How to Succeed in Business and (and Politics and Everything Else) Without Really Lying; Spinglish; The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language
by Henry N. Beard and Christopher Cerf
Okay, this is maybe the longest title ever.
Spinglish is a darkly humorous and disturbing dictionary of
overly PC terms and purposefully deceitful phrases, some so ridiculous they'd
be indecipherable without the Spinglish dictionary. The book's supertitle (if that's a word for a
subtitle that comes BEFORE the real title) is
"How to Succeed in Business (and Politics and Everything Else)
Without Really Lying." And that
pretty much sums it up.
Some gems:
"After-death care provider" –undertaker.
"Core rearrangement"—a nuclear power industry
term for the explosive destruction of the core of a nuclear reactor
"Engaging the enemy on all sides"—A US Dept of
Defense phrase for getting ambushed
"Permanent pre-hostility"—another great term from
our DOD friends. This one rather
depressingly means "peace."
"Failure to maintain clearance from the ground"—a
plane crash
"Percussive maintenance"—hitting a piece of machinery
until it starts working again
And perhaps my favorite:
"Entrance solutions."
Any guesses? Yes, those would be
doors.
I do think the authors put too much of their own spin on
some terms. For example, they define
"thrifty" as "miserly," "stingy," and
"scrooge-like." And
"wetlands" as "swamps."
While "thrifty" and "wetlands" can be used as euphemisms,
in general usage "thrifty" and "miserly" have different
meanings, and "wetlands" is a broader term than
"swamp." Also, a rainforest
isn't just some fancy environmentalist's way of making a jungle sound better,
as the book implies. It's a scientific
term for areas that sometime are jungles and sometimes not. Some of the political definitions have a fair
amount of slant too. Which perhaps only
reinforces the whole theme of the book.
It's a very interesting—but somewhat disheartening—book. How
many ways can business execs come up with to make firing a bunch of people
sound good?