Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Put a Pin in This Synergy"

Today's throwback is from a bit over two years ago, and dealt with corporate jargon: "Put a Pin in This Synergy" 

The link,   from NPR, is still there, as of today. No idea what NPR's archiving policies are.

Sadly, despite another two years of pan(dem)ic with its much-discussed rise of work-from-home situations, corporate jargon endures. And it's likely morphed again since I wrote that entry, and since the original article's date of November 2020.

I wouldn't know, though, since I don't keep up, and articles that unironically include it get X-ed into oblivion very quickly.

I did want to touch on a few things I said back then, though:

Look, the English language isn't exactly pure as driven snow.

Not sure why I didn't mention this at the time (probably because it's irrelevant), but the cliché "pure as driven snow" deserves some attention.

Today, when we talk about the verb "drive," from which "driven" derives (see what I did there), we think of cars or trucks. When vehicles kick up clots of snow, they're about as far from pure as one can imagine without being yellow. But the concept of "driving" a car comes from the pre-vehicular practice of driving a team of horses that are pulling, say, a carriage—in which case, "driven" would still not be associated with purity.

Apparently, if my sources can be trusted, the verb "drive" has yet an older meaning, referring to windblown snow drifts, which were generally thought of as unsullied.

And yes, the word "drift" is associated with that meaning of "drive."

All of which is to say that today's corporate jargon is tomorrow's unintelligible cliché.

And finally:

Being able to complain about language changes is one of the many perks of getting older, along with joint pain and ragging on "kids these days."

Which is why I push back when someone uses "literally" as an intensifier, or "decimate" to mean anything other than "remove 1/10th of."