In the 1990s, the American workplace is undergoing right-sizing, restructuring, downsizing, empowerment, and paradigm shifts! In other words, fewer people are attempting to do more tasks. Business buzzwords help convey ideas, issues, or responses. Business jargon is communication shorthand, but people need to correctly interpret this shorthand, which requires a common understanding. American business people too frequently assume new individuals in their organization and their professional counterparts around the world understand business jargon. This book is a practical reference for students, managers, and international business people trying to comprehend the fast-paced buzzword-laden language used by business people in the United States.
Understanding American Business Jargon
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
As he humbly admits in his preface, author Folsom is definitely not a lexicographer, so this book, which updates a 1997 edition, is not the place to look for scholarly definitions. However, Folsom's experience as a business professor lends credence to this informal and entertaining dictionary, which aims to help both American-born English speakers and English-speaking foreigners reduce communication problems.
More than 2,500 terms are defined in individual entries, which are often one or two lines and rarely more than five. For example, catch a falling knife is explained simply as "buy when the stock market is falling," and put out to pasture as "pressure someone to retire." Some definitions--and it is unclear why some and not others--are accompanied by citations to usage examples in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Maclean's. Occasionally, the author includes see also references, such as glad hand under the entry for press the flesh.
Some of the jargon explained in this source will seem self-evident to an American-born speaker. Big cheese is defined as "important person," and el jefe is defined as "the boss (Spanish), a term of respect." Other terms, such as pilot fish (meaning "junior executives who follow close behind senior management") and living dead (meaning "a company or investment that is not so successful but not in bankruptcy") are somewhat less self-explanatory.
Libraries serving advanced business students and researchers will probably find Understanding American Business Jargon a little on the light side for their needs. However, collections serving American speakers who do not live and work in a business environment, as well as nonnative speakers, will benefit from this source. Art A. Lichtenstein
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
Review
"Do you know what dead time is? Golden handcuffs? Opportunity costs? De facto? Quid pro quo? Business communication is peppered with terms and expressions whose meanings are not obvious to the uninitiated.... Many entries include an exapmple of how the term or phrase was used in an actual journal or newspaper article, which gives a real world flavor to the dictionary....A useful resource for any library." -- Choice
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