Chances are, you're not "herding cats" or "throwing the spaghetti at the wall" during your 9 to 5 — and yet, these are some of the most common, and confusing, phrases people are using in workplaces across the globe.
That's according to new research from LinkedIn and Duolingo, which surveyed more than 1,000 workers between the ages of 18 and 76 in the United States, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries.
More than half of young professionals have looked up a word in a meeting to follow along, and 83% have used a phrase they didn't fully comprehend in a professional setting to save face, the report found.
In the U.S., the most confusing phrases at work are:
- "Boiling the ocean"
What it means: "Undertaking an impossible task" - "Herding cats"
What it means: "Attempting to organize a difficult group of people" - "Ducks in a row"
What it means: "Planning" - "Move the needle"
What it means: "Making progress on something" - "Run it up the flagpole"
What it means: "Testing the popularity of an idea" - "Drinking the Kool-Aid"
What it means: "Demonstrating blind loyalty" - "Out of pocket"
What it means: "Unavailable or unreachable" - "Building the plane while flying it"
What it means: "Taking on a project with a lot of risks and uncertainty" - "Throwing spaghetti at the wall"
What it means: "Testing a variety of solutions or ideas in order to identify what works" - "Juice worth the squeeze"
What it means: "Deciding if something is worth the trouble of getting it or not"
Younger employees feel a "palpable pressure" to use jargon they hear from their co-workers or boss to impress them and fit in, LinkedIn career expert Andrew McCaskill says. Millennials use workplace jargon the most, while Gen Zers are the most annoyed by it.
"At its core, jargon is a code that you use to demonstrate your belonging to a particular professional circle, a tool for projecting a workplace identity," adds Hope Wilson, a senior learning and language curriculum expert at Duolingo. "It's unsurprising, then, that we'd see people earlier in their careers use it more, as a conscious or subconscious effort to move up the professional hierarchy."
But, Wilson warns, using too much jargon "can make you sound desperate to belong."
Office jargon doesn't just confuse the people you want to impress — it can also exclude or even offend them in some cases.
Nearly half (49%) of the workers surveyed by LinkedIn and Duolingo said they feel like their colleagues are speaking a language they don't understand when they use office jargon.
Amidst the office jargon, there are also phrases with culturally insensitive undertones like "low on the totem poll," McCaskill points out.
People who did not grow up in the U.S. or aren't confident speaking English might also struggle to understand corporate jargon that references American customs or experiences, Wilson says, like "knock it out of the park" (a baseball reference) or "a slam dunk" (a basketball reference).
You might not be able to avoid jargon completely, but deferring to simple, clear language — and limiting how often you're using corporate colloquialisms — is the easiest way to sound smarter at work, McCaskill says. You might also consider creating a how-to guide on the jargon your team uses for new hires, to help them better acclimate.
"Communicating at work is hard enough as it is," he adds. "Why would you want to complicate it further?"
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