I well and truly blotted my copybook during a meeting at work today.

A colleague talked about "progressing upcoming deliverables" and I burst out laughing. The juxtaposition of these three dire examples of managementspeak just set me off. The boss wanted to know what I found so funny, so I had to explain that, as a lover of the English language, I found such phrases risible.

Later, I apologised to both the boss and the perpetrator of the phrase and I hope no lasting damage was done.

Good for you.
I would have laughed too!
But: had to think about what it meant.
Supply keeping up with demand?

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Later, I apologised to both the boss and the perpetrator of the phrase and I hope no lasting damage was done.

I am sure, knowing you, that there was no lasting damage. I, however, got into trouble recently with a "grammar maven" discussion by my boss, who, by the way, thinks that you should never start a sentence with "however." It must be included within the sentence as I did above. He learned this from his English teacher, and so it's Gospel!

Lily, I had the same question. What the heck did she mean?

I would have requested a translator.

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had to think about what it meant.
Supply keeping up with demand?

No, it just means making progress (progressing) on the stuff (deliverables) you still need to do (upcoming).

A local NY newscaster commented that Home Depot really knew how to turn a phrase when it announced yesterday that it would "slow new-store growth."

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it just means making progress (progressing) on the stuff (deliverables) you still need to do (upcoming).

Yes. The particularly ridiculous thing was that someone else had already talked about that in plain English, and he was agreeing.

I believe I may have managed a small victory, though. When I apologised to the guy who said the phrase he said that all he really needed to say was "I agree" and he realised didn't really need to translate it. He might even engage his brain before his mouth at future meetings; we shall see.

Having survived a decade as a female in still-nearly-all-male mega-engineering companies of the 1970's-80's, I found fluency in management doublespeak to be a pre-requisite of getting around ornery critters of every stripe. My dh is still with one of those institutions, and we both get a kick out of Dilbert, who tells it like it is.

See here for an almost infinite number of Management-speak phrases. http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

First time I've heard 174,240 called near infinite.

Actually, as a mathematician I feel obliged to point out that the phrase "near infinite" is nonsense. There can be no finite number that is near infinite because no matter what finite number you choose there is an infinity of numbers bigger than it. And that's before we get into the idea of multiple infinities. (I can recommend some good books if you are interested.)

Of course, one can speak of "almost infinite" in a rhetorical sense. In programming, I get confused by the concept of a maximum integer, typically 2^31 - 1. There is also a minimum integer, typically -2^31. The other day I was talking about an algorithm working on the "Traveling Salesman problem", with something like hundreds of cities, which I said would take "forever" to solve. In truth, assuming P is not equal to NP, one can construct problems that would take the entire universe trillions of years of solve, meaning that they will never be solved.

2 weeks ago was "Take Your Child to Work Day", and it happened to be a day when I had marathon meetings. The first was a system-wide managers meeting, and I figured he'd be pretty bored. I was tempted to make him some Lingo Bingo cards to keep him interested and paying attention.

Another story - my library gutted the PR department a few years ago, and the new folks came in talking all the time about "branding" the library. I happened to be sitting next to one of my African-American colleagues at one of the meetings when they were explaining their concept of "comprehensive branding of all library programs and locations." She said "don't talk to Black people about branding!" I responded "moo".

Ah, "Branding." It just means to use the same logo on all your letterheads, publications, web sites, etc. And the same "color palette." Not the same colors. The same color palette. We've been branding higher education for a number of years too, and it still brings up images of steers on ranches getting letters burned into their hides for me.

WM

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First time I've heard 174,240 called near infinite.

I confess I didn't scroll to the bottom of the list and do the maths - but even if the number is not "near infinity" (and I agree that the phrase is technically nonsensical) I think the expression conveyed my meaning clearly enough. It is a large number of phrases to generate and to try to use.