Buzz word of the day

A buzz is a low humming sound, like the ones bees make. Lively and excited activity is also a buzz and, informally, a phone call can be called buzz too. As a slang term, a buzz is a feeling of excitement or exhilaration or of slight intoxication. As a verb, to buzz means ‘to make a buzzing sound,’ ‘to whisper or gossip,’ or, often followed by around or, in UK English, about, ‘to move busily from one place to another.’ Informally, it means ‘to call somebody on the phone.’

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The year 2022 was everything but typical in every way. No one anticipated the unsettling combination of war, rising prices, energy scarcity, and climate change. This was at a time when life was just starting to move forward after the COVID-19 epidemic.

On the other hand, 2022 has also established itself as a year of buzzwords. Here’s a Curious Times 2022 Round-Up of some of the top buzzwords of 2022.

Top 10 Buzzwords Of 2022!

Wordle

The online word puzzle game known as “Wordle” came out on top as the game that was searched for the most on Google. People get 6 opportunities to guess a new five-letter word each and every day. In addition, there are millions of users that participate in the game every single day.

Ukraine

The search term ‘Ukraine’ dominated the news search around the world. On a freezing morning in February, the nation awoke to find that its neighbour, Russia, had invaded its territory. There have been several months have passed since then. However, the conflict is not yet over.

Queen Elizabeth

The phrase “Queen Elizabeth had passed away” was one of the most often googled phrases in 2022. The British monarch who held the throne for the longest period of time and died at the age of 96 was the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

FIFA World Cup

During the FIFA World Cup, Google Search experienced its biggest volume of users in its 25-year history. In addition to Lionel Messi winning the World Cup for the first time. The 2022 tournament saw a legendary performance from Kylian Mbappe and a second-half comeback by France.

iPhone 14

In 2022, “iPhone 14” was one of the most searched terms on Google. The tech company is always very excited about a new iPhone. Even if people don’t plan to buy one, they argue a lot on social media about what new features it might or not have. 

Indian Premier League

In 2022, searches on Google connected to sports were among the most popular searches in India. The Indian Premier League (IPL) came in first place on the table that tracks “searches” for 2022.

Metaverse

With Facebook changing its name to Meta to join the Metaverse, everyone wants to know what it is. The metaverse is just a network of 3D virtual worlds that are linked together. The focus of the metaverse is on social connections and building communities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Scientists have been working on AI for a long time, and in the next few years, we’ll see more new uses. AI is the behaviour of software or machines that are smart enough to make decisions on their own and get better over time by learning from their mistakes.

Goblin mode

Oxford defines “goblin mode” as “unapologetic self-indulgent, lazy, slobby, or greedy behaviour that usually goes against social norms or expectations.” Goblin Mode is the Oxford 2022 Word of the Year.

Omicron

The World Health Organization uses the Greek alphabet to tell the different types of COVID-19 apart. In 2022 many people looked for “Omicron.” This type of COVID-19 was one of the most common ones this year.

What were your favourite buzzwords this year?

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HEALTH, FITNESS & FASHION

Breathwork

The next big thing in wellness, breathwork is founded on the idea that breathing techniques can do everything from reducing stress to improving sleep.

One part meditation and one part lamaze class, breathwork will be the part of the soon-to-be-launched MindLabs online platform, which has dubbed itself the “Peloton of mental health”.

Unlike some wellness trends, this one has some scientific backing: there is evidence that controlled breathing can do things like alter a person’s mood and boost athletic performance.

Sea greens

Kale being so very 2015, sea greens — think kelp and wakame — are the new thing in leafy greens. They pack a nutritional punch, are high in soluble fibre, and offer a hit of umami all at once.

Expect to see your favourite cafe working sea greens into the menu and your favourite celebrity name-checking them in her morning smoothie.

Face gym

This does not mean posing for a selfie in athleisure wear but refers to the growing popularity of using face rollers, massage tools and even electric stimulation to supposedly tone and tighten face muscles. The theory is a needle-free face lift, thanks to massaging techniques intended to stimulate blood circulation and collagen production, although as with many beauty treatments it is very much a caveat emptor situation.

DIY face gyming has become popular during the pandemic in countries where the prevalence of COVID-19 has made people reluctant to head to a day spa or facialist.

Reducetarian

If you are trying to eat less meat, dairy and eggs in your daily life but lack either the desire or the willpower to go full vegetarian or vegan, you are probably a reducetarian. This trend has been going on for a while now — check out the number of non-dairy milks now on offer at the average cafe — but it is not going anywhere.

Just as Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, every reducetarian may have a slightly different reason for wanting to cut back, be it about their health, the environment or concerns about animal cruelty.

Regencycore

Blame this one on the success of the Netflix series, Bridgerton, but one of the big fashion trends tipped for 2022 involves tight corsets, empire-lines and lace gloves. This is a look inspired by regency-era fashion, rather than an attempt to ape it entirely.

Keep the smelling salts handy for passers-by when you opt to debut your statement puffed sleeves and pearl choker in your local Coles.

Pickleball

Routinely described as one of the fastest growing sports of recent years, could this be the year that this mash-up of badminton, table tennis and regular tennis really breaks through in Australia?

Why not? Australia already has a Pickleball Australia Association, founded in 2020, which is a start.

The sport, which involves hitting a small ball over a low net with a paddle, can be played inside or out, only needs two to four players and takes 10-20 minutes a game, so it is not exactly a huge commitment.

TECHNOLOGY

Extended reality

Sure, you’ve heard of virtual reality and maybe you have even pretended to understand how it works but what about extended reality?

Extended reality is not so much a new concept as an umbrella term that includes virtual reality, augmented reality — think Pokemon GO —and everything in between, up to and including the much-hyped idea of the metaverse.

The potential for simulated online worlds is often associated with computer games and other forms of entertainment but this also has big implications for the way we shop and work, which could one day be online in a virtual simulated environment akin to that depicted in a lot of B-grade science-fiction movies.

NFTs

If you made it through 2021 without knowing what a non-fungible token is, : congratulations. Unfortunately, 2022 may be the year you are forced to learn about them, if only to understand roughly half the jokes on Twitter.

The short version is that NFTs are digital tokens, which can be attached to anything from an original artwork to a video, in order to claim ownership of it and trade it on the blockchain.

An NFT attached to a photo of model Emily Ratajkowski that shows her standing in front of a different Instagram photo of herself, for example, sold for nearly $200,000 last year. Confused? Think of it as bragging rights that are only worth something so long as somebody else believes the hype too.

Other celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Shawn Mendes and Kate Moss, have all got onboard the NFT train to varying degrees, although the jury may still be out on whether it represents a major shake-up to the worlds of art, music and culture or a very modern take on a pyramid scheme.

DeFi

DeFi or decentralised finance is a catch-all term for the world of finance that aims to operate outside conventional banking, using cryptocurrency.

The most famous crypto currency remains Bitcoin but there are too many to name here, although they can collectively be dubbed Altcoin. Anything relating to cryptocurrency tends to inspire passion on both sides and Hollywood actor Matt Damon has already come in for ridicule this year after the widespread distribution of an ad in which he compared investing in a cryptocurrency exchange app to some of history’s greatest achievements.

With banks around the world now jostling for a slice of the crypto market that was supposed to render them irrelevant, you are going to hear more about centralised versus decentralised finance in the year ahead.

Web 3

If Web 1 was the days of AltaVista, Napster and terrible-looking webpages of the 1990s, and Web 2 was the slicker days dominated by Google and Facebook, then Web 3 is a way to describe what is supposed to come next.

Although the term was coined to describe an online future that never arrived, these days it usually refers to an internet built on blockchain technology, data decentralisation and which — theoretically at least — aims to take power away from big tech.

Techlash

Signs of a backlash against the world’s big technology companies — think Facebook, Google and Apple — has been on the rise for years. Partly, it is about concerns over what they do with users’ data, partly it is about their social responsibility to restrict misinformation and partly it relates to issues of censorship.

Governments love to sound off about big tech, despite the fact — or perhaps because — there is not much they can do about it, so expect to see more of it this year.

The new space race

The 2022 space race is not about the Cold War-era dichotomy of the US versus the USSR but about the incredibly rich, who can afford to pay millions to go to space, versus everyone else.

Watch on for an explosion in space tourism, Elon Musk’s ambitions to make it to Mars and NASA’s plan to crash a space probe into an asteroid, which sounds a lot like it should be a Hollywood blockbuster starring Ben Affleck.

THE WORLD

The pandemic election(s)

There is a school of thought that voters are reluctant to trade in political leaders during times of crisis. Try telling that to former US president Donald Trump, who was ousted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australian voters will go to the polls on or before May 21 and it is hard to imagine the result will not be a referendum on how the Government has steered the country through COVID-19.

Further afield, international elections to watch include France, where incumbent Emmanuel Macron remains the favourite but a right-wing rival is gaining traction, and the US mid-terms.

The pandemic Olympics

The Olympic Games have always had a political element but with this year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, that will ramp up considerably.

Diplomatic boycotts have already been announced but the games will go on and there are several medal hopeful Aussies. Jarryd Hughes claimed a silver at the 2018 Games in South Korea in the snowboard cross.

Australianshave a natural affinity with the Winter Games given our near arctic climate. We understood few of the sports, like the skeleton where competitors hurtle head first down a track of ice and pray to survive, but love watching the snowcapped resort towns they always take place in on TV.

Endemic

Could this be the year that COVID-19 goes from pandemic to endemic in Australia and the rest of the western world?

While once it might have been hoped that coronavirus could go the way of smallpox or polio, it now seems increasingly likely it will become endemic. That means it will continue to circulate in the world — and there will be outbreaks in some countries, potentially seasonal — but enough people will be immune that it will become less transmissible and outbreaks will be more localised.

Content without borders

Streaming services may be to blame for keeping the world motionless on the couch for hours on end but they have also done wonders for popularising foreign language TV and movies to English-speaking audiences.

Squid Game, Lupin and Money Heist — all foreign language hits for Netflix — will be just the beginning as streaming platforms rush to capitalise on audiences’ newfound willingness to read subtitles in pursuit of a good story.

Stagflation

If 2021 was the year everyone was talking about inflation, 2022 could be the year the world wraps its head around the prospect of stagflation.

Stagflation happens when high inflation is coupled with low economic growth and often high unemployment. Labour shortages and wage price pressures in the US and the UK have raised the prospect of stagflation there.

Australia may yet dodge the global trend, given inflation is running pretty close to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s preferred band of 2-3 per cent, while the country is also less vulnerable to the short-term fluctuations in the cost of labour because in part the wage-setting process often involves multi-year agreements.

Platinum Jubilee

After a year that saw the death of Prince Philip and the departure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from British Royal Family duties, few would deny Queen Elizabeth II a chance at a knees-up.

Come June, the UK will be celebrating the Queen’s 70th year of service and hoping for a less dramatic 2022 for the beloved matriarch.

WA

RATs

Rapid antigen tests have gone from a three-word acronym few people in Australia would have heard of to this year’s must-have, making 2020’s inexplicable rush on toilet paper look positively calm.

New rules about testing requirements for COVID-19 have made RATs just about impossible to find in some States, while WA has only just agreed to lift a ban on them. Frustration at inflated prices for the tests has not yet hit WA but stand by, with pharmacists already concerned about their ability to meet demand.

Hybrid work

Predictions about the death of the office may have been overcooked but the ongoing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic means that many workers will be embracing a combination of working from home and on-site for some time to come.

Employees who have enjoyed a taste of hybrid work may push to retain it, given it offers more flexibility for working parents in particular. Employers in competitive industries may find themselves under pressure to offer hybrid work options to retain or attract workers.

Baby bust v boom

Falling birth rates across much of the western world — and China — will continue to be a talking point, with 51 countries now facing shrinking working age populations, compared to 17 in 2000.

Tesla chief executive and father-of-six Elon Musk has warned about the economic consequences, while the Chinese Government, once the architect of the country’s one-child policy, now wants its citizens to have three children for the good of the country.

Australia’s fertility rate hit a record low in 2020 of just 1.58 births per woman, although in WA there were 1300 more babes born in 2021 than 2020, suggesting the State may be bucking the trend — at least for now.

Vaxport

West Australians who want to go to the pub or see a concert this year will have to embrace the idea of vaccine passports and get used to have their proof-of-jab close to hand.

Anti-vaxxers concerned this represents a slide towards nazi Germany might want to remember that plenty of venues, from pubs to airports to primary schools, already require proof of age, identity or vaccination status.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used to impress others. Some «buzzwords» retain their true technical meaning when used in the correct contexts, for example artificial intelligence.^[1][2]
Buzzwords often originate in jargon, acronyms, or neologisms.^[3] Examples of overworked business buzzwords include synergy, vertical, dynamic, cyber and strategy.

It has been stated that businesses could not operate without buzzwords, as they are the shorthands or internal shortcuts that make perfect sense to people informed of the context.^[4] However, a useful buzzword can become co-opted into general popular speech and lose its usefulness. According to management professor Robert Kreitner, «Buzzwords are the literary equivalent of Gresham’s Law. They will drive out good ideas.»^[5]
Buzzwords, or buzz-phrases such as «all on the same page», can also be seen in business as a way to make people feel like there is a mutual understanding. As most workplaces use a specialized jargon, which could be argued is another form of buzzwords, it allows quicker communication. Indeed, many new hires feel more like «part of the team» the quicker they learn the buzzwords of their new workplace. Buzzwords permeate people’s working lives so much that many don’t realise that they are using them. The vice president of CSC Index, Rich DeVane, notes that buzzwords describe not only a trend, but also what can be considered a «ticket of entry» with regards to being considered as a successful organization – «What people find tiresome is each consulting firm’s attempt to put a different spin on it. That’s what gives bad information.»^[6]

Buzzwords also feature prominently in politics, where they can result in a process which «privileges rhetoric over reality, producing policies that are ‘operationalized’ first and only ‘conceptualized’ at a later date». The resulting political speech is known for «eschewing reasoned debate (as characterized by the use of evidence and structured argument), instead employing language exclusively for the purposes of control and manipulation».^[7]

Definition[edit]

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a buzzword (hyphenating the term as buzz-word) as a slogan, or as a fashionable piece of jargon: a chic, fashionable, voguish, trendy word a la mode.

It has been asserted that buzzwords do not simply appear, they are created by a group of people working within a business as a means to generate hype.^[8] Buzzwords are most closely associated with management and have become the vocabulary that is known as «management speak»: Using a pompous or magisterial term, of or relating to a particular subject employed to impress those outside of the field of expertise.

It could also be called buzz phrase or loaded word.^[9]

What this means is that when a manager uses a said buzzword, most other people do not hear the meaning, and instead just see it as a buzzword. However it has been said that buzzwords are almost a «necessary evil» of management, as a way to inspire their team, but also stroke their own egos.^[10] With that being said, a buzzword is not necessarily a bad thing, as many disciplines thrive with the introduction of new terms which can be called buzzwords. These can also cross over into pop culture and indeed even into everyday life.^[8] With media channels now operating through many media, such as television, radio, print and increasingly digital (especially with the rise of social media), a «buzzword» can catch on and rapidly be adapted through the world.

Origin[edit]

The origin of buzzwords can be seen in Hallgren & Weiss (1946) as coming from business students studying at Harvard University as a way to help them gain better results from their studies. Such language terms were collated and then became what is known today as «buzzwords». During the early years of buzzwords, buzzwords were used by students as a means to enable them to quickly recall items of importance. As an example, «If his analysis does not highlight the most important problems he has ‘poor focus’, and if he fails to emphasize important recommendations he will be accused of ‘tinkering’. If the sequence for the ‘implementation’ of the recommendations is not good it is a matter of ‘poor timing’. To succeed, the student must ‘get on top of the problem’. He must ‘hit the problem’ and not ‘shadow box’ it. If he cannot do these things he might just as well ‘turn in his suit'».^[11]

Students have used many different buzzwords to describe the situation that they are in, and how this might affect a moment in their everyday life. From studying these business students, Hallgren & Weiss (1946) noticed that business students could speak with apparent authority. It also seemed as if using the right buzzword was more important than what the student came up with as an answer. Buzzwords have a strong influence on business culture and are commonly used in business speak.

In popular culture[edit]

Jon Keegan of the Wall Street Journal has published a Business Buzzwords Generator, which allows readers to use a randomizer to assemble «meaningless business phrases using overused business buzzwords» – for example, «This product will incentivize big data and demonstrate innovative performance in the playing field.»^[12]

Forbes hosts an annual «Jargon Madness» game, in which 32 of «corporate America’s most insufferable expressions» are played off against each other in a bracketed, basketball-style tournament to determine the buzzword of the year.^[13]

LinkedIn publishes an annual list of buzzwords to avoid in creating résumés (British English: CVs) – «trite, empty words that may sound good to your ear but say almost nothing». The 2014 list: motivated, passionate, creative, driven, extensive experience, responsible, strategic, track record, organizational, and expert.^[14]

When people are approaching a meeting where they expect the presenters to use many buzzwords, they may prepare a game of buzzword bingo, where players score points each time a particular buzzword is used.^[15]

Patch Products has published a board game called Buzz Word.^[16]

The «Weird Al» Yankovic album Mandatory Fun contains the song «Mission Statement», which is a long list of essentially meaningless buzzwords.^[17]

Examples[edit]

General conversation[edit]

Education[edit]

{{Columns-list|colwidth=15em|

• Accountable talk^[37]
• Higher-order thinking^[38]
• Run like a business^[39]
• Student engagement^[40][41][42]

Business, sales and marketing[edit]

Science and technology[edit]

Politics and current affairs[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

• Cluley, Robert (11 January 2013). «What Makes a Management Buzzword Buzz?». Organization Studies. 34: 33–43. doi:10.1177/0170840612464750. S2CID 143649572.
• Collins, David (2000). Management Fads and Buzzwords: Critical-Practical Perspectives. Psychology Press.
• Hallgren, F. M.; Weiss, H. (1946). «‘Buzz words’ at the ‘B School’«. American Speech.
• Loughlin, Michael (May 2002). «On the buzzword approach to policy formation». Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. 8 (2): 229–242. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2753.2002.00361.x. PMID 12180370.

Further reading[edit]

• Negus, K.; Pickering, M. (2004). Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. SAGE Publications.
• Godin, B. (2006). «The Knowledge-based Economy: Conceptual Framework or Buzzword?». The Journal of Technology Transfer. 31 (1): 17–30. doi:10.1007/s10961-005-5010-x. S2CID 154304268.

External links[edit]