Slips of the tongue, er, keyboard, and other oddball phrases.

A recent mass email from a jobbing board called USAJOBS warned subscribers about malicious software that had been used to gain unauthorized access to the Monster.com resume database to steal the contact information of job seekers.  The email asked users to “remain alert for counterfeit “phishing” emails that may appear to come from Monster.com.”  Now I ask myself, how do I differentiate these fake phishing emails from the authentic phishing emails? 

Yet another email from a marketing newsletter advised address “customer pain points.”  Ouch, jargon hurts.  I read that the marketing buzzword “solutions” has been requested to be retired.  I wonder what Assurant Solutions thinks about that?  This one is perhaps to the point, “fuzzword” as one “having an aura of a new, more exciting reality, but one that has no basis in the real world.” or alternatively “a word or phrase that is deliberately confusing or euphemistic”.

Here’s a fun new word, “typosquatters,” who are unscrupulous people who take URLs designed to take advantage of a mistyped URLs when inputting a website address into a browser.  And then there’s the dreaded “spim,” or instant message spam.  The digital age also has spawned smexting, which is “sending text messages while standing outside on a smoking break.”

Well, for all their merits or demerits, I personally find jargon a lot more exciting than clichés such as “too many chiefs, not enough indians,” though when they’re fresh, they are refreshing as in “cast in warm Jello: (a  decision not yet made) or “open the kimono” which is to divulge detailed information about one’s business.