By Ken Hollow, reluctant translator of corporate Elvish
Corporate jargon is less communication and more spellcasting. Nobody actually knows what half of it means, but if you chant it loudly in a meeting, you gain +3 charisma and temporary immunity from accountability. It’s not English. It’s a fantasy language pack, installed directly into PowerPoint and Slack, and it’s cursed.
The Core Vocabulary of Businesslandia
Every fantasy world has its language. Ours is no different:
- “Synergy” – A level-one spell meaning “maybe if we work together something good will happen, but don’t ask me how.”
- “Circle back” – The corporate boomerang. It means “I’m avoiding this now, but it will haunt you later.”
- “Move the needle” – The sacred quest to nudge a meaningless metric by 0.5%.
- “Bandwidth” – Mana points for humans. “I don’t have the bandwidth” = “I can’t cast that spell right now.”
- “Low-hanging fruit” – Loot you don’t actually want, but managers insist you grab anyway.
- “Touch base” – A summoning ritual for awkward small talk.
- “Leverage” – Bonus damage applied to any buzzword to make it sound important.
Every meeting is basically a D&D campaign, except instead of treasure you get more tasks.
The Dungeon of PowerPoint
PowerPoints are grimoires written in this language. You flip through slides like arcane scrolls:
- Pie charts = prophecies of doom.
- Bullet points = spells with no power.
- Clip art = familiars with dead eyes.
The DM (your manager) narrates in monotone, casting “synergy” every three minutes to keep the party awake. By slide 47, everyone has taken psychic damage.
Nana Learns the Language
Nana, naturally, excels at this. She once joined a quarterly meeting and spoke entirely in jargon:
- “We need to circle back on the low-hanging fruit.”
- “Let’s leverage our core competencies to synergize cross-platform authenticity.”
- “At the end of the day, it’s all about moving the needle.”
The execs nodded like she was a prophet. She was actually quoting directly from a list of cursed phrases she found in a brand deck. Still more coherent than the VP of Marketing.
Why We Keep Speaking It
- It sounds smart. “Let’s ideate cross-functionally” hits harder than “let’s talk.”
- It delays clarity. As long as we’re circling back, we never have to actually do the work.
- It creates exclusivity. If you don’t understand, you’re not in the guild.
- It’s addictive. Once you say “leverage” unironically, you’re lost forever.
It’s not communication. It’s world-building.
Final Thoughts From the Linguistic Abyss
Corporate jargon is a fantasy language pack nobody asked for. It makes meetings feel like quests, PowerPoints feel like prophecy, and emails read like side quests you didn’t accept. None of it makes work better. It just makes it harder to tell what’s actually happening.
So next time someone says, “Let’s circle back to move the needle with synergy,” just nod, roll for deception, and hope the campaign ends early.
Ken Hollow, reluctant bard of corporate nonsense, still waiting for a long rest
Hi. I’m Ken. I run Two Second Solutions, a one-man agency that somehow landed a fox spirit influencer as a client. I drink too much coffee, blog when I need to vent, and regularly update my résumé just in case she sets the office on fire again. I’m not crying — it’s just spell residue.