06 June 2011

Mala-props

I have had a lot of run-ins with odd language in the office setting. Some words that pass for words in Cubicle America are in fact not words, but abominations; some are merely amusing and not horrible. But nothing beats the meeting I had today when someone said, "I didn't want everyone to feel like, 'Oh no, the sink is shipping!'"

If any of you have artistic talent, I think a drawing of this would make a great Threadless design, and I would happily be its mascot.

2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

So one word I never heard before grad school is "quantitation", and, as a result, its verb "quantitate". No, I have no idea why we can't just say "quantification" and "quantify".

Also, an object of debate: what do you say when a pathway is no longer regulated correctly? I say it should be "dysregulated", clearly: but I've also heard "misregulated", and, very commonly, "deregulated" (which just sounds like libertarianism to me).

Ellen said...

I don't know from pathways... Dysregulated or misregulated seem more correct, from this layperson's perspective.

I'm afraid "quantitation" and "quantitate" would really catch on around here. It could be the "learnings" of 2011! (i.e. instead of "Let's talk about the things we learned from this project" it would be "Let's talk about the key learnings from this project.")