When my new supervisor passed by my desk and said, “I’ll have to schedule your ‘bilateral,’ ” I nodded and assumed a look that suggested I knew what he was talking about. It took some time before I was able to deduce that this would be a one-on-one meeting with my boss.
Why didn’t he just say that? Wait, do we still say “boss?” In my new position, I was soon to realize that a knowing look, when cryptic corporate speak was heard, would be needed more often.
It wouldn’t be the last time I would feel the need for translation assistance in a series of temporary assignments after I was “let go,” or should I say “reorganized,” from my position at a nonprofit organization in 2011. As a senior communications professional, I had not expected to encounter a language barrier working at major national corporations.
So just why is there a need for using a word like “bilateral” in a new way? Why not say what you mean? I felt it was going to take extra effort on my part to keep a straight face so that I would look like I was part of this corporate language in-crowd.
Within a short time, one of my colleagues asked me if I had “bandwidth.” Thank goodness I didn’t respond with stats from my PC, or offer other technical frequency metrics. Soon enough, I was able to figure out that he was asking if I had time to help with a project. How about, “Do you have time to help?” Bandwidth is a big word around these companies. Have these words been added to the dictionary while I was out?
New words are, in fact, added to dictionaries every year. Last year, for example, selfie and hashtag became part of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary in recognition of their popular usage. And new words and slang reflecting the increasing use of technology are also added annually to the Oxford Dictionary. So I checked, and no, bandwidth is still listed as “the range of frequencies with a given band, in particular that used for transmitting a signal.”