My digital marketing team who are fab by the way! Helpfully every month give me blog titles which I then go off and attempt to write. Madly it works mostly although occasionally it does feel like an english class when I was at school with the title given to you and the word discuss at the end.
I was writing another blog about my reflections of 2020. When I got to thinking about how the language of business, and with that acceptable practices have changed over the last eight months with the onset of the pandemic. It’s great to see that the phrase working from home is now widely accepted by all businesses and not seen in the context of a cheeky day off as it was perceived a few year ago. Likewise. that ‘childcare issues’ are not seen as an inhibitor to career development nor lead to the historic groaning in some people. We hear ‘post COVID-19’ a lot. I personally refuse to use it because sadly, I don’t believe we are, for us and the businesses we help they are very much still in the middle of it and some fighting for survival.
Two online meetings today had me thinking about new business phrases, which have emerged since we moved to an online culture. Phrases such as ‘you are on mute’ continue to make me smile and I hope when we meet face to face it may still be acceptable to mute people when needed. Who knew that ‘legacy hand’ would be a thing, used to describe when someone puts their virtual hand up on screen, and forgets to take it off the screen. Another favourite ‘we can only see your chin/s’ when one person has still not figured out their camera angles, and my all time favourite where are you? Which leaves me with a mental image ofa zoom séance and Ouija board.
In 2018 the Oxford English dictionary named toxic as the word of the year, and in 2019 climate emergency was the word of the year. A recent article in November stated that the Oxford English dictionary has chosen not to name a ‘word of the year’. It described 2020 as the year which cannot be accommodated in one single word. I am sure like me you could beg to differ, crap and disappointing spring to my mind but I will leave you with your own thoughts on that.
I also read an online article about 12 new words which have entered the dictionary some made me laugh out loud. I have posted the link if you need a lift, and look at MacGyver think we all know one of those. Here are three that made me smile!
Manspreading – used to identify a public transport commuter attempt to increase the space available to them. In my time I have pocket dialled people on numerous occasions, I am not sure that I will ever be owning up to butt-dialling for when that pesky smartphone is in your back pocket.
There is a great new word which supports equality and a fairer society, Mx said as mix or mux by the way, this is one we all need to be familiar with for a person who prefers not to be identified by their gender or is gender fluid.
There are also other phrases, which I think have had an enormous impact on the way we work, we talk now about self-care and well-being, and it no longer comes across as disingenuous or insincere but instead are genuine phrases with no stigma attached. I cannot end this article without mentioning mental health as both a word and an issue. I have recently seen some brave posts on Linked in whereby business owners have genuinely opened about the impact of the pandemic on their mental health. This is good news and a new word I hope we will continue to use once this is truly a post COVID-19 world!
As mentioned earlier if you want to smile then look at the 12 new words.
https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/language/12-brand-new-english-words/
