Word for boring conversation

Every business sector has jargon. It’s largely known that you shouldn’t use those terms much outside of that field or people won’t know what you are talking about. Beyond jargon, there are other things that people should not say if they want to reach their potential. The things we say can have a profound impact not only on those we say them to but also to ourselves.

The meeting that made my blood boil

Do you remember the moment you knew you were destined to be a successful entrepreneur? For me, it was when I was in what I call the cliché meeting.

I walked into a meeting, grabbed my cup of coffee, and looked around at my teammates. The boss wandered in and said, «All right everybody, we have to start thinking outside the box.»

I thought, «The 80s called, and they want their mantra back.»

Yes, I knew that I could communicate with more meaning than he, so my mind drifted away as I counted his catchphrases and clichés. At the end of the meeting, he said, «Thank you in advance and good luck!»

Related: Want to Improve Your Communication Skills? Stop Saying These 25 Words.

I felt my stomach roil. I was successful at holding it in. But I did blurt out, «Luck has nothing to do with it.»

I couldn’t hide my feeling of insult on that one. My team members thanked me all day for coming to the defense of their skills. I never let on that my remarks were due to my lack of control. Empty phrases make me angry; I expect better from leaders.

Words make a difference

Smart people avoid saying the wrong thing to their teams. Highly successful people know they just have to open their minds and consider the purpose behind their words. A little thought before we speak will make our words have more meaning. Plus, it will make us sound smarter.

Related: Your Words Have Impact, So Think Before You Speak

Avoid entering a conversation unless you understand what others intend to take away from the interaction. I look for what I call the «unifying vision» of everyone in the room. Once you understand the purpose that binds everyone in the conversation together, you will be able to focus on the content of the conversation. Armed with understanding, you will be less likely to say something detrimental because you will be in a focused place. You will be present.

Words and phrases to avoid

The following phrases are ones that detract from our ability to make a point, our desire to continue a productive dialogue or that may simply offend or insult the listener.

1. «I’m just saying.» This phrase is the ultimate cop-out. No matter how long you have spoken, no matter what you have said, you just reduced everything that you have offered as in «just words.»

2. «I’m entitled to my opinion.» Yes, you are. There’s no doubt about it. You are entitled to have your own opinion, but conversations or discussions about fact or occurrence. When you voice your opinion, you surrender the ability to make your point, because you have placed everyone on a defensive saying that you are not budging, and the conversation will not move.

3. «I had no choice.» We always have a choice. Even when someone says I had no choice; they made a choice. If you are involved in a meeting or discussion about that choice, you should be prepared to defend the choice rather than ask people to accept the summary conclusion as final.

4. «That’s just my two cents.» Without even knowing you, I assure you that your thoughts are worth more than two cents. Never minimize that which you have to say by putting the cliché low price on your words.

5. «I could care less.» This is one of those phrases that will shut down a conversation. You do not like it when someone doesn’t care about your thoughts, so don’t throw down this gauntlet. Besides, the use of the double negative really means that you do care, but that is not what is heard because that is not what you meant.

6. «I, personally.» Always been a pet peeve of mine because you are speaking it as you are personally speaking. We use this phrase to try to mask our feelings by saying this is what’s in me. It is your personal feeling so simply say «I» and live with what you say.

7. «Like…» I don’t imagine that this will ever leave our lexicon. It is used by people who are formulating thoughts and looking for something to say. While I guess it’s better than «um,» it sends a message that you don’t know what to say next. Think about what you are going to say before your words are spoken. There is no harm in silent thought.

8. «I Hope…» Along with «I’ll try,» is one of those phrases that set a bad tone. Subconsciously you’re telling people that you are surrendering control. It is a much stronger position to say, «I will.» Do not give yourself a subconscious «out» or cast doubt on your ability to do what you say you were going to do.

9. «It’s not my fault.» The moment this comes out you are looking for someone else at whom all can point the finger of blame. Take ownership of the situation and explain the circumstances with sufficient detail that everyone else can make a determination that you are not to blame. And, if you are to blame, own that too, and present a solution.

10. «My bad.» Okay, I just said take ownership. While this phrase does implicate that it is your fault. But it is a slang term that comes across as crass and a little street worthy. It does not come across as ownership because the frequency of the phrase in society makes the acceptance of blame seem sarcastic and trivial.

11. «I can’t.» If you say this with the meaning that you are not capable of doing something, it may be time for you to learn. But the reality is that when most people say, «I can’t,» what you are really saying is «I won’t.» Or, at least, that is what everyone else will hear. It just sends a very bad message, so get rid of it and don’t say, «I can’t get rid of it.»

12. «It’s not fair.» Whether you like it or not, the moment this phrase leaves your mouth, everyone in the room will picture a three-year-old stomping on the floor and screaming. No one ever said that life was fair. It is much better to focus on the circumstances that you deem to be unfair and explain that there is a greater workload on you, that you are being forced to do something that is beyond your means, or whatever it is it is making you feel the unfairness.

13. «That’s how we do it around here.» Yep. That will put an end to innovation and improvement. It tells everyone around you that you are not open to suggestions and new ideas. No one will aspire to be you.

14. «Please advise.» This phrase is a two-way street. It is bad when it’s used by a manager and it’s bad when it’s used by a member of her team. If you are assigning someone to do something, then be specific about what you want. If you are receiving instructions from your manager and you reply with «Please Advise,» pushing the responsibility back up the hill. These two words could be the most passive-aggressive words in any work environment.

15. «With all due respect.» This is the ugly cousin of «No offense, but…» You might as just say, «I don’t respect you and I don’t like you, but I’m going to tell you what I’m about to say.» You don’t buffer disrespect by saying your buffering disrespect.

16. «That makes no sense.» This will shut down the conversation because it either says that you don’t understand, or the other person is not making sense therefore, the negative connotation is that someone is… dare I say, stupid. Identify what doesn’t make sense and incorporate that into a question so the discussion may continue.

17. «Let’s not reinvent the wheel.» Face reality, the wheel has been re-invented thousands of times since it was first carved by a caveman. Every advancement in our society is the result of a reinvention of something somewhere. Sometimes those reinventions are bad, sometimes the reinvention is phenomenal. This phrase pre-judges every idea as bad. That presupposition will destroy innovation in its infancy.

18. «It is what it is.» I got to be honest. I don’t even know what this means. It is a trite trivial cliché that has survived far too long in society. It pretty much means… no, who am I kidding it doesn’t mean anything. It just turns people off.

19. «Let’s take this offline.» Yes, this is a cool line because it came into being during the Internet era. It sounds like you’re really hip. But it also sends as a message to everyone else in the room that something is going to happen that they are not going to be a part of it. If you want to talk to someone about something that doesn’t involve everyone else, make that clear.

20. «I hear you.» I was once asked, «What is the opposite of speaking?» I said, «listening.» My inquisitor admonished that the opposite of speaking was waiting to speak. Listening was a completely separate function. You could hear people without listening to them. It means you are ready to speak. You heard their «noise» and now it’s your turn. That is an unconscious conversation stopper.

21. «Disrupt.» When one invokes the phrase «disrupt,» it sounds cool, hip and rebellious all at the same time. While it is popular in modern culture, it sounds like change for the benefit of change without consideration of the outcome. To disrupt something is to interrupt by disturbance or drastically alter or destroy the structure of something. Pursuing a new vision is positive. But, apparently, «disrupting with a positive purpose» just doesn’t sound cool.

22. «New Normal.» This phrase used to be used effectively to describe a newly restructured business, or someone’s life after the loss of a loved one. The phrase is one that was originally intended to describe a permanent new existence. Recently, over the past few years, during the 2020 pandemic, it has been bandied about in various ways to prematurely. The future is not cast in stone. Accepting a norm too early is a concession.

23. «But…» when you were discussing something and all of a sudden you throw out a «but,» it sends a message that you are about to get to a point in your discussion that will negate everything that you have said previously. People will focus on that word, forget everything that came before, and the negative that follows the word will stay with your audience.

24. «To be honest.» Does this mean that everything you have said prior to this statement has been a lie? If everything that you have said has been true, there is no reason to insert the phrase to be honest into a discussion. Whether you intend it or not, it causes people to wonder if you have been truthful the whole time.

The old adage applies, «Say what you mean and mean what you say.» Peppering your conversation with catchphrases, clichés and copouts will not further dialogue or create clear understanding. Consider dumping the useless phases that clutter a discussion. You will maximize the impact of every word you speak, and you will sound more successful in doing it.

Author, business coach, lawyer, mentalist and motivational speaker Joe Curcillo helps companies to thrive by focusing on the idea of having a unifying vision. For more information, visit The Mind Shark.

Guest Post by Jack Milgram
Jack Milgram is a freelance writer and editor who agreed to share his words and an infographic about words with Literacy Beat. I hope you enjoy this vocabulary challenge!

Find your own vocabulary subpar? Can’t keep your audience listening to you with interest for more than two minutes? Do you use words like “nice,” “good” and “new” way too often?

Well, we might have a solution for you.

Make your first step toward improving your speech by replacing some of the words that are responsible for very boring conversations.

And you know what?

We have exactly what you need: an infographic with some super helpful synonyms to 28 dull words that overpopulate our conversations. It’s time to realize that these words have overstayed their welcome in everyday use.

Moreover, when you vary your speech, you improve your thinking. Words are our most frequently used mental tools, and the more of those you have in your vocabulary, the quicker your thinking will become.

Everything’s quite obvious when you think about it.

All those common, dull, and boring words just sit on the tip of our tongues, and using them requires no effort whatsoever. On the contrast, bringing something new into your vocabulary involves thinking quite a bit harder.

That’s another reason we’ve made this infographic. The most difficult part has already been done. All you have to do is to start including these word alternatives in your everyday life.

Scroll down and see how you can give your vocabulary a significant boost!

Meet Jack:
Jack Milgram is a writer at Custom-Writing.org. He started his freelance career when he was a student. Jack has been interested in writing since he first took pen and paper in his hands. And he never stopped writing ever after. He loves combining his job with traveling around the world.

• Connect with Jack Milgram and read more of his work:
  10 Tips for Public Speaking
  200 Powerful Words to Use Instead of “Good” [infographic]
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Filed under: digital tools, vocabulary, writing | Tagged: boring words, infographic, Milgram |

Do you just sometimes find yourself losing focus or getting detached because something is just too boring? Getting bored is one of the worst feelings you can experience because you don’t get anything, you waste time, and you wish you were just doing something else. Boredom frequently enters our lives and we just have to deal with it. Maybe try reading this list of slang words for boring may help you fight boredom. Enjoy reading!

You’re at a party. You run into someone you kind of know but not well enough to talk anything more than pleasantries with. Maybe this person also has little to no or even a bad sense of humor. There’s no way around it either: you’re going to run into them, and at this point pretending to look at your phone isn’t going to get you out of it. Thirty minutes later, and you’re still listening to them talk about the mole they had to have removed last week. In excruciating detail. And they haven’t come up for air, so you haven’t been able to get a word in. Does this sound like a familiar nightmare yet?

Getting out of boring conversations while still being polite can sometimes be tricky. When all you want to say is «I have to.. Go and do a thing…,» finessing the situation takes a little more than a Chandler Bing-style awkward getaway. Especially if you’re likely to see the person you’re escaping again or even on a regular basis. And just because a conversation is boring, it doesn’t mean the person you’re having it isn’t nice, or it isn’t someone you love. I mean, I’m not naming names, but I’ve certainly been caught in conversations with loved ones that have made me feel like I aged a year. I’m sure you have, too. Here are some ways to get out of a boring conversation politely.

1. Use The Restroom

This is so risky. If you’re at a party, the other person might say «Yeah, me too!» and follow you, stand in line with you, and continue the boring conversation with you. But it’s a pretty solid excuse to leave a conversation that’s not doing anything for you. No one ever suspects your need to urinate. It’s necessary. More necessary than being part of the conversation in fact. No hard feelings, and you get away easy. Just make sure you actually visit the restroom if it’s in the other person’s eye line, otherwise you’ll just look like kind of an ass.

2. Go Get Something, Like A Drink Or Some Food

If the glass in your hand is empty, you’re in luck. The excuse of a refill is a legitimate one in a social setting, whether you’re drinking wine or water. Likewise, if food starts going around, declare yourself starving and excuse yourself momentarily. You’ll never make it back to the conversation obviously, but that’s a natural part of parties — you get caught up in other conversations along the way, it’s just part of the social flow. Plus, you get food in this excuse. So it’s a double win for you.

3. Notice Someone Across The Room

Chances are there’s someone at the party you haven’t spoken to yet that you’d like to speak to. If you’ve been in your boring conversation for a while, it’s perfectly OK to say, «Oh there’s Tina, I’d love to say hello to her!» Again, that’s the nature of the flow of the party. In this scenario you might even invite Borey McSnoreson to join you where you can start a new, more exciting conversation with Tina.

4. Enlist A Friend

When you have a close friend nearby, they might be able to save you. Without doing anything obvious to get their attention, hopefully your friend knows you well enough to know when your brain has gone numb in conversation. I once saw a close friend at a party talking to someone I knew they found pretty boring, but who was a nice person they wouldn’t want to be rude to. So I shimmied on over and joined the conversation, changing the topic and the dynamic entirely. That’s what friends are for, and hopefully you’ve got one around to help you out.

5. Walk Away When The Other Person Brings A Third Party To The Conversation

If the person you’re talking to brings their friend into the conversation, and it’s someone you’ve never met, this is the perfect time for you to make an exit. Allow yourself to be introduced to the new person, and then politely say something like «I’ll let you guys catch up!» as you walk away. To be extra secure (they might be so nice they tell you to stay regardless), add that you’re going to check in with one of your friends at the party.

6. Use It As A Networking Opportunity

This is a great way to get out of a boring conversation at a work or professional event. If you see someone around that you’d like to meet, especially someone that might be beneficial to know for your career, ask the person you’re talking if they can introduce you. Obviously pick someone they know and can introduce you to, but you get the drift. Boring conversation over, and you’re doing some neat networking instead.

7. Check Your Phone

Let’s get this straight: don’t sit/stand around in a social situation looking at your phone. Leave your phone in your bag or coat pocket. Not only does this make you a more fun, sociable person, it also gives you a fantastic out if you’re caught in a boring conversation. You can say that you need to check in with your S.O. (if they’re not at the party), or that you’re expecting an important work email and you just need to go use your phone quickly. Don’t be quick.

8. Transition The Conversation

Getting out of a boring conversation politely doesn’t always mean leaving it. You can change the subject, or find a way to transition the conversation into something different. Look for an in, whether it’s a pause where you can start a new topic, or a current topic that you have a fun anecdote about. You can do it!

Images: jeffbergen/E+/Getty Images; Giphy (4)

When you’re trying to have a conversation with someone you just met, and the conversation is not getting off the ground, what’s a good topic or question to bring up to try to get some momentum going? Sometimes I find myself talking to people and simply not knowing what to say next, after the usual small-talk topics have been exhausted.

Thank you for your question.

When next you find yourself in this awkward spot, try a time-tested line: “I’m going to refresh my drink. May I get you anything?” Never fails. Making your way to or from the bar or the fridge, you can allow yourself to get swept up by a warmer current of chitchat and then simply drop off your interlocutor’s drink without picking up the thread. This is how to ditch a bore while earning his appreciation. And if you strike out — if your ploy doesn’t yield an upgrade — at least you and your new acquaintance will have something better to do with your mouths than to timidly grouse about the weather.

I don’t mean to issue a blanket condemnation of meteorological murmurings. One good reason to talk about the weather is that weather is sometimes bad: Shared hatred and mutual disgust make excellent crucibles of connection, as any good demagogue will tell you. Another good reason to shoot the breeze about the breeze is to take the temperature of a stranger’s temperament and to place his station by working through a classically noncontroversial topic.

The early stages of a conversation are, consciously and otherwise, about determining your interlocutor’s rank and asserting your own. This is human nature, as you will recognize if you learned the least bit of anthropology in college, whether by listening to lectures, studying your peers at room parties, or eavesdropping on visiting professors’ intrigues while working a job at the faculty club.

Entering a conversation with a stranger, one’s first impulse is to speak in a way that maximizes the potential for romantic enchantment, career advancement, status enhancement, so on. Fears and desires are evident in grammar, diction, vocabulary, and elocution, as Paul Fussell discussed in 1983’s «Class: A Guide Through the American Status System.» Dismissing Alexis de Tocqueville’s naive belief that this country’s political organization “would largely efface social distinctions in language and verbal style,” Fussell wrote:

Actually, just because the country’s a democracy, class distinctions have developed with greater rigor than elsewhere, and language, far from coalescing into one great central mass without social distinctions, has developed even more egregious class signals than anyone could have expected. There’s really no confusion in either language or society, as ordinary people here are quite aware. Interviewed by sociologists, they indicate that speech is the main way they estimate a stranger’s social class when they first encounter him.

I am going on this detour to mimic the swerve of an engaging conversationalist on a provocative tangent — and also to say that the sooner you consciously acknowledge this truth of casual conversation, the sooner you’ll make peace with it; to remind you that there are steep odds against adults carrying on certain kinds of conversations across class lines; and to remark that it is amusing, when chatting with members of the petite bourgeoisie, to stay on the lookout for the euphemisms and Europeanisms and aspirational ennoblements that distinguish what Fussell calls “the middle-class quest for grandeur and gentility.” What’s the difference between a lawyer and an attorney? The latter, introducing himself as such, believes that the extra syllable confers an extra degree of fancy-schmanciness.

May I trace a reciprocal of the tangent? (As I say—as the Encyclopédia Moderne said — “Conversation is not a regular attack on any particular point, but a ramble at hazard through a spacious garden.”) “What do you do?” is not a great question. We all resort to it, granted, and it is no longer widely considered crass and vulgar, but it’s a bit dull, and it has a way of taking the bloom off the roses in the garden.

“What do you do?” points toward an old sin of American talk. One throughline of Stephen Miller’s 2006 book «Conversation: A History of a Declining Art» concerns the dreariness of talking about work. In the middle, Miller studies Charles Dickens’ remark that the U.S. “is a place where the pleasures of conversations are rare, mainly because the ‘love of trade’ makes Americans narrowly self-interested” and also quotes Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville’s road-trip buddy, noting that “American men are occupied with but one single thing, their business.”

Near the end, Miller observes that American advice on conversation has frequently proceeded from the careerist example of Dale Carnegie’s «How to Win Friends and Influence People»: “Carnegie thinks of conversation as instrumental. The title of the book is misleading. The book is not about winning friends.”

To win a friend — or, at the very least, to gather data that will enrich your appreciation of the human comedy — you should ask something like “What are you excited about?” — which is nice and wide and cheerful. Just thinking about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs, you know.

To say, “What are you looking forward to this fall?” invites the other party to remark on enthusiasms and travel plans and hopes and dreams, and it allows him his choice of a momentous or delightfully trivial answer. He looks into the future while you look into his eyes.

It will be your duty, in this joint improvisation, to ask good follow-up questions. It will be your pleasure to reveal something of yourself — the slant of your curiosity, the cast of your mind — by drawing him out and encouraging a self-portrait.

[The] man who listens with easy attention to the saddest prosing, — who delights the speaker with the impression his words seem to produce: this man, who only throws in an assenting smile, puts a single, well-timed question, or expresses a doubt, certain of being easily removed, — is the man of real genius, a sort of nonpareil in fact, and the rarest of all apparitions in modern society.