About

Whenever people organize around a common interest, it doesn’t take long before they start speaking in shorthand. Bulky sentences are reduced to quick slang and conversations are peppered with inside jokes and references. Verbs are transformed into nouns and nouns become verbs. And then a curious thing happens—the new language actually speeds up communication and helps members of the group to quickly identify each other. A sense of solidarity and shared experience develops. All well and good, but somewhere along the way the business world took this idea and went straight off the effing rails.

Since launching, The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary has grown to become the largest collection of business jargon online. It has been used as a reference (for better or worse) in a number of ESL Business English courses and has been visited millions of times. The dictionary has been mentioned in Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, CBS News, BBC Magazine Monitor, NPR, LinkedIn blog, Mint.com blog, BNET MoneyWatch, The New Zealand Herald, Lifehacker, and others. You can also find our contributions in a business jargon column in the short-lived Project Magazine from Richard Branson.

Please enjoy the list and feel free to submit a term of your own. Our inbox is always open.