INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY

Essential additions for the workplace vocabulary (some old, some new):
BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.

SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have 2 children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney.

SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the **** out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.

OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.

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The Washington Post's 'Style Invitational' asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.



Here are some recent winners:

INTAXICATION: euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

REINTARNATION: coming back to life as a hillbilly.

FOREPLOY: any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

GIRAFFITI: vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

SARCHASM: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


HIPATITIS: terminal coolness.

OSTEOPORNOSIS: a degenerate disease
(this one got extra credit).

KARMAGEDDON: It's, like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's, like, a serious bummer.

GLIBIDO: All talk and no action.

DOPELER EFFECT: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

And, the pick of the literature:

IGNORANUS: a person who is both stupid and an asshole.