Fashionable Trends in English New Names / Trendy Words / Stange Business Language

Finding Names for New Things

With the exponential growth of developments in technology, the creation of new words, mainly nouns and verbs, is lagging sadly behind.
It was comparatively easy to find meaningful words as long as basically new inventions had to be named. Latin or Greek roots provided all that was needed. For example, let's assume that you have created a device capable of measuring humidity over a distance. You wouldn't hesitate to call it a telehygrometer. But the accelerated introduction of new technology has far outgrown the availability even of word combinations, particularly in the area of informatics.

So what have we come up with to cover all these new terms? Here is my complaint: Nothing has been found. No Latin/Greek roots, no new combination of syllables.
What is now en vogue is a method bereft of all fantasy, a simplistic, easy way out, so to speak and one prone to confusion on top of it.
It consists of borrowing words from unrelated fields and using them in a different context. Sometimes a lot of imagination has to be used in order to find any connection between the two meanings, sometimes there is none at all. The world of computers is swarming with examples:
Assistant, Client, Clip, Editor, Engine, Export, Finder, Firewall, Flame, Fork, Glossary, Host, Icon, Import, install, Library, loading, Menu, Mouse, Notebook, Palette, Plug-in, Port, posting, Preferences, scanning, Script, Server, Suitcase, support, surfing, Template, Thread, Tool, Virus, Window
are only a few of the generic names taken from unrelated fields and carried to a different meaning. They make sense only if you know in the first place that the current topic is computers. To use this method of inventing new meanings for old words, they need a "tag" to be understood. The tag means that, along with a word, you must now additionally remember the field the word belongs to.
"He went through the menu" no longer tells you what happens, unless you know the actor is either in a restaurant or in front of a PC.
Well, at least by accepting this development, we make it easier on the people faced with finding names for new items in the field of informatics. It means less strain to their phantasy.

The main culprit in the destruction of our planet's protective ozone layer is known as a group of chemicals called the FCHCs. Now there's a monster of a word-creation! Fluoro-chloro-hydrocarbons. Whoever first coined this tongue-twister must have overlooked that fluorine, chlorine and bromine already have a collective term: halogens! So why not halogen-hydrocarbons?

"Trendy" Words

I am constantly wondering about by WHOM, WHERE, WHEN and WHY well-known terms are suddenly replaced by new ones, becoming old-fashioned in the process.

For example, "background" is now "backdrop".

Strange Business Semantics

It has become fashionable to speak of a "solution" rather than a product. Advertising copywriters have probably found this to be a word-saver, as it implies the product solves a problem. What if the customer doesn't feel he has a problem when he's simply looking for a new product? We all know the notorious word-savers from creations formulated to look like a sentence: "Because Ajax goes further." with a period after a non-sentence. Another inexplicable fashion is in sentences like: "The single most important word in your career is hired" How does the meaning of that phrase change if you omit the fashion word single? I have no idea. Marketing people, no doubt have long realised that their customers want to be met as induviduals and as human beings. Not so the terminology in their own billing department. To them a customer is an "account" as in "key account". Dollars and cents replacing human beings! Another strange development, introduced about 15 years ago mainly in American English, is that products are no longer produced - they are "shipped". The products themselves have become "shipments". Who induces changes like these and by what mechanism do they slip into general use?

Strange Business Semantics

It has become fashionable to speak of a "solution" rather than a product. Advertising copywriters have probably found this a word-saver, as it implies the product solves a problem. What if the customer doesn't feel he has a problem when he's simply looking for a new product? We all know the notorious word-savers from creations like: "Because Ajax goes further." with a period after a non-sentence.

Another inexplicable fashion is in sentences like:

"The single most important word in your career is hired" How does the meaning of that phrase change if you omit the fashion word single? I have no idea.

Marketing people, no doubt have long realised that their customers want to be met as induviduals and as human beings. Not so the terminology in their own billing department.
To them a customer is an "account" as in "key account". Dollars and cents replacing human beings!

Another strange development, introduced about 15 years ago mainly in American English, is that products are no longer produced - they are "shipped". The products themselves have become "shipments". Who induces changes like these and by what mechanism do they slip into general use?

Have you noticed how often, to reward you for buying their goods, merchandisers throw in a"free gift". What on earth is that supposed to mean? Are there any gifts out there that you have to pay for?

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