On business English

Friday 20 November 2009 — This is almost 15 years old. Be careful.

I’ve noticed in the office, people often refer to meetings with just an adjective phrase, letting “meeting” be implied: “I have to go, I have a 2:00”. Why don’t we carry this to its logical extreme? Let’s just say things like,

I have to get ready for the weekly.

Lunch has to be quick, I have to get back for a boring.

I think I’m going to skip the pointless.

Comments

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Claudio A. Heckler 6:26 AM on 20 Nov 2009
Awesome!

On the same topic: MS's Raymond Chen's excellent blog, "The Old New Thing", has a whole category dedicated to documenting "Microspeak", with some priceless entries:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/tags/Microspeak/default.aspx
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Florian 6:31 AM on 20 Nov 2009
Wow, for once I'm glad to hear German in the office, never heard anything like that here.
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Dmitry 7:04 AM on 20 Nov 2009
Typical excuse for not attending would be "Sorry, I have accidentally our daily"
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Ken Whitesell 7:14 AM on 20 Nov 2009
Around here, we actually use the first two you listed. We don't use the third, because the phrase "pointless meeting" is redundant.
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Harish Mallipeddi 7:18 AM on 20 Nov 2009
This is a very American thing IMO. For a long time, I didn't know what "I'm on a redeye to NYC" meant. I would have just said "I'm on a late-night flight to NYC".

Another thing which I find Americans do a lot is to pronounce the abbreviation as if it's a real word.
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Tom 8:33 AM on 20 Nov 2009
I think it's a tech thing. Admitting you're going to a meeting is like admitting you use a spreadsheet. It's a flag that you don't really know what you're doing ;-)
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Eleanor 12:37 PM on 20 Nov 2009
Very amusing! But isn't this like the (I think ancient) custom of leaving out "class" in a school/college environment ("I'll be late for my 2 o'clock") or appointment/patient in a medical/business environment ("My 4:30 never showed up")? In each case, the context governs this interpretation. Granted, in these cases, the adjective doesn't appear...
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Eleanor 12:38 PM on 20 Nov 2009
Hey, what's with the time-stamp? Here in Toronto, it's 1:37 p.m.!
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andrew 7:13 PM on 20 Nov 2009
I skipped a pointless today and was congratulated on my foresight.
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Ben Scherrey 1:42 AM on 27 Nov 2009
We don't say 'boring' or 'pointless' because that is inferred. The time is mentioned as it is really the only thing that differentiates it from the other meetings. :-)

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