Glossary of Corporate-Speak for College Grads

Introduction

Lately it has occurred to me, amidst all the bad news about the job market, that it’s still technically possible for young college grads to land a spot in corporate America. Instead of bemoaning the loss of entry-level jobs to AI—a topic that has already received plenty of attention—I figured I’d help out those who have been hired, who are probably rather mystified by all the corporate jargon.

[Art by ChatGPT. No rights reserved.]

The glossary

AI (artificial intelligence): Of course we all know what this is, but it’s useful to define it in the specific context of the white-collar workforce: to wit, AI is the software capability that is purportedly rendering humans increasingly unnecessary. That you, recent college grad, have landed a job demonstrates that your new employer believes you possess capabilities that AI hasn’t developed—yet.

Alignment: The state of a company when all the stakeholders (e.g., Sales, Finance, Marketing, Engineering) are working well together toward the same goals. You will generally encounter this term when there is an alignment gap, that being a disconnect between what leadership is prioritizing and what employees are doing day-to-day. This could signal trouble in the form of a reorg, which can cause distraction to say the least.

AOP (annual operating plan): This is a comprehensive 12-month roadmap for how the company will turn its long-term strategic goals into specific targets, usually financial, for the coming year. It shouldn’t directly concern a new hire like you, other than to recognize that, in keeping with the adage “man plans, God laughs,” these plans can and do fail to come to fruition, which in the modern cutthroat realm can lead to swift and often severe consequences.

ATS (applicant tracking system): If you managed to get a job, you’re probably well versed with this recruiting tool, which is essentially a bot that screens résumés so humans don’t have to. Since it lacks the acumen of a human who can discern subtleties, such as a candidate’s rise through the ranks of a company or industry, it is basically screening for skills—that is, buzzwords—on the assumption that recruiting an intelligent, hardworking person you can train on the job is a hopelessly outdated and obsolete notion. If you possess actual intelligence and a real work ethic on top of having obviously mastered the art of listing desirable skills, you may well thrive in your new job.

Attrit: The linguistically unsupportable verb form of “attrition.” Its main purpose is to imply that downsizing at a company is the result of some natural phenomenon akin to erosion. For example, leadership might say, “The workforce is bound to attrit over time.” See also Downsizing, Rightsizing, Managed attrition

Bandwidth: Except in obvious technical contexts, this generally means an employee’s capacity for taking on more work. It is not only a handy metaphor, but adds to the overall conception of employees as basic implements of labor, in this case pipes through which you can shove workloads. See also Resource

Bias for action: A mindset that favors swift decision-making over careful, analysis-driven planning. Its popularity reflects growing impatience among executives, whose compensation is often based on the short-term results demanded by stockholders. In the current layoff-forward business climate, this bias can present serious risks to rank-and-file employees. Note that there is no longer any corresponding bias for analysis. See also Data-driven

BAU (business as usual): This is used to describe the routine, day-to-day operation of a company. In general this idea is threatening to ambitious leaders who want to “disrupt” business and turn existing models on their heads. If you find yourself using the term BAU, make sure to adopt an air of derision. See also Disrupt

Boomerang hire: This refers to the rehiring of an employee who was previously either laid off or coaxed into quitting but who the company has realized it actually needs. Oftentimes in the case of voluntary severance (i.e., a buyout), the boomerang hire is only permitted to return as a contractor, meaning the company is paying more for him or her than it used to, while he or she earns less. See VSP, Involuntary attrition, Voluntary attrition

Data driven: This refers to the idea that decisions should be made based on analyzing real-world data rather than going by somebody’s hunch. Unfortunately, the amount of available data is increasing much faster than any human’s ability to analyze it. Thus, when leadership wants to act quickly, they will lean on AI for answers, e.g., “Read these documents and advise whether I should shut down Project Unicorn.” See also Bias for action

DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion): These all add up to workplace fairness, which—though it may seem an unalloyed good thing—has become a political football. Depending on where you work, you should be careful how you use this term. The tech sector in particular is a minefield here, having tacked to the right with tech bros like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk seeking favorable treatment from the candidly anti-DEI Trump administration.

Disrupt: To use technology, especially in the absence of regulation, to upend a traditional business model and corner a market. Probably about 1% of businesses are actually in a position to disrupt anything, while about 99% only pretend they can. Watch out for force-fits like connected bidets or autonomous razors.

Downsizing: Euphemism for a round of layoffs. In times past, downsizing was reluctantly performed when a company was failing to produce a profit because too much money was going toward salaries. Oddly, the current fashion is for companies that are producing record profits to downsize anyway, just to show off.

EAP (employee assistance program): This is a type of voluntary intervention program designed to help employees cope with the mental health problems caused by their workplace. An EAP is generally easier and less expensive for corporations than treating employees well, and is useful in keeping them from harming themselves and/or becoming less productive.

Efficiency: In Corporate-speak this is generally used as a euphemism for layoffs, and may even be used to indicate a person laid off, as in “We are forecasting about 3,000 efficiencies in the fourth quarter.” See also Impact, RIF, Reduction, Synergy

Flattening the organization: The strategy of reducing the number of layers of management in order to speed up decision-making and facilitate layoffs.

Follow the puck: This is a fairly meaningless bit of advice resulting from the erosion of a pithy aphorism from the hockey great Wayne Gretzky, “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” It’s a nice example of how a corporate-speak cliché can get mangled over time without losing popularity. Another example would be “peel back the onion,” which means essentially nothing but perhaps started out as something meaningful from, like, Julia Child.

Forced distribution: Also called stack ranking, this is the practice of requiring managers to categorize their employees by performance rating. It may mandate, for example, that only 10% can be “top performers,” 80% must be considered “average,” and 10% must be classified as “low performers.” Since the job market is currently so tight, and so many corporations have had massive layoffs, it’s kind of hard to believe anyone who has managed to land or keep a job is a low or even average performer. Still, that quaint notion cannot get in the way of the benefits of this practice: namely, that a company doesn’t have to give very many good raises, and can instantly lay off employees en masse by telling managers, “Jettison all your low performers.” See also Stack ranking

FTE (full-time equivalent): A unit of measurement representing the workload of a 40-hour-per-week employee. This is often used as a synonym for “employee,” to suggest that these are not so much humans as machineries of work that are essentially interchangeable, and by extension expendable. See also Resource

Ghost posting: This is a fake job posted to LinkedIn or a company’s recruiting web page, usually to create the illusion of growth or to frighten current employees into thinking their employer is seeking to replace them. Such postings cause countless hours of soul-crushingly pointless activity by job seekers. See also Requisition aging

Guidance: Refers to the predictions, aka “forward-looking statements,” that publicly traded companies make to Wall Street. If the guidance is too conservative, the stock will suffer, yet if a company realizes it won’t deliver on its guidance (i.e., “misses guidance”), it has to backtrack and “restate guidance.” This leads to severe punishment from investors, resulting invariably in layoffs. It doesn’t actually matter that the employees being laid off had nothing to do with the guidance; Wall Street tends to respond favorably to layoffs and that’s all that matters.

HR (human resources): This is the department that manages employee’s affairs beyond the recruitment phase, including “organizational health.” In theory it gives employees a way to pursue remediation in the event they are mistreated. In practice, HR employees can easily be punished by leadership for making waves, whereas rank-and-file employees cannot harm anyone in HR. For this reason, distrust of HR is commonplace if not ubiquitous.

Impact: As a verb, indicates a person was laid off, e.g., “Unfortunately, Tom has been impacted.” There is no need to say by what; staff reduction is always implied. See also Attrit, Downsizing, Efficiency, Involuntary attrition, RIF, Rightsizing, Synergy

Involuntary attrition: Euphemism for laying off employees. See also Voluntary attrition

KPI (key performance indicator): A measurable contribution to a company, the absence of which suggests that an employee is underperforming. Corporate America doesn’t seem to see any issue in pretending that all employee contributions are easily measurable. If marriage partners adopted this same mindset, divorce could be prevented only by documenting specific marital deliverables like income generated, sex acts committed, chores completed, and hours of childcare performed.

Leaning in: Generic term for actively engaging instead of stepping back or hiding out. This started out as the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg’s call to action for women to stop being reticent, but was genericized to mean “take initiative,” regardless of gender, and then further genericized to simply mean “work harder.” I suspect that this term’s popularity stems partly from the word “lean” lurking in there, implying “trim the fat,” which is to say a smaller workforce.

Managed attrition: A workforce-reduction strategy of resolving not to replace employees who leave voluntarily. A hiring freeze, especially when accompanied by unpopular changes such as eliminating perks or eschewing raises, is much easier and cheaper than laying people off. See also RTO, Voluntary attrition

Missed guidance: see Guidance

North Star metric: This is the single most important measurable result of a company’s efforts, and rather than being about the revenue received, tends to focus on what customers have gotten; e.g., Airbnb nights booked, Spotify time spent listening, WhatsApp messages sent. When a company needs to justify underpaying employee bonuses, it’s useful to have a solid-numbers goal that employees are powerless to meet, since it’s based on the whims of customers. Needless to say, this is a very northern-hemisphere-centric term. There is no southern-hemisphere equivalent, such as “Southern Cross metric.” South of the equator people still use the term “North Star metric,” which might feel a little strange, but then these people also celebrate Christmas in the summer.

OKR (objectives & key results): Similar to KPIs, except these are assigned in advance as the way an employee’s performance will be measured. These tend to be quantitative (e.g., “grow revenue 10%) and “stretch goals” meaning they’re conveniently unachievable. If you achieve 100% of your OKR, it will be deemed “not enough of a stretch” and increased for the next measurement period. The main benefits of the OKR model are, obviously, justification for underpaying bonuses and assigning a poor stack ranking. See also Forced distribution, Involuntary attrition, KPI, Stack ranking

Parking lot: This is a metaphorical space where tangential ideas introduced during a meeting are set aside for a separate discussion. It is more polite than telling a colleague to shut up. See also Take it offline, HR

Pre-wire: This is an informal discussion between two or more leaders before a formal meeting to make sure they already agree on the way forward. This prevents them from embarrassing each other during the meeting by having different strategies. It also prevents the meeting from generating friction-inducing embellishments to the existing plan, while giving non-leaders the feeling of being involved. See also Alignment

Requisition aging (aka Req aging): This is a measurement of how long a job posting has been open and unfilled. Traditionally this was a way to see if a company’s recruiter was doing a good job of finding candidates, and was an input into deciding to revise the salary offer or requirements as needed. In the modern climate, however, this metric is essentially meaningless because most reqs are fake and there is actually no job on offer. See also Ghost posting

Resource: A generic word for employee, which is used to imply that all employees are interchangeable; e.g., “We will get a resource on that task right away.” See also FTE

RIF (reduction in force): Standard term for a wave of layoffs, frequently used as a verb; e.g., “Unfortunately, Tim was the only one who understood that system and he just got RIF’d.” See also Attrit, Downsizing, Impact, Efficiency, Rightsizing, Synergy, Involuntary attrition

Rightsizing: This is just a euphemism for downsizing, emphasizing that if you don’t like it, you’re simply wrong. See also Downsizing

RTO (return to office): This refers to the growing practice of companies requiring teleworkers to return to offices despite widespread acknowledgement that remote work is highly effective. There is a generally accepted theory that RTO mandates are imposed solely to erode employee morale as part of a managed attrition strategy. See also Managed attrition, Voluntary attrition

Skip-level: This is a meeting with your boss’s boss, so that he or she can get candid feedback about the health of the team and the effectiveness of middle management. Of course, you need to be very careful about just how candid to be, and channel your inner Dirty Harry by asking yourself, “Do I feel lucky today?”

Stack ranking: See Forced distribution

Synergy: This formerly described the way in which partnerships or mergers could deliver more value than the sum of their parts, but has lately evolved to simply mean layoffs, and usually indicate a person laid off, as in “We are forecasting about 3,000 synergies in the fourth quarter.” See also Downsizing, Efficiency, Impact, RIF, Reduction, Rightsizing

Take it offline: This is a way, during a meeting, to table a side discussion. It can be confusing because it suggests data network connectivity but is actually totally unrelated to being online or not. What does it mean to be “offline” when so many meetings are conducted via videoconference? Don’t overthink it. See also Parking lot

Ventilate: To lay off employees. This term suggests that downsizing is required because the workplace is being stifled by too many people. Leadership might say something like, “It’s no secret this workforce needs to be ventilated.”

Voluntary attrition: This is when employees leave a company of their own volition. Quite often they are either nudged along with unpopular changes (e.g., lack of raises, RTO mandates), or offered an attractive severance package. In the past, HR would analyze voluntary attrition levels as a way to measure company health and morale, but in the modern workplace it is widely considered the desired outcome of a well-played rightsizing strategy. In other words, practically a gift. See also Attrit, Managed attrition, Rightsizing, RTO, VSP

VSP (voluntary severance program): Also referred to as “buyout,” this can be an attractive alternative to a RIF, because it lets a company save face while downsizing. With a VSP, a company pays a severance that is generally better than what an employee would get if laid off, and is often tied to years of service, meaning the employees with the most tenure have the most to gain from it. It’s also particularly attractive to top performers who know they can find employment elsewhere, vs. the deadwood the company really hopes to lose. However, to the extent those left behind by a VSP are ill-equipped to cope, this strategy fits in nicely with subsequent managed attrition programs. See also Attrit, Boomerang hire, Downsizing, Efficiency, Impact, Managed attrition, RIF, Rightsizing, Synergy

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Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

Family Shibboleths: a Glossary of Albert-isms

Last week I hosted my mom, two brothers, assorted nieces, and a nephew for Thanksgiving. My niece L— brought this custom-made Bingo card:

(A little explanation: CAlbert means a California Albert; WAlberts are the Washington state Alberts; and the W—s are other relatives from my mother’s side that came for lunch the next day.)

I dig this family Bingo concept. It’s a nice way to celebrate the little idiosyncrasies and oddities that make a family feel close. We didn’t actually compete at family Bingo; that would have required fourteen unique cards and people would have had to carry them around the whole time. Instead we just had the one card, posted to the fridge. As you can see, we fell just short of getting a complete blackout.

I think there’s room to refine this game and make it a tradition. First, we could have a card for each person, up on the fridge, and anyone could mark things off (that’s right—helping one another try to win). Second, we could improve on what goes in the squares. “Cats are unusually mean,” for example, could never apply in this household, because a) we have just one cat, and b) what counts as “unusually” mean, given that all cats are asocial predatory beasts? 

Meanwhile, “NPR plays in the background” could apply to many a Bay Area home, but not mine—I dislike talk radio of any kind and there’d be no way to hear it over the din of this many Alberts anyway. 

(As for the final missing square, “Someone spews their drink,” apparently the only reason this didn’t happen was that my nephew Peter couldn’t come; I’m told he “seems to make it his mission to make a sibling or relative laugh explosively while drinking, hoping that said drink will spew out of said relative’s nose.” Peter stayed home as he was required by his megalomaniac coach to attend basketball practice on Thanksgiving Day, just to kiss the ring and demonstrate that sport comes before family. But I digress.)

The family Bingo game got me thinking about why family gatherings are so enjoyable. For one thing, we get that comforting sense of belonging, of being among our tribe. The quirky, idiosyncratic lingo we tend to throw around helps cement this. (Of course my family isn’t alone in this; Roz Chast recounts here how she polled her friends to learn what term their families use for picking thru the fridge instead of cooking a meal; in her household they call this “fending.”)

I think of such linguistic peculiarities as a family shibboleth. In case you haven’t heard this term, Wikipedia defines it as “any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another.” Of course, I mean shibboleth in a good way; the origin of this word, from the Old Testament, is actually pretty dark: after a battle between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, any Ephraimite refugees who were intercepted were challenged to pronounce “shibboleth,” because in their dialect it sounded like “sibboleth.” Anyone who pronounced it this way was identified as the enemy and immediately killed.

Clearly this isn’t the point where family gatherings are involved; naturally we want everybody well-versed in our lingo. Generally our members pick it up easily enough. For example, early in the visit when I asked my youngest niece, age nine, if she liked butter, she looked puzzled and said something like “um … sure,” instead of the right answer which is, “yeah …. mmmmmbutter” … but when I asked her again three days later she responded correctly. Notwithstanding her swift adaptation, the family lingo can certainly be bewildering to a newcomer, and my niece Laura, recently engaged, asked me to create a family glossary for her fiancé’s benefit. Any time somebody asks me to write something, especially on the subject of words and wordplay, I find the prospect irresistible (as you can see here and here).

And so, I’ve compiled a glossary of Albert-isms, replete with etymologies. What does this have to do with you, the lay albertnet reader? Well, for one thing, if you’re reading this, you’re probably my mom, or perhaps one of my brothers. And even if you’re not, you ought to find these amusing. Moreover, I’ve witnessed family gatherings where people were too quiet or seemed lacking in family shibboleths, so I hereby give you permission to totally steal these and introduce them into your own family dialogue. (If any of my family members don’t like this, they  can complain in the comments area below, or on their own social platforms).

I’ve grouped these into general categories, starting with food-related terms, since family gatherings tend to center around the kitchen. Next are the cinematic references my family is so fond of. The last section comprises the truly weirdest utterances, many of which celebrate important bits of family history dating back decades.

Culinary Albert-isms

• Jukebox – microwave oven (origin: Kitchen Confidential; until my older daughter went off to college, she had no idea that this term, and the next three, weren’t ubiquitous)
• Microbe – see “microwave oven”
• Nuke – to heat in a microwave oven (e.g., “I don’t feel like cooking, let’s just nuke some leftovers”)
• Radar love – the process of heating via microwave oven (e.g., “this isn’t hot enough, give it a little more radar love”; origin: Kitchen Confidential)
• Bell’s seasoning – the key to Thanksgiving and thus the subject of much discussion
• Tranja (pronounced “TRAHN-ya”) – any tasty beverage, including energy drink; often used in the statement, “Drink—it’s tranja. I hope you relish it as much as I” (origin: Star Trek)
• Pretty yum – delicious (origin: five-star Yelp review of a Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco, ca. 2015)
• “Do you like butter?” / “Yeah, mmmbutter.” – standard verbal exchange whenever butter is present (origin: my friend Pete’s home-ec teacher back in, like, 1983, responding spontaneously when randomly asked if she liked butter)
• Lekker – see “pretty yum” (origin: from Netherlands Alberts)
• Splaula – spatula, especially a rubber spatula (origin: what my daughters and I thought my wife had written on her shopping list years ago, due to her encryption-like handwriting)

Cinematic Albert-isms

• “You’re not the quarterback here, Mike!” – Say this whenever somebody is overstepping or attempting to have too much influence. Do not substitute your interlocutor’s name for “Mike.” Always say “Mike.” (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “Cutter started it!” – Trot this out whenever you’re chastised for pointlessly bickering. It’s not important who actually started the argument, of course. (Origin: Breaking Away)
• “It’s a crazy world.” / “Someone oughtta sell tickets.” / “Sure, I’d buy one.” – Whenever you encounter an instance of the world being, in fact, crazy, you should say so, and then wait for the correct response, which is the bit about selling tickets. If this response is not received, pause a few beats and then say, “Sure, I’d buy one” anyway, to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Say, that reminds me.” – Use this whenever changing the subject, or even when continuing on the same subject, or whenever harmless verbal garnish is desired (source: Raising Arizona)
• “I’m defecatin’ you negative!” – This is a more family-friendly way of saying, “I shit you not.” It avoids both the profane word and its common synonym, “poop,” which is of course far worse. (Origin: Raising Arizona, with “defecatin’” substituting for “crappin’” which is still too risqué for the youngest Alberts)
• “I guess that’s why they call it a Way Homer.” – Say this whenever one of your jokes bombs. If your interlocutor replies, “Why’s that?” then you say, with much hilarity, “Cause you only get it on the way home!” Ideally, the next response will be, “I’m already home, Glen” (even if your interlocutor is not at home). This will have been a perfect volley. (Origin: Raising Arizona)
• “Does the pope wear a funny hat in the woods?” – This simply means “yes” or perhaps “hell yeah.” (Origin: combination of a quote from Raising Arizona and the expression, “Does a bear shit in the woods?”)
• “Two dollars! Two dollars!” (while walking like a zombie) – This one is a bit tricky. You have to walk slowly with your spine totally erect, your head back, your eyes fixed on a distant point on the ceiling, and arms outstretched (i.e., like a zombie), while chanting “Two dollars!” over and over. Do this when you don’t know what else to do; for example, if somebody is explaining why he or she went gluten-free. (Origin: Better Off Dead, combined with some random zombie-walking which my young Dutch nephew Max first encountered around the same time. He somehow conflated the two, having probably never even seen Better Off Dead, and his father later complained that Max was staggering around like a zombie chanting “two dollars!” pretty much nonstop. Thus this is a tribute to youthful enthusiasm and joie-de-vivre.
• “Good luck … we’re all counting on you.” – Say this whenever anyone is embarking on anything. This is one of those lines that somehow improves with age and repeated usage. (Origin: Airplane)
•  “Vaal is pleased.” – This is shorthand for “I am the eyes and ears of Vaal, and Vaal is pleased.” There’s no perfectly prescribed situation for using this; just exercise your best judgment. (Origin: Star Trek)

Particularly idiosyncratic Albert-isms

• Duh-huh or tuh-huh – just kidding. (Origin: when I first moved to California, I lived and worked with my brother Geoff; we biked to work and back together; we socialized together; in short, we were practically inseparable, and sometimes got a bit tired of one another, which could result in witty verbal exchanges that sometimes became caustic or acerbic. To soften this, we took to formally indicating the jocular nature of a comment by attaching “duh-huh” (which Geoff reckons is spelled “tuh-huh”) at the end. For example, we’d say something like, “Wait, you traveled three hours for this bike race and didn’t bring your UCSF license? Why would you think they’d let you register ... your good looks? Duh-huh!” Astonishingly, almost everyone we knew adopted this usage, including this one kid, Dave E, who couldn’t even say it right so it came out “duhhhht.” More than thirty years later, this is still standard usage among Alberts, across generations.)
• Mmmmmyello – this is how to answer the phone (origin: our friend Davey’s mom back in like 1980)
• Brrrowh – I don’t know (origin: contraction, over time, of “I dunno”)
• “Huh huh … no” – basically either “just kidding” or “scratch that” (origin: uttered by my friend Chris, as we were looking at VHS cassettes at the video store; he had suggested, “Let’s get Blame it on Rio” and then—realizing that his young lust was obviously the only possible motivation for wanting to see such a drippy movie—he got embarrassed and uttered the now immortal phrase, “huh huh … no” to try to retract it)
• “I need to drop some friends off in the toolit” – use this when you’re excusing yourself to go do a, uh, download. (Origin: the euphemism “drop some friends off at the pool,” warped unintentionally by a very young Albert, and spoken with a redneck accent for no clear reason)
• Micturate – urinate (this is certainly not an Albert coinage; it’s unclear how this became the family’s preferred term, given how seldom it’s typically used)
• “Okay, Christmas is canceled” – This is trotted out annually as a (so far empty) threat. (Origin: our mom said this repeatedly during our childhood, out of sheer exasperation at our awful behavior and/or her [and eventually everyone’s] contempt for the rampant commercialism of the holiday)
• Motherfrockle – motherf**er. (Origin: my niece Rachel, when very young, was verbally abused by another kid, and told her father but didn’t want to use the actual word, so he asked her to whisper it in his ear, and she put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “He called me a frockle!”)
• “I don’t wear contacts because I care about my eyes” – Say this whenever somebody mentions contacts, or puts them in, or takes them out, as a way to pass judgment. (Origin: our dad pompously declared this when he first learned I wear contacts; he followed it up with some long diatribe about how some lady friend of his, who had like the first generation hard contact lenses, slept in them and then they were stuck to her eyes; never mind that this was over forty years before and she was an idiot)
• EUx (Evil Uncle Dana, Evil Uncle Max, Evil Uncle Geoff) – All three uncles get the “Evil” moniker, and the standard abbreviation (e.g., EUD, EUM). (Origin: my brother Bryan was the first to have kids, and the last to become an uncle, so the rest of us got this label, mainly due to our actually being pretty much evil or at least a bad influence)
•  “What we need here is a Physics major.” – Say this to insult a sibling. You can substitute whatever college major you need; for example, during an argument about grammar you could say to me, “What we need here is an English major.” (Origin: during a long, complicated scientific discussion, which included possibly all his sons and definitely Bryan, our dad said this, as if to deny the very fact of Bryan’s major, which was indeed Physics.)
• “You are real lucky.” – Say this to any family member who seems even remotely lucky or successful, or who has avoided failure or cataclysm, as a way to deny that his or her good fortune has anything to do with character, pluck, or effort. You can also tell yourself this several times a day, as a way of feeling gratitude. It’s especially useful if, like me, you actually are real lucky. (Origin: our dad said to me, “You are real lucky you didn’t do more damage,” in angry response to [what he evidently perceived as] my utter incompetence, when I did some very minor damage to my car. Details are here.)
• “You’re not very bright, are you.” – Say this to any family member who says or does anything even slightly incorrect or questionable. (Origin: our dad famously, though perhaps apocryphally, said this to me after I rode 130 miles over the highest pass in North America without proper food or even a jacket and got caught in a thunderstorm; details are here.)
• “I’m going out there, don’t try to stop me. / You fool, you’ll be killed!  / I must do this … alone.” – Whenever you leave the house, utter the first statement. Your interlocutor should utter the second, and then you close out the dialogue with the third utterance. If your interlocutor neglects, or refuses, to provide the second statement, pause for a few beats and deliver the closing line anyway to inspire your interlocutor to do better next time.)
• “All over the place spaced-out BLEAAAH!” – This is a nice way to point out that a family member, particularly a teenager, has totally dropped the ball. (Origin: back in the ‘80s, our mom once completely lost her shit and delivered a powerful, thundering harangue including several instances of this very useful expression. The “BLEAAH!” part should be delivered with extreme gusto and high volume, ideally with your eyes practically bugging out. Note: do not deliver this diatribe in a library or museum.)
• “Bundle up Billy!” – Say this to any family member heading out into the cold, especially if you wish to advise and also demean the person (e.g., if you are talking to a teenager who finds the idea of a jacket, not to mention protective parenting, highly offensive). Do not substitute any other name for “Billy”—always use “Billy.” (Origin: actual quote concerning our friend Bill, whose loving mother said this to him and which we all took to saying to him constantly, all winter long, ad infinitum. Interesting aside: Bill now lives in Perm, Russia which isn’t technically Siberia but is halfway there; the average high temperature there in winter is just 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Bundle up, indeed!)
• “Come and get it or I’ll throw it out!” – what you say when the family meal is on the table (origin: one of those Time Life Old West books, probably The Cowboys; I read this sentence aloud to my mom and brothers back in like 1975 and it just stuck)
• Landlo’ – our mom’s second husband (origin: he actually was her landlord, and when he got greedy and said she either needed to buy the apartment or move out, she slipped between the horns of the dilemma by marrying him and thus moving in with him, which was a huge mistake as you can see here)
•  “Bye” – Obviously this word itself isn’t a family shibboleth, but we say it in a very specific way, waving annoyingly by opening and closing a hand, which is held up right next to our face, which wears an expression of utter disgust and dismissal; useful whenever a family member departs but particularly through a car window as the family member drives away. (Origin: this is how one of us, or perhaps all of us at one time or another, were kicked out of Green Scene, a go-kart track, for reckless driving, in the mid-‘80s)
• Slaap lekker – sleep well (origin: literally, “sleep tasty,” this is a standard Dutch expression brought to us by the Netherlands branch of the family)
• Don’t let the hmm-hmmms bite – don’t let the bedbugs bite (origin: this is what our brother Geoff used to say to his son Max because he was very young and the idea of bedbugs terrified him)
•  “You know, I really like [x]. I mean, I know that’s not profound or nothin’ … heck, we all do. But for me, I think  it goes far beyond that.” – This is really useful, every time you encounter something you like. It’s a way of expressing gratitude very formally and passionately. (Source: a “Far Side” cartoon)
• “Outta my way, mother daughter!” – This expression gets nearly constant use: pretty much whenever a wife, mother, or daughter is in your way. I have two daughters, a mom, a wife, and at least eight nieces, and thus say it probably 700 times a year. (Origin: during a violent dispute with my brother Max, then a teenager, my dad fled down the hall, with Max in hot pursuit, ready to beat his ass; our brother Bryan was squarely in the way, either to intervene or as a pawn caught in a deadly game, and Max yelled something similar to this, except that what he said was decidedly more profane, along the lines of “outta my way, motherfrockle!” Granted, this is a pretty dark memory to be dredging up all the time, but perhaps by saying this jovially we’re neutralizing that old trauma, or at least owning it.)

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From the Archives - Bicycling Glossary

Vlog

You know what’s a real hassle? Reading! It’s much easier to just kick back, click Play, and let the ocean of words wash over you (and perhaps occasionally pummel you). On that note, below is my vlog version of this post, and if you don’t like it, you can a) get somebody else to read the post to you, or b) just read it yourself as the full text follows below.

Introduction

Lately I’ve been going through a bunch of decades-old Winning magazines, including their special oversized Tour de France special editions, and I have to chuckle at the ubiquitous full-page cycling glossaries. They always have a bunch of terms that no newbie really even needs to learn. For example, “bottom bracket.” When’s the last time a Tour de France stage was won or lost due to a bottom bracket? The other is “bidon.” Nobody actually calls a water bottle a “bidon” except those Velominati clowns. The glossary also claims that “tubs” is a nickname for “tubulars” and I’ve never heard that in my life.

Many years ago, I wrote a (satirical) cycling glossary for the online magazine Daily Peloton. Alas, when DP’s server crashed a few years back, evidently without having been backed up, all my stories there were lost. One by one I’m rerunning them here on albertnet. Look, here’s the glossary now!

Veteran’s Dictionary of Modern Biking Usage – March 13, 2008

A couple of days before the Tour of California started, I checked the official website for a start list, and couldn’t find one. But right away I found the inevitable glossary of bike racing terminology. It had all the normal cycling terms: attack, bonk, etc. (You can tell this glossary was written for American readers because it has “bonk” in it. My wife and I used to ride with her British Reuters colleagues, and one day she told her boss, “I brought a Powerbar in case I bonk.” Her boss blushed and stammered, “I beg your pardon?!”)

This got me thinking about all the cycling glossaries I’ve seen over the years in the backs of race programs and such, and I realized how incomplete they all are, like they’re all quoting from the same out-of-date document. Cycling has a rich oral tradition that is highly regional and evolves rapidly. I fear that some of the newer riders on my (or any) bike club may not be up on some of the more obscure cycling terms, while we veterans may not be familiar with the newest additions to the vernacular. Thus, I created this dictionary.

ABCs: Angry Biker Clothes, also known as costume, strip, uniform, or kit. See Angry biker.

Angry biker: a biker who has a fancy bike, fancy clothes, and usually a stern expression, who really needs to lighten up. In other words, just about everybody on the road.

Arseless: a generic term for your bike, especially the old three-speed you ride to work. [Origin: from a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, shortened from “Arseless Horse.”]

Backwards: slow, especially when you’re supposed to  be going fast; e.g., “Dude, I was so blown, I was going backwards.”

Bald: the condition of a veteran biker’s scalp being hopelessly worn out. Also refers to bike tires suffering the same affliction.

Ballast: the aesthetically ameliorative but physically cumbersome padding that a veteran angry biker tends to develop despite his or her best efforts to remain skeletal.

Basso Lamento: 1. [Music] Also called “descending tetrachord.” A musical scale of four notes, bounded by the interval of a perfect fourth (an interval the size of two and one-half steps, e.g., c-f). 2. The widespread sorrow surrounding Ivan Basso’s admission to doping (or “planned doping,” the lying sack of shit).

Bibs: cycling shorts with shoulder straps instead of an elastic waistband. Popular among juniors who fear being “pantsed,” and among older riders for the comfort and corset-like effect.

Bike porn: glossy bike catalogs that incessantly arrive, unbidden, in your mailbox.

Biker: the preferred term for “cyclist” among crusty old veterans, as they mock the relative newcomers who insist on being called cyclists. Note: particularly senior riders may despise the term “biker,” as they were around when this term was used contemptuously (perhaps because real bikers rode Harleys).

Bike widow: a wife forced to seek companionship outside her marriage, especially during weekends, because her angry biker husband is always off pursuing his suffering centers.

Bitter biker: an angry biker who is also old.

Bleb: the almost, but not completely, broken membrane on a gel packet, when the top has been torn off at just the right point so it won’t dribble out but can be zipped into your mouth. [Etymology: unknown; possibly borrowed from medical nomenclature.]

Blow chunks: to ride very poorly; e.g., “Dude, I totally blew chunks in the time trial.” [Originally a term for projectile vomiting, though this only happens in the minority of cases.] See Backwards.

Bonk: 1. To lose all energy while cycling due to depleted blood sugar. 2. To lose all energy while cycling for reasons you’re still trying to figure out. 3. To partake in a non-athletic but nevertheless vigorous activity with a compatible partner, which is far more enjoyable than cycling [chiefly British].

Break:1. Short for breakaway. 2. A respite from cycling that, when it inadvertently becomes permanent, is called Retirement.

Bulby: see Young Bulb, The.

Carbo-load: to eat a whole shitload of carbs, because you love them and because you can, and because you despise the Atkins craze. Not to be confused with the training nutrition système once used by Bernard Hinault, which just about nobody actually understood.

Cawbun Fibuh: carbon fiber. [Origin: crazy Berkeley-area angry biker who assailed a fellow bike shop customer who was innocently checking out a steel road bike. The crazy biker ranted, “Steel frames suck shit! Cawbun-fibuh! You want cawbun-fibuh”! The crazy biker was eventually asked to leave the store. Neither customer ever returned, and steel framesets are now a rarity.]

Chamois (pronounced SHAM-ee): the soft pad sewn into cycling shorts (originally made of the leather of the eponymous antelope but now almost always synthetic), designed to give angry bikers another thing to complain about. See also Mr. Flippy Floppy, Skid Mark.

CO2 inflator: a malfunction-prone device used by an angry biker to increase his blood pressure, while adding needlessly to our landfills, all because he’s too lazy to use a proper pump.

Coked to the gills: see Lubed. [Etymology: from the short story “The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber.

Crapture: gratifyingly swift evacuation of the bowels, especially right before a race.

Crash hat: bike helmet.

Cripple: a triple crankset, used by angry bikers who are not only weak and worthless, but also shameless.

Cyclo-sportif: a popular type of amateur race popular in Europe. Almost the opposite of an American race; instead of dozens of bikers paying $40 each to suffer for 40 minutes riding around an industrial park, thousands of bikers pay $20 each to suffer for 8 hours tackling some of the more amazing mountains on Earth. The most famous cyclo-sportif in Europe is La Marmotte in the French Alps.

Datas: the arguably interesting but probably valueless information that can be gleaned from modern bike computers and heart monitors. [Etymological note: this odd double-plural form derives from instruction manuals poorly translated from the German.]

Dawn patrol: post-ironic term for a very early morning group ride.

Derailleur: the component on a bicycle which shifts the gears, and which is often used as an excuse for losing a race (e.g., “Dude, I would’ve made the break but I threw my chain!”).

Detonate: to suddenly become unable to pedal the bicycle. Usually the consequence of going too hard for too long on too little training, or from just being fricking old.

Dr. Shimano: The big brother of this guide’s author, a college team’s mechanic known for proselytizing about the superiority of Shimano components.

Flat: The sensation you have at the beginning of a ride that your tire is flat, or you’re dragging an anvil behind you. Formerly used to indicate the state of being overtrained, as if that were ever actually possible within our amateur cohort.

Flats: a popular Berkeley area ride, known to be about the flattest ride in the area as it features only 1,400 feet of vertical gain.

Float: the foot rotation offered by modern cleats, to allow your feet to do any damn thing they want instead of being fixed where they ought to be.

Geriatric sports: bonking. [Chiefly British.]

Glycogen window: the period of 30-40 minutes after exercise during which an angry biker eats gobs of sugary snacks because he has convinced his wife/girlfriend and/or himself that this is actually useful somehow.

Goggles: sunglasses. Used by those who arguably go a bit far in avoiding the use of terms like “eyeshade système.”

Gooseneck: preferred term for handlebar stem, intended to indicate lack of techie-dweebhood. Real old-timers can remember when a stem actually slightly resembled a goose’s neck.

Grind: anything undesirable; e.g., “Dude, those Speedplays are such a grind.” [Etymology: post-ironic mimicry of the Wheels Manufacturing founder’s favorite expression.]

Hardtail: a word used by dorks to describe non-suspension mountain bikes and moreover to demonstrate their utter dorkiness.

Intervals: the increasingly long periods between a veteran biker’s rides. Formerly used to describe some kind of training method that is too distant and painful a memory to recall in detail.

Kit: see ABCs. [Etymology: the widespread myth that expensive clothing can turn you into a great biker, like assembling something from a kit.]

Knackered: Totally exhausted, either through completing a difficult ride or race, or having detonated during a failed attempt.

Light it up: see Throw down.

Lima bean: a frame with compact (i.e., undersized) geometry such that more than a foot of seatpost is showing. [Origin: an area rider’s analysis of these frames: “They’re like lima beans ... I suppose they have a right to exist, but I don’t like them.”]

Lubed: assisted by illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

Material: see Ride.

Mech: derailleur (not to be confused with the French “mec,” meaning big thick guy).

Megamix: post-ironic term for an MP3 playlist created for working out on the stationary trainer. [Origin: overheard by an area biker; uttered by some dip standing in line for an early-80s U2 concert.]

Mr. Flippy Floppy: a biking-shorts-related ailment occurring only in males; usually results from geriatric sports.

Muffin ride: an easy ride, whether or not a bakery exists on the route.

Novocain legs: an all-encompassing muscular complacency making it impossible to ride hard, usually resulting from geriatric sports.

Out of shape: a term of deceit used by an angry biker to indicate that he secretly plans to attack you and hopes you’ll underestimate him; e.g., “Dude, let’s go super-easy today because I’m soooo out of shape.”

PCT: peak conversational threshold. The degree of effort beyond which a rider can no longer keep up a conversation, and a useful indicator of who’s got the upper hand.

Plastic: a derisive term for carbon fiber. See Cawbun Fibuh.

Pocket climber: a very lean, slight biker who specializes in hill climbs. Generally used bitterly by someone too heavy to climb well.

Podium: the three-tiered boxy platform that winners get to stand on, not to be confused with a lectern, which is the stand that holds a lecturer’s notes. [Etymology: Latin, from Greek podion, base, diminutive of pous, pod-, foot. Okay?!]

Positive sensations: general feeling of surprisingly plentiful strength. [Origin: countless bike racing news stories; either a popular expression in the European peloton, or a lazy approximation of one or another non-English expression.]

Post-ironic: indicative of a biking term that was mimicked in the spirit of mockery until it gradually evolved into standard usage.

Psyched: caffeinated, especially in accordance with an un-doping regimen. See Un-doping.

Race weight: the weight of your bike without pedals, as if you could pedal without them. [Origin: formerly referred to a rider’s weight during the racing season, before the focus shifted from fitness to equipment.]

Rack: see Stationary trainer. [Origin: short for “torture rack.”]

Rain bike: the second road bike that an angry biker would ride on rainy days, if he actually rode on rainy days. Mainly used when the primary bike has a flat tire.

Recovery: the occasional return to an area biker of one or more of his stolen bikes. Formerly used to indicate restoration of a biker’s physical capacities, back when this was actually possible.

Retirement: the phase of life during which an angry biker pretends he doesn’t race anymore, but actually merely refocuses his competitive impulses on friends and innocent strangers. See Break.

Ride: a bike; e.g., “Dude, just four more months and I’ll be rockin’ my brand-new ultimate super-fly ride!”

Road Look: term that describes a relative novice who is shaming you; e.g., “I was going about as hard as I could and then this frickin’ Road Look dude passes me.” [Origin: from the saddle with “Road Look” printed on the back that came on cheap Fuji road bikes in the 1970s.]

Royal: the coffeeshop at the corner of College and 63rd in Oakland, regardless of what the current owners feel the need to call it. Meeting place for local angry bikers.

School: to shame by outperforming on the bike. See Road Look.

Sew-ups: bicycle tires with a casing, usually made of silk or Egyptian cotton, that is sewn together so that it completely surrounds the inner tube. These must be glued to the rim (ideally with Vittoria or Clément cement known as “red death”). They are gradually going extinct because they’re a total pain in the ass.

Skid mark: discoloration of the chamois caused by sweat—only sweat, I swear!—and the reason for the modern chamois being blue or black instead of brown.

Soaps: See Sew-ups.

Spank: see School.

Spare tube: the contents of a veteran biker’s spare tire. See Ballast. See also Carbo-load.

Stack hat: see Crash Hat.

Stationary trainer: apparatus that enables an angry biker to turn his regular racing bike into a stationary bike; used primarily as a paperweight or conversation piece.

Stuffing: the sum of an angry biker’s physical resources; e.g., “Poor fellow, he’s had the stuffing knocked out of him.” [Chiefly British.]

Système: a fancy word for “system,” used by somebody who is trying to seem sophisticated and Euro; e.g., “Dude, these aren’t sunglasses, this is a highly advanced factory eyeshade système, okay?”

Technova: 1. Overly modern, gimmicky, unproven, and/or shoddy; e.g., “Dude, that aero helmet is so Technova.” 2. Defunct nickname for Dr. Shimano’s kid brother. [Origin: model name of awful Panaracer tires that came on late-80s Miyatas.]

Throw down: to attack, usually foolishly.

T.I. : bike bling; e.g., “Man, Eden is really a high-end shop, so much T.I. there.” [Origin: uttered by an area biker who refuses to divulge what, if anything, the letters stand for.]

Ti (pronounced TIE): See Titanium.

Titanium: one of the most plentiful elements on earth, used for increasing bike industry profit margins.

Toe-clip overlap: the characteristic of a properly designed frame, where the shoe hits the front tire when clipped in to the pedal with the crank in the 3-o’clock position. Lack of toe-clip overlap indicates too shallow a head tube angle. Understanding of head tube angles indicates nerdiness.

Tool: 1. See School. 2. Somebody who unpleasantly increases the pace of your group ride at a time when other angry bikers want to loaf.

Torched: see Wappered.

Tranja [pronounced TRON-yah]: energy drink. [Origin: an episode of the original 1960s “Star Trek” in which the Gentle Ben-looking alien says, “Drink ... it’s tranja. I hope you relish it as much as I.”

Tubulars: see Sew-ups.

Un-doping: the systematic non-consumption of caffeine, designed to create a freakish lack of tolerance for it, so that a single pre-ride NoDoz can instill the effect of an illegal performance-enhancing drug.

Vein: possessed of a specific type of vanity common to bikers with really veiny legs.

Wappered: See Knackered. [Chiefly British.]

Widowmaker: a dangerously rusty bike, or one that has been inherited from a fellow angry biker who is convinced it harmed his knees somehow.

Young Bulb, The: a young rider, especially an enthusiastic one. [Origin: nickname for Paul Kimmage in the early 1980s.]

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