I remember that in the late 1990s, calling someone “edgy,” especially filmmakers, was a big thing. I always pictured someone who’d had six or seven fu-fu coffees, maybe had ADD, and happened to be the creative type. Whatever was being praised as “edgy” felt less like danger than a mild disorder, the only real risk being that you might not get your way. Words. What are you going to do.
Donald Trump, the world’s most consistent bullshitter, calls his social media platform Truth Social. We live in the Great Era of Lies, with the likes of George Santos, the Rosa Parks of liars. These people love buzzwords that hide what is simply true: weaponization, deep state, et al. Language as camouflage.
I ran into a Times article that said, “If New Yorkers are unflappable, impervious and stoic on the sidewalk, we are raging, delighted, terrified, dancing, sobbing messes in the subway tunnels.” Another cliché stacked onto another. “Unflappable” did it for me. You lost me right there.
We’ve drifted away from language rooted in things themselves and toward language built around transactions, branding, management, and mood. The result is a fog of phrases I can’t wrap my head around, where the only way to pivot is with skin in the game, so that at the end of the day it becomes a game-changer that empowers us, because it’s baked into the optics, and therefore, at the end of the day, it’s awesome. I just wrote a paragraph that says nothing, and you understood every word.
When Betty White died, she was described as “99 years young,” which makes no sense, and as a “national treasure,” which makes even less. When I think of national treasures, I think of national parks, Lincoln, Crazy Horse. Our priorities reveal our confusion about death. Saying someone is “in a better place” is a comfort phrase, not a fact. We know nothing about it beyond hope. We seculars love entertainment, and we love soft language to pad the hard edges of reality.
Buzzwords aren’t aphorisms. There’s no philosophy in them. Most have short shelf lives. They’re quick, descriptive, and functional, often one-word metaphors designed for media time slots and data compression. If you want to hear baseline American English done correctly, listen to a news anchor. They’re masters of pronunciation and neutral diction, and they also deploy buzzwords nonstop. Sometimes they work. “24/7.” “Hangry.” “Good-to-go.” No pretension. Just function and sound.
Want to make money? Speak to everyone. Economics enforces baseline language better than any style guide. Ka-ching. Watch how anchors speak. The words refresh themselves, but the meaning stays the same.
Take “food insecurity.” “Slum” is an ugly word, but it covers bad health, bad education, unstable families, poor housing, lack of heat in winter and cooling in summer, and exposure to crime. In February 2024, CNN started using “stickiness,” borrowed straight from Google Analytics, to describe audience engagement. Same thing, new word. You can watch the manufacture of buzzwords in real time.
Occasionally, one sticks because it works. “Flash in the pan.” “Stool pigeon.” “Cool your heels.” Even “taking my talents to…” escaped LeBron James and entered common speech. That’s how language earns permanence.
“Re-up” works. No buzz. Just utility. Straight from military slang.
The dumbest buzzword yet is Trump’s “retruth.” An oxymoron stacked on top of another oxymoron. A lie retruthed is still a lie. Treating it otherwise requires pretzel logic, but pretzel logic is now the price of admission.
This isn’t just about Trump. Buzzwords rise and fall with economic incentives. Twenty-five percent of Virginia’s electricity now goes to data centers. AI and bitcoin will demand more. “Dead trees” had to be killed as a phrase to sell the myth of frictionless tech virtue.
Some buzzwords deserve to live. Most don’t. You decide which ones make it.
Tone deaf
Optics
Laser-focused
Existential
Weaponize
Pivot
Gray matter
No brainer
Squishy
Cross the pond
Gin up
Ecosystem
Across the pond
Journey
Transitioning
They are in a better place
Bucket list
They died doing what they loved
Been there, done that
A lot to unpack
Skin in the game
Baby bump
Right-sized
Image architect
Calculus
Calcification
On my plate
Low hanging fruit
Engaged
Hybridization
Granularity
At the end of the day
Bated breath
Hot mess
Language violence
Sucks up all the oxygen
Dial it back
Level playing field
Win-win
Cha-Ching
Poppin’
Game-changer
Redemption of our narrative
Moving forward
Reshore
Upskill
Onshoring
The brand
Backfill
Blowback
Push back
Weaponize
Performative wokeness
Lean in
Unhinged
Performative bigotry
Guardrails
Lanes
Recuse
Boots on the ground
All in
Outlier
Baked in
Metrics-driven empathy
Any death, is one death too many
Authenticity at scale
Game changer
Pre-revenue
Retruth
Narrative
Optics
Intersectional lens
Sustainability
Scale
Toolkit
Vacay
Daycay
Staycay
Bleisure
Fam
Revenge travel
Out of your lane
PZ easy
Holy moly
Kit and caboodle
My north star
Community
Keeps me up at night
Reach out
Bad in
Thick skin
Fully bald
Down there
Super
Awesome
Epic
Empowerment, empowering, empowered
Stakeholder capitalism
Riz
G.H.O.A.T.
Weaponize
Disruption
Managed decline
Narrative control
Extractive systems
Trauma-informed
Care economy
Derisking
Sketchy
Racist infrastructure
Systemically marginalized
Environmental racism
Dead trees
Food desert
Nothing-burger
Word salad
Housing insecurity
Food insecurity
Food apartheid
Geography of racism
Having bandwitdth
You got this
You own this
You killed it
Own it
Walk back
Baby bump
Wrap your head around it
We’re all in this together
Not so much
Eponymous
Overlooked no more
Bad actor
Spoiler alert
Toxic masculinity
Moving forward
Think outside the box
Checked all the boxes
Suck up all the oxygen
Change the calculus
Age is just a number
Any death is one death to many
Having a moment
Aha moment
Best version of yourself
Radical transparency
Empowerment
Your best self
Self-care
Metastasize
Resilience framework
It’s in our DNA
Digital sovereignty
That’s so you
People of color
That being said
To your point
My mother cleaned toilets
Check all the boxes
New normal
It’s a lot to unpack
Wrap my head around it
Rabbit hole
Kudos
Bropriate
Cancel culture
Clicktivism
Conscious capitalism
Cultural appropriation
Fast fashion
Fexitarianism
Gaslight
Gender binary
Greenwash
Internalized misogyny
intersectionality
Mansplain
Plant-based
Trigger warning
The Brooklyn goldfish pond
These words exist to signal virtue, stall action, or pad grant proposals. Often all three. They age badly, get quietly retired, then return in new outfits with the same smell.
With the arrival of wokeness, buzzwords reached a pinnacle of conceit: words treated as things themselves, elitism masquerading as morality. Performance replaces action. Language replaces reality.
Starving and impoverished became “food insecure.” That’s over-education talking. I live it. I don’t need a new phrase for it. Trendy language alienates people who might otherwise agree with you.
For a buzzword to enter the Hall of Fame, it has to last. “Significant other” did. By the 1990s, I heard homeless people use it. “Baby bump,” unfortunately, made it too. Even “very” has been replaced by “super” in a country running on steroids.
No group is more defined by its buzzwords than the Woke. But the buzzwords that stick do so because they work, not because they signal virtue. They signify nothing beyond themselves, and that’s why they last.
So enjoy your “hair-growth journey.” It’s not my idea of a journey. It’s a vanity trip. Like “awesome,” it inflates the trivial. And that, more than anything, is what buzzwords do best.
Her name is Sarah. She died recently, in 2024. Her body wore out from consumptive practices. She lived a lot in abandoned cars with her mate, Eduardo, and read books, as well as take care of cats in the Junkyards.