bureaucratese

An informal term for obscure speech or writing that is typically characterized by verbosity, euphemisms, jargon, and buzzwords. Also known as officialese, corporate-speak, and government-speak. Contrast with plain English.

See also:

• 200 Words and Expressions That Tick You Off
• Circumlocutions
• Doublespeak
• Flotsam Phrases
• Gobbledygook
• Legalese
• Mystification
• Rules for Combating Jargon
• Skotison
• Slang
• Soft Language
• Title Inflation
• Vogue Words

Examples and Observations:

• "Civil Service language: 'Sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a manner which, all things being considered and making all possible allowances is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward.' Translation: 'You are lying.'"
  (Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes, Minister)



• "[T]he CoE's Dick Marty dropped a bombshell this week when he suggested that European governments may have been secretly cooperating with the US in its practice of kidnapping terrorist suspects--'extraordinary rendition'--in American bureaucratese."
  (Ian Black, "Tortuous Distinctions." The Guardian, Dec. 16, 2005)



• "Few would contest that some business jargon, or 'Offlish' as it has been dubbed, can be both infuriating and ridiculous. . . . Beyond the familiar blue-sky or joined-up thinking, blamestorming, and downsizing, have come and gone an enervating line of words and idioms which are held up as key indicators not of success, but of a failed attempt to impress. Yet it is not a few company prospectuses that will boast of strategic partnerships, core competencies, business-process outsourcing (BPO), driving achievement tools, improving system outcomes, creating capability, managing across the matrix, and of blueprints or routemaps for (a tautological) future progress."
  (Susie Dent, The Language Report: English on the Move, 2000-2007. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007)



• "Corporate speak is more than jargon. While such terms as synergy, incentivise and leveraging can be difficult to grasp, there's nothing especially hard about wow factor, low-hanging fruit or (at least to cricket fans) close of play. But these phrases nonetheless attract criticism. The charge is that, even though they are simple, they have lost their meaning through overuse. They have become automatic reactions, verbal tics, a replacement for intelligent thinking. In short, they have become inappropriately used clichés."
  (David Crystal, The Story of English in 100 Words. St. Martin's Press, 2012)



• "The matters with which bureaucrats deal are mostly mundane and can be fully described and discussed in sixth-grade English. In order to augment their self-image, therefore, bureaucrats create synonyms for existing vocabulary using a Graeco-Latinate lexicon, seeking to obfuscate the commonplace and endow it with gravity; this achieves a double-whammy by mystifying and intimidating the clientele. A notice to householders, from the City of Fitzroy in Melbourne, Australia, read:

  Refuse and rubbish shall not be collected from the site or receptacles thereon before the hour of 8:00am or after the hour of 6:00pm any day.

  . . . Householders would probably have found it easier to understand the more colloquial We will collect your garbage between 8:00am and 6:00pm."
  (Keith Allan and Kate Burridge, Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006)