Miscellaneous Jargon
We’ve had lots on bad business jargon in this space, but other fields of endeavour have also been polluting the language.
Surface
This is from the world of technology, a jargon-generator if ever there was one.
As in This AI solution will surface all the relevant case law.
Please, techies, stop calling every product or service a solution for one thing; but also, stop using the verb surface in this way.
Things surface, but one does not generally surface things. Here, it means nothing more than plain old find.
Just say that.
Transparency
Blame NGOs and civil servants for this one, I think.
It was once a vivid metaphor to describe a refreshing new approach to government (or business, or what have you) that has nothing to hide.
It’s tired now (1,579,993 hits on the Government of Canada website!) – and in this new world of big data, we are all probably sceptical of the claim anyway.
Why not say openness, candour or even honesty?
But perhaps that is the point: things aren’t hidden, exactly, but do they fall somewhere short of complete disclosure?
Wellness
If my hunch about transparency being almost-but-not-quite-honesty is correct, wellness is definitely along the same lines.
It isn’t the same as health, with which it is often twinned but thereby juxtaposed: see, for example, https://www.studentlife.utoronto.ca/hwc/contact-us
Promoters of wellness may say the concept is meant to seem wider and more holistic than health (holistic being a New Age sort of word from the 1930s that I don’t much like either).
I suspect the underlying rationale is that wellness is often the domain of the unlicensed; and the standard by which it is assessed is more subjective, more nebulous.
And therefore intended to be less susceptible to litigation?
Start the discussion!