Help! I’ve been petty-sacked for coffee-badging

Confused by the blizzard of business buzzwords, acronyms and coinages that came to the fore in 2024? It’s a jargon jungle out there but maybe this can help...

We’ve been bombarded by business buzzwords and jargon over the last 12 months. Picture: iStock

Attack’ems: Long-range missiles or Atacms (Army Tactical Missile System) made by Lockheed Martin, supplied by the US and used by Ukraine against Russia for the first time. Not to be confused with Storm Shadow missiles, made by an offshoot of BAE and also fired into Russia for the first time, which led President Putin to assert that Britain was now a legitimate target for retaliation.

Bed-rotting: Spending hours in the sack consuming fast food and doomscrolling while pondering Enshittification and Snacceleration.

A blue Windows error message caused by the CrowdStrike software update is displayed on a screen in a bus shelter in Washington on July 22. Picture: Getty Images

Blue screen of death: The blank screens seen around the world one day in July, when a supposedly routine software upgrade patch from the cybersecurity software provider CrowdStrike disabled Microsoft users around the world – paralysing airports, railway stations, banks and London City trading firms.

Brilo: Useful coinage invented by Rupert Soames, the Confederation of British Industry president, to describe companies that are “British in listing only.”

The London Stock Exchange is eager to attract more Brilos, while institutional investors are more circumspect, fearing governance standards could slip.

Shein, the Chinese retailer, is set to be a big test of investor appetite for Brilos if it pushes ahead with a London flotation next year.

Bubble-in-a-bubble: The term for overvalued global markets, according to super-bear Jeremy Grantham, who said the AI frenzy has further inflated and prolonged an already overvalued stock market.

“Waiting somewhere in the future is another July 1982 or March 2009,” he warned, referring to the low points of past stock market crashes.

An Aston Martin DB12. The car maker’s shares slumped on poor delivery numbers to China.

Cadence: Aston Martin Lagonda burbled about a “more balanced delivery cadence” back in September. Translation: it shipped fewer vehicles to China than it had hoped. The shares crashed by 25 per cent. BAT Industries started this euphemistic confusion, talking last year of “an enhanced cadence of innovation”. That sent its shares down 8 per cent.

Coffee-badging: The practice of employees entering the office turnstile for just long enough to trigger the electronic attendance record and grab a free coffee before leaving.

Co-intelligence: The potentially potent combination of human brainpower and artificial intelligence, as set out by Professor Ethan Mollick of the Wharton business school.

Comedian: Title of artwork, actually a certificate granting the owner the right to tape a banana to a wall. It changed hands at Sotheby’s for a reported $US6.2m ($10m), purchased by the crypto tycoon Justin Sun.

A woman poses for a photo in front of a poster depicting the Comedian a banana artwork bought by Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun for $10m. Picture: AFP

Compression: The erosion of wage differentials. Once used by shop stewards to justify pay demands on the factory floor but now used as much in the boardroom. AstraZeneca claimed that compression made it essential to push up the maximum pay of its chief executive Sir Pascal Soriot to £18.5m ($37.2m).

Crink: Any of four states – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – seen as increasingly hostile to western interests. We used to talk optimistically about the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Now we worry about the Crinks.

Disinflation: Decrease in the rate of inflation. Not to be confused with deflation, when prices actually fall. Economists became increasingly focused on the rate of change of the rate of change of prices this year. Clare Lombardelli, the eminent economist and deputy governor of the Bank of England, left mere mortals scratching their heads when she declared in a speech: “There are some signs that the process of wage disinflation may be slowing.” Or in plain English, wage rises are accelerating.

Doge: Department of Government Efficiency. A possible future US government department given the blessing of Donald Trump, who appointed his chief funder Elon Musk to co-head it. Musk has vowed to cut $US2 trillion from the $US6.7 trillion annual federal budget. In a sequence of events beyond parody, Doge began life as an internet meme based on the accidental misspelling of the word “dog”, gained fresh life as the name of a joke cryptocurrency backed by Musk and is now seen as a major force in Washington.

Elon Musk, right, joins Donald Trump on stage at a campaign rally in October. Picture: AFP

Eco-ception: Deception that a product or service is greener that it really is. Greenwashing is very 2023.

Enshittification: Coinage of the Canadian-born novelist Cory Doctorow to describe the slow decay of standards at social media platforms. Now used by pessimists to describe pretty much everything.

Gailification: Gentrification. The up-market bakery chain Gail’s began life in Hampstead in 2005 and now has 150 shops, with another 40 openings planned this year. It has reached as far east as Billericay in Essex and as far north as Manchester.

But at what point does saturation come when a loaf of sourdough costs £5.10 ($10.30)? Goldman Sachs is trying to find out, exploring the appetite for a new purchaser from the current owners Bain Capital and Luke Johnson. Not everyone wants a Gail’s. Some residents of the northeast London district of Walthamstow kicked up a stink, saying the chain would threaten small independent bakers.

A member of staff carries loafs of bread at Gail's bakery-and-cafe in Queen’s Park, London. Picture: Getty Images

Genny lec: General election – from the generation that gave us “cozzy livs”, for cost of living crisis.

Geofencing: The targeting of specific geographical areas by marketers. Burger King successfully used satellite technology to send targeted ads to anyone straying within 600 metres of a rival McDonald’s restaurant.

Guinea pig: Subject of an experimental product or service. Lloyds Banking Group discouraged staff from using the idiom in its inclusive language guidance because it “might not be inclusive of vegan colleagues.” See Widow.

Hush trip: An overseas holiday where the employee misleads their employer that they are working normally from home.

LTAF: Long-term asset fund, pronounced Eltaff. A new type of open-ended fund for lumpy, illiquid assets, which managers hope will address the problem of investors wanting to get their money out at a moment’s notice.

JaGUar (sic): Widely ridiculed rebranding of Jaguar.

Japanification: The economic stagnation and slump in yields that characterised Japan in the 1990s and 2000s. Analysts worry that China is entering its own version of Japanification despite Beijing’s stimulus efforts.

Limitarian: One who argues there should be maximum wealth rules alongside minimum wages. Ingrid Robeyns, a Dutch philosopher and economist, argued in a new book that no one should be allowed to amass a fortune of more than £1m.

Loud budgeting: Boasting of success in improving one’s finances on social media platforms like TikTok. Also known as extreme budgeting.

Maganomics: Trumpian economic policy. See Mercantilism.

Mercantilism: Economic policy of aiming to minimise imports and maximise exports through a mix of tariffs and belligerence. Big in the 17th and 18th centuries before globalism took over. Trump is a fan.

Ming vase: Metaphor for the “say nothing controversial” approach. Standard operating procedure for 95 per cent of listed company bosses.

Mouthfeel: The physical sensation of food in the mouth, now increasingly seen as more important than the actual taste. Tate & Lyle spent £1.4bn on CP Kelco, a producer of concoctions to make yoghurts, sauces and dressings feel creamier or more velvety on the tongue, and biscuits and snacks crunchier.

Neuro-mimic: AI trying to replicate the working of the human brain.

Oracy: Range of skills needed to speak confidently, effectively and clearly. Every bit as important as numeracy and literacy. Employers have become increasingly keen on this as they struggle to instil confidence and articulacy in silent or grunting new recruits.

Ozempic was mentioned in 26,000 press reports worldwide over the last 12 months. Picture: AFP

Ozempic: The fat jab brand that looks set to become the “Hoover” or “Biro” of our time, entering the vernacular as the most commonly used catch-all word to describe the new generation of weight-loss treatments. Ozempic was mentioned in 26,000 press reports worldwide over the last 12 months, as against 19,000 for Wegovy. Both, containing semaglutide, are made by Novo Nordisk. Eli Lilly’s two compounds Mounjaro and Zepbound scored 10,000 and 9,000 mentions respectively.

Ozempic effect: New phenomenon bemoaned by restaurateurs of diners not bothering with starters or pudding.

Petty-sacking: Finding a flimsy pretext for dismissing unwanted staff. EY was accused of petty-sacking after it caught some employees watching multiple mandatory training videos at the same time in order to meet firm-imposed quotas.

Purity: Unattainable virtue for fund managers operating in the real world. “We cannot offer purity,” the Edinburgh fund manager Baillie Gifford said in response to criticisms that it invested in fossil fuel companies. It pulled out of sponsoring the Hay Festival and nine other literary gatherings. Lead “puritan”, the novelist Richard Flanagan, refused to accept £50,000 of BG prize money until BG set out a plan to cut its oil and gas investments.

Quishing: Phishing using QR codes.

Rage-farming: Also called rage-baiting, the practice of shaping social media posts to elicit fury and increase engagement.

Resenteeism: The phenomenon of employees forced to remain in jobs they loathe while quietly seething. A subset of presenteeism.

Revolutionaries: The name for its customers used by Revolut, the edgy financial services group now valued at more than Barclays and heading for a possible flotation next year. It celebrated winning its 50-millionth “revolutionary” by putting on a performance by Charli XCX.

Rizz: Charisma in Z-speak. The electricals retailer Currys and food giant Nestle were among many corporates to try to get down with the kids through TikTok marketing campaigns studded with lingo like rizz, demure and brat.

Safety-ism: The risk-averse investment philosophy infecting the City of London and leading to a shortage of capital going into more speculative ventures, its critics say.

Social media platform Bluesky. Picture: AFP

Skeet: A posting on Bluesky, the social media refuge for those defecting from the violence, nastiness and Musk-heavy feed of X, formerly Twitter. An echo of tweet, of course.

Slop: Low-quality data generated by AI.

Snacceleration: The growing speed at which new food product trends emerge, explode in popularity and then die.

Tax gap: The difference between tax owed and tax actually paid. Grabbing that £36bn margin was the centrepiece of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’s plan to get her fiscal sums to stack up.

3-Nop: 3-nitrooxypropanol. Ingredient added to cattle feed, branded as Bovaer, to reduce planet-warming burps by cows. Farms supplying the Danish dairy company Arla began using it, triggering a belch of misinformation from conspiracy theorists and populist politicians, wrongly claiming it could be harmful to humans eating Lurpak butter.

Uninvestible: Disparaging term used by investors to justify saying no, or at least demanding sweeter terms. The damning diagnosis of Thames Water by all nine of its shareholders led to the as yet unresolved financial crisis at Britain’s largest water monopoly.

Vertical-slicing: The commendable practice, when raising cash from an investment portfolio, of selling all varieties of assets, not just the easy-to-flog, most liquid ones.

Vibecession: A downturn precipitated more by souring consumer confidence than hard economic factors. The accounting firm PwC declared Britain was in a vibecession because of “a sense of unease gripping UK consumers”.

Vreq: Voluntary requirement. Starling Bank agreed a so-called Vreq with the Financial Conduct Authority not to open any new accounts for higher-risk customers amid money laundering concerns. It then carried on anyway, opening another 54,000 because of controls branded “shockingly lax” – and earned a £29m fine.

Web3: Decentralised version of the internet, often using blockchain technology.

Widow: Another word Lloyds urged its staff not to use, despite owning the Scottish Widows brand. The bank claimed the word was “unnecessarily vivid” and might “trigger unwarranted personal memories of trauma and upsetting situations”. It suggested to its 57,000 staff that they use “separated” instead.

Zebra drinking: Alternating alcoholic drinks and soft drinks.

Zedsplaining: Patronising explanation by generation Z of events and concepts, new to them, but already well known to their parents and grandparents. The opposite of boomersplaining. Both phenomena are expected to go exponential this holiday season, wherever extended families gather.

The Times