The Top Business Buzzwords of the Year in Global English Announced
The Top Business Buzzwords of the Year in Global English Have Been Announced by the Global Language Monitor
(Media-Newswire.com) - New York April 7, 2015 -- The Global Language Monitor has released the To Business Buzzwords for Global English for 2014. “It is often noted that the world of business includes its own specialized ( and a bit mesmerizing ) vocabulary, and this can certainly be found in the English language, the business language of the planet,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor.
“The Top 50 Global Business Buzzwords of 2014 represent some six continents, which continues to confirm the ever-expanding nature of the English language. This is the second annual ranking,”
​GLM’s Word of the Year and Business Buzzwords of the Year rankings are based upon actual word usage throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.83 billion people. To qualify for these lists, the words, names, and phrases must be found globally, have a minimum of 25,000 citations. and the requisite ‘depth’ and ‘breadth’ of usage. Depth is here defined as appearing in various forms of media; breadth that they must appear world-over, not limited to a particular profession or social group or geography.
Top 50 Business Buzzwords: GLM employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time. NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 375,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge.​
Rank, Business Buzzword, Last Rank, Change, Comment
No. 1, CONTENT, Last Year 1, No Change -- Far and away the No. 1 BizBuzz leader
No. 2, NET-NET, Last Year 35, Change +35 -- Consider a sportswriter for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team -- “The net-net for the Nets was the netting of the final shot.”
No. 3, BIG DATA, Last Year 10, Change +7 -- Soon Human Knowledge will be doubling every second. ’Big’ does not begin to describe what’s coming at us.
No. 4, AT-THE-END-OF-THE-DAY, Last Year 19, Change +15 -- More likely the end of the quarter or fiscal year
No. 5, SOCIAL MEDIA, Last Year 2, Change -3 -- Reality: Social media impacts less than 15% of the Web
No. 6, OFFLINE, Last Year 15, Change +9 -- 'I’ll be offline’. The statement is meaningless unless one includes cell phones, tablets,smarty TVs, not to mention all atomic clocks.
No. 7, FACETIME, Last Year 41, Change +34 -- Before it was a product, it was a meeting with a C-Level executive.
No. 8, PING, Last Year 9, Change +1 -- High tech lingo seeping into the mainstream; now it means ‘get back to you’. Originally, a tool to send message packets to a network address to measure the time & quality of the response.
No. 9, ROCK-AND-A-HARD-PLACE, Last Year 44, Change +35 -- A supposedly intractable situation though it usually gets back on track
No. 10, WIN-WIN, Last Year 20, Change +10 Much more positive than tie-tie or lose-lose
No. 11, AS-IF-IT-WAS, Last Year 35, Change +24 -- Used some four times more than the correct, ‘as if it were’. You know, conditional voice.
No. 12, UTILIZE ( rather than use ), Last Year 7, Change -5 -- Please deflate the diction and utilize the word ‘use’.
No. 13, LITERALLY, Last Year 5, Change -8 -- Principally used in non-literal situation, eg, Literally, “an explosion of laughter”.
No. 14, ANY NOUN USED AS A VERB, Last Year 11, Change -3 -- Any noun used as a verb To concept. to ballpark, and the like ….
No. 15, GURU, Last Year, 6, Change -9 --Someone moderately skilled in a subject or particular field ( cf ‘rocket scientist’ or ‘brain surgeon’ )
No. 16, RE-PURPOSE, Last Year 42, Change +26 -- Finding a new use for an old ‘solution. Unfortunately anything thing can be re-purposed ,including your job ( or yourself ).
No. 17, ROBUST, Last Year 8, Change -9 -- Applies to oh-so-many products: software, tablets ( computer and otherwise ), coffee, perfume, mileage, and hundreds of others.
No. 18, VALUE-ADD, Last Year 38, Change +20 -- P+E+VA, where Product ( is P ) + Enhancement ( is Ε ), and Value add ( is VA ) . No. 19, TRANSPARENCY, Last Year 4, Change -15 -- Remains a goal far from corporate reality.
No. 20, SEAMLESS, Last Year 12, Change -8 -- Seldom actually seamless ( Cf Obamacare website ), often merely ‘seemless’ or meaningless.
No. 21, SUSTAINABILITY, Last Year 3, Change -18 -- No. 1 Word in 2006 when it simply confused most; now n corporate imperative.
No. 22, HASHTAG, Last Year 51, Change +29 -- The number- and pound- sign grows evermore powerful still.
No. 23, BANDWIDTH, Last Year 16, Change -7 -- Measurement of electronic communications devices to send and receive information with upper and lower limits.
No. 24, GLASS IS HALF-FULL, Last Year 40, Change +16 -- Note: Glass is half-full is used nine times more that glass is half empty ….
No. 25, PRO-ACTIVE, Last Year 22, Change -3 -- Pro-active is evidently better than amateur-active.
No. 26, QUICK-AND-DIRTY, Last Year 46, Change +20 -- Cited tens of thousands of times; we prefer ‘quick-and-clean’.
No. 27, SYNERGY, Last Year, 18, Change -9 -- The interaction of two efforts that result in a greater return than the sum of the two.
No. 28, THE CLOUD, Last Year 4, Change -14 -- Everything ( and every one ) now apparently ‘lives in the cloud’ though few remember that networking clouds pre-date the web by a decade or two.
No. 29, IN THE CLOUD, Last Year 36, Change +7 -- Yes, dwelling within the Cloud merits a special mention.
No. 30, GAME-CHANGER, Last Year 21, Change -9 -- A step below a paradigm-shift but exaggeration nonetheless.
No. 31, TOUCH BASE, Last Year 48, Change +17 -- Another baseball allusion: if you don’t actually touch the base you are ‘called out’. Cf Cricket allusions, such as using ‘sticky wicket ‘ for a quandary. . No. 32, MOVING FORWARD, Last Year 13, Change -19 -- From the actual results of all those ‘moving forwards’, moving sideways might be more appropriate.
No. 34, FUTURE PROOF, Last Year 39, Change +5 -- In reality an impossible feat because it assumes you are cognizant of future events; in Marketing, just another day of concepting.
No. 35, PUSH THE ENVELOPE, Last Year 47, Change +12 -- A phrase few actually understand; Originally a descriptor of breaking through the sound barrier by X-Series Test Pilots ( e.g., X-15 ).
No. 36, BALL PARK, Last Year 33, Change -3 -- Another name for a ‘guesstimate’.
No. 37, MULTI-TASK, Last Year 31, Change -6 -- Swapping in and out of tasks quickly is the key to multi-tasking not doing many things as once which actually decreases productivity ( as imagined by Dave Nelson and other tech industries visionaries the 1970s ).
No. 38, 110%, Last Year 30, Change -8 -- We believe it’s time to synchronize the exertion scale. As a hiring manager, how do you compare 110% from an Ivy school with an exertion level of 130% from the Big Ten?
No. 39, RESONATE, 26, Change -13 -- Produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound, belief or emotion.
No. 40, DELIVERABLE, 29, Change -11 An 'output', product, result, or outcome; a term of great flexibility.
No. 41, MONETIZE, 27, Change -14 -- The attempt to transmute Internet lead into gold.
No. 42, FLOUNDER, 34, Change -8 -- A ship might ‘founder’ along New England’s rocky coastline. Over time the act of foundering became collated with flounder the fish. Your grasp of the language is telegraphed by this confusion.
No. 43, ROCKET SCIENCE, 32, Change -11 -- One step up ( or down ) from a guru; equivalent to a Brain surgeon ).
No. 44, NEW PARADIGM, 17, Change -27 -- Revolutionary new ideas that change the then-existing worldview; think Copernicus, think Newton, think Einstein, most definitely not your next product.
No. 45, DOUBLE DOWN, 28, Change -17 -- To double an investment in an already risky proposition.
No. 46, BRAIN SURGERY, 43, Change -3 -- One step up ( or down ) from a guru; equivalent to a Rocket Scientist.
No. 47, BLEEDING EDGE, 45, Change -2 -- Leading edge of the leading edge ( top ten per cent ).
No. 48, LOW-HANGING FRUIT, 50, Change +2 -- Easy pickin’s for the sales force; unfortunately, obsolete since 2008.
No. 49, 30,000 FOOT LEVEL, 24, Change -25 -- Let’s decide if we are viewing the topic from the 30,000-, 40,000-, or 100,000 ft level. Airlines actually fly at a 35,000 ft cruise level.
No. 50, HERDING CATS, 49, Change -1 -- Used in high tech circles for several decades regarding controlling headstrong engineers, a seemingly improbable task.
No. 51, OUT-OF-THE-BOX ( experience ), 25, Change -26 -- Big move down for OOBE.
​About the Global Language Monitor In 2003, The Global Language Monitor ( GLM ) was founded in Silicon Valley by Paul J.J. Payack on the understanding that new technologies and techniques were necessary for truly understanding the world of Big Data, as it is now known. GLM provides a number of innovative products and services that utilize its ‘algorithmic services’ to help worldwide customers protect, defend and nurture their branded products and entities. Products include ‘brand audits’ to assess the current status, establish baselines, and competitive benchmarks for current intellectual assets and brands.
These services are currently provided to the Fortune 500, the Higher Education market, high technology firms, the worldwide print and electronic media, and the global fashion industry, among others.
For more information, call 1.512.815.8836, email info@LanguageMonitor.com, or visit www.LanguageMonitor.com.​ Twitter: @LanguageMonitor and @PaulJJPayack
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