-test medicalese, though, when telling patients stuff, i think---some ppl hear plain talk and think yr a quack (cf Louis CK's bit on "head full of cancer"), others hear impenetrable lingo and think yr a hoity-toity know-it-all a-hole

eh i think a lot of the time jargon comes from trying to have a word that more narrowly means something than its synonym but without partic baggage from other contexts that those synonyms are also used in that might confuse what u r talking abt.

american military pentagonese is the worst, full of wtf acronyms for scary weapons and strategies

interestingly enough, I think the density caused by the precision of medical language (which I also think is awesome) is a direct causal influence on its propensity towards acronyms (which I find kind of funny)

xp: oh yeah, nobody acronyms like the military, although there I can see a stronger reason for speaking in obfuscatory terms as it's basically like training your force to speak in cyphers

"jargon," to me, seems almost necessarily tied to obfuscation. like, it's a sort of code-switching that happens when some subset of ppl in the room want to have a conversation unencumbered by deference to ppl not in the know. or when they want to get "credit" for relaying information to someone (in the most precise way possible!) while knowing full well that the exact opposite has happened.

"lingo" or "shop-talk" is just the natural evolution of a profession's conversations with itself. it's basically just slang, but it enjoys a little more respect because its practitioners, you know, have jobs.

I remember finding out what 'two-tap' means in the context of the military and being disgusted by the bro-iness of it all

FUGAZI

The most impenetrable jargon I've ever encountered is poker jargon.

so jargon is annoying, but lingo, technical terms and shop talk are good, even thought they're the same thing

vernacular >>> argot >>> jargon >>> lingo

also I was just fkn waiting for nakhchivan to find this thread, goddamn

the third definition of "jargon" on MW is amazing:

obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words

"jargon," to me, seems almost necessarily tied to obfuscation. like, it's a sort of code-switching that happens when some subset of ppl in the room want to have a conversation unencumbered by deference to ppl not in the know. or when they want to get "credit" for relaying information to someone (in the most precise way possible!) while knowing full well that the exact opposite has happened.

this is why i don't rly think of medical language as jargon, it's sort of unavoidable that science needs acronyms and neologisms whereas marketing probably doesn't

exactly--i'll take medical jargon over business jargon any day of the week

both of those jargons should be in quotes

business jargon is used to justify the speaker's fukkin existence, imo (see also the shamelessly self-aggrandizing (!) language deployed by the "design community"). most other jargon is used to streamline conversation and, also imo, deliberately exclude non-practitioners.

i dunno, business jargon doesn't really bother me either, anymore. it's all meant to express something. medicine has its own very specific technical-expression needs and so the language follows. business has more social information that people want to get across -- mostly saying-without-saying kind of bs -- alongside whatever factual or technical thing is being communicated. that's fine.

business has more social information that people want to get across -- mostly saying-without-saying kind of bs -- alongside whatever factual or technical thing is being communicated. that's fine.

bs! exactly.

xp yeah I agree with that goole - that's some nice blue-sky thinkin you're generating

i mean yeah, i find the whole thing hateful and abusive of the King's English and all, but i've never had to corral a bunch of people who don't care or flat out don't like each other to make something that nobody on earth really cares about, for money, and that's basically the world of quote-unquote productive enterprise. no wonder the language gets mangled.

i have been told to "action this going forward" by someone who meant "do this now".

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

there ya go. bullshit!

ha i guess i'm lucky enough to have avoided that kind of heavy businessese so far

distinction of jargon from technical language, no? (fuckin many xposts) altho I'm stupid enough to think that what even many of the wackier cont. phil. folks are doing could be described as technical writing.

poisonouse

I looked this up. Ought've read next post.

dude i am telling you the shit that people will say when they are trying to explain to a client why they made a logo/layout look a certain way (ie why it cost so much $$$$) would make you self-harm

yeah well people sure can get lost in their own world, especially when they think they ought to be paid. that's the danger i guess, jargon insulates you from thinking, rather than speeding up the process. and when you hit a difficult spot, it's like a panic button that doesn't do anything anymore. "b-but i'm LEVERAGING here"

patients would ask me to take 'em on smoke break and I'd be like "ahora no, estoy muy preocupado"

lmao this is awesome

"Action this going forward" sounds like the birth of a new language.

As in the syntax starting to tear completely away from standard English.

'action it going forward year on year' to give it it's full due.