Linguists recently identified around 20 words still doing the rounds today that were being uttered as many as 15,000 years ago. They included ‘spit’, ‘worm’ and ‘mother’.
‘Learnings’, ’empowerment’ and ‘monetise’ weren’t on the list. But these are such sturdy, evocative and indispensible words that I have no doubt they’ll be around 15 millenia hence. This got me thinking about what words not yet in the dictionary that I hope will be getting verbally lobbed across offices and work sites thousands of years from now. Here are a few:
Upthink (verb, noun)
To come up with a better idea than one previously expounded.
This isn’t up to your usual standard; I need you to seriously upthink.
Latherature (noun)
Unexciting, overly-clear words enhanced with vigorous rubbing so that they become fun, frothy and opaque.
Why give our website visitors copy when we can give them latherature?
Moneyastic (adjective)
Dedicated wholeheartedly – one might say religiously – to the pursuit of higher profit margins.
As a team going forward, we need to be more agile and moneyastic.
Twork (verb)
To undertake a professional activity while squatting slightly and gyrating, with the aim of bringing attention to the buttocks.
Her tworking improved office morale but lowered productivity.
Solutionise (verb)
Solve.
Let’s solutionise the issue of declining sales of our liquid thirst solution by generating more optimal marketing strategies.
Premimum (noun)
A mother with a great deal of disposable income.
We need to pitch our latherature at the premimum demographic.
Squidink (verb)
To fill the market with a confusing dark cloud so as to escape from a difficult corporate situation.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. OK. Let’s just squidink now and solutionise the issue later.
Vive le merde de taureau.
Got some of your own? Post them as a comment below.
An edited version of this article first appeared in the MyCareer section of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. You can read Benign to Five in those papers every Saturday.
Vestiginate
Make out that traces of “olde worlde charm” in an object or situation are actually romantic, ‘bespoke’ and ‘authentic’, instead of just faded lettering, op shop gleanings and gran’s chuck-out pile.
Prolirium
To market a product to the point of hyper frenzy. Buyer has no use for product and often left clueless to why they bought it. Loved by fast food outlets. Product also has catchy and/or annoying made up names.
EG:
Farmer 1: “I just signed up for a Rabbit Supabooster 3000”
Farmer 2: “What’s that?”
Dairy Farmer 1: “I have no idea. I think it’s pregnant rabbits for my farm.”
good article, thank you