JARGONAUT

jargonaut: translation

n.

A person who uses a an excessive number of jargon terms when speaking or writing.

The plain white envelope, as those anonymous ones do, just sort of showed up in the County Lines mail slot. Inside was a cute decal of Freddy, the cartoon alligator mascot of the South Florida Water Management District. There also was a note, which no doubt referred to a recent column that sniped at the SFWMD, as the governmentjargonautscall it.

—Geoff Clark, "Commission hardbal didn't cause shiner,"Orlando Sentinel, May 16, 1993

'Mode' could now use a rest.'Slipping into a failure mode' is an admiral's jargon for 'failing.' Whenever a scientific term is embraced byjargonauts, the parameters are stretched beyond recognition. Let us return 'mode' to fashion, and to the large dollop of ice cream that lands squarely on top of the pie.

—William Safire, "On Language,"The New York Times, December 28, 1980

jargon creep

jargon dyslexia

jargon filter

taikonaut

Jargon and Buzzwords

People