The BS Dictionary
Uncovering the Origins and True Meanings of Business Speak
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Speak for Yourself
Do you yearn for a book to disambiguate words and phrases commonly used in business settings, your workplace, and in life in general? Do you wish the kimono would open on idioms and clichés that stretch the bandwidth of understanding and make you wonder if your career is scalable? What are you really saying when you go against the grain and are aboveboard? What do you hear when your colleague wants face time or to move the needle?
The BS Dictionary: Uncovering the Origins and True Meanings of Business Speak provides the real-world definitions to about 300 of the world's most commonly-used business terms and gives you the origin story (who coined the term? when did it start to be used figuratively in the business world?) for each one. Get the language clarity you need and have fun learning the full etymology of favorite phrases. Read humorous commentary about how phrases might be misused or misunderstood.
If you are interested in language, business speak, writing, and trivia knowledge, this book is for you! Get The BS Dictionary and impress your friends with your newfound wealth of phrases and their history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anyone baffled by buzzwords or dubious about deliverables will find amusement, though perhaps not hilarity, in PR expert Wiltfong and marketing v-p Ito's look at corporate nonsense-speak. Each word or phrase is given a standard dictionary-style definition, a sardonic "BS" definition, and some background on etymology. The entries range from cranky (the BS definition of "actionable" is "literally nothing on the list of items that comes from the innovation team") to snarky (for "ghosting," "what your boss does when you ask for a raise"). The definitions should raise a knowing giggle from anyone who's had to operationalize their paradigm shift when the boss has them over a barrel, but it's hard to imagine who, with Google at their disposal, would actually need this as a working dictionary. The authors acknowledge as much in the introduction, but scoff at the variable credibility of people writing on the internet, and in any case, aim more for amusement than instruction. This is a natural gift for a newly minted MBA, or as a passive-aggressive suggestion to that friend who won't shut up about having "laser focus," but the central conceit of this gimmicky humor offering gets old fairly fast.
