The Corporate Rosetta Stone

An Unofficial Guide to Corporate Speak

Jan 22, 2026

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.
—Niels Bohr

Those choked by a white collar or confined to a cubicle know that the workplace is (Thank God) a far-off land very different from the home front.

With foreign lands come foreign tongues and with foreign tongues comes a great deal of confusion that manifests in messages that might read something like this:

Happy Monday everyone, be sure to circle back and make some action plans on those roadmap items to further visibility and ensure alignment.
Let’s synergize our core competencies to leverage a paradigm shift in the marketplace. By embracing a holistic approach to scalable, disruptive innovation, we can incubate a cross-platform strategy to pivot our value-added ecosystem. It’s imperative that we deep-dive into the data lake and extract actionable insights to streamline our bleeding-edge, customer-centric solutions.
Let’s touch base to blue-sky some out-of-the-box shower thoughts, ensuring we’re on the same page to maximize our ROI in this hyperconnected, omnichannel landscape.
Remember, it’s all about moving the needle by aligning our bandwidth with the digital transformation roadmap for a seamless integration of our next-gen deliverables.
Lastly, it’s imperative to keep top of mind that what we do is not just about leverage or synergy, it’s about leveraging synergies.1

Finished vomiting? Okay, good.

What follows is my best Noah Webster impression: a translation of some words and phrases from the wild west of white collar work for those blessed with blue collars, Roman collars, or no collars at all.

Consider this a pocket phrasebook for the bureaucratic savannah.

“Touching base” = I need a favor.
“Circling back” = You ignored my last email.
“Following up” = Do your f*cking job.
“Deep dive” = We’re going to waste 3 hours on this.
“Let’s take this offline” = You are wrong and you are embarrassing me in front of everyone.
“Moving the needle” = We did the bare minimum.
“Just to piggyback on that”= I have absolutely nothing to add, but I need to look like I’m participating so I don’t get fired.
“Blue sky thinking” = Ideas we will never execute because we have no budget.
“Let’s put a pin in that” = That is a terrible idea and we are never speaking of it again.
“I don’t have the bandwidth” = I have time, I just don’t want to help you.
“Let’s circle the wagons” = We screwed up. Badly.
“I’m OOO with limited access to email” = I am on my phone right now, watching you email me, and I am laughing.
“Can I pick your brain?” = I want you to do my job for me, for free.
“Let’s promote synergy” = I am a kindergartner with a thesaurus fetish.
“Optional attendance” = If you don’t come, I will remember it during your performance review.
“Thanks in advance” = You don’t have a choice. I’ve already decided you’re doing this.
“Gentle reminder” = I am currently screaming at my monitor.
“As stated below” = You are stupid and you are wasting my time.
“Per my last email” = Use your eyes and read what’s in front of you, you incompetent boob. I didn’t realize you were the Grand Marshal of the idiot parade.
“Correct me if I’m wrong” = I am not wrong. I am never wrong. And I dare you to try me.
“We need to stay agile” = We have absolutely no plan and will change our minds every 6 hours.
“Does that make sense?” = I have no idea what I just said, please just nod so we can leave.
“It’s on my radar” = I forgot about it until this exact second.
“Hope this helps!” = Do not contact me.
“Quick question” = I have a long, convoluted question that Google could have answered.
“Let me get back to you on that” = You’ll never hear me discuss that again.
“Hey!” = I’m about to ruin your whole day.
“Respectfully” = F*ck off.

Well, I think that’s all the low-hanging fruit. Commit the above to memory and you’ll be able to gallop with the very best desk jockeys.

What did I miss? Drop your (least) favorite corporate phrase below.

I’ll keep updating the dictionary until HR takes me out behind the building.

Thanks for reading White Noise! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.

If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share in a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on X.

With sincere gratitude,

Tom

I hope this was as painful to read as it was to write.