Here’s the most comprehensive collection of hilarious alternate meanings for common terms from project management, business, and computer science.
Have fun with these language jokes and language humor!
2020: A year so wild that when the Pentagon confirmed UFOs, it's barely news.
ability: The virtue you are forced to use if your boss has no daughter.
adminisphere: The levels of management where big, impractical, and counterproductive decisions are made.
advertising: The art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need. (Will Rogers)
all new: Not compatible with earlier versions.
ambiguity: The lack of clarity in speech, or something like that.
annoying: That. Feel. When. You. Are. Not. Able. To. Read. This. Without. Pausing.
applicating: The act of submitting applications.
argument: An exchange of words between people with diametrically opposed views, all of whom know that they are right. (Kevin Boddington)
blamestorming: A method of collectively finding one to blame for a mistake no one is willing to confess to. Often occurs in the form of a meeting of colleagues at work, gathered to decide who is to blame for a problem.
boss: Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.
cell phone: An electronic device for one-to-one communication and one-to-many irritation. (Chris Simmons)
circular reasoning: See reasoning, circular.
civil servant: Someone who isn't civil and doesn't serve.
class action: A stylish deed.
clicklexia: A disorder often suffered by novice computer users in which they have a tendency to double-click on items which only require one click, often resulting in two items opening instead of just one.
clone: 1. An exact duplicate; "Our product is a clone of their product." 2. A shoddy, spurious copy; "Their product is a clone of our product."
committee: An entity that keeps minutes and loses hours.
comprehension: Something that one has to get in order to get it. (Dave Peters)
compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece.
computer: An electronic time-saving device that is commonly used for time-wasting activities. (Warwick Annear)
computer expert: Someone who has not read the instructions, but who will nevertheless feel qualified to install a program and, when it does not function correctly, pronounce it incompatible with the operating system. (Priscilla Mann)
conference: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.
conference room: A place where everybody talks, nobody listens, and everybody disagrees later on.
cooperate: Used of oneself, to enter into a constructive collaboration with another person. Used of someone else, to do exactly as one is told. (Gordon Burnside)
corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. (Ambrose Bierce)
co-workers: Like Christmas lights, they all hang together but half of them don't work, and the others aren't so bright.
creative writing: Because job security is for pussies.
debugging: Being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer.
degree certificate: The receipt to your 4 years of tuition.
design: What you later regret not doing.
dictionary: The only place where success comes before work.
diplomacy: The ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip. (Winston Churchill)
DIY: Damage-It-Yourself. (Mike Allen)
egosurfing: Typing your own name into Google to see who's talking about you.
email: A method to electronically wasting someone's time when wasting their time in-person is not possible.
experience: 1. The ability to repeat one's mistakes with ever-increasing confidence. (Patrick Hoyte) 2. What you get when you don't get what you want.
FAQ: Frequently Avoided Questions. A company's attempt to answer commonly asked questions such as, "How do I get technical support?" (Guy Kawasaki)
feature: A hardware limitation, as described by a marketing representative.
flow chart: A graphic representation of a bowl of spaghetti.
freelance: To collect unemployment.
fuck: Can be used in many ways and is probably the only fucking word that can be put every fuckingwhere and still make fuckings sense.
hardware: The parts of a computer which can be kicked.
getting fired: Being promoted to customer.
Google: Your surrogate brain.
inbox: A catch basin for everything you don't want to deal with, but are afraid to throw away.
initiative: Deliberately disobeying a destructive order from your manager and being right in the long run.
innumeracy: An ineptitude for mathematics which results in the fear of all sums. (Simon Stacey)
instruction manual: An explanation of how to use something written in a way that is easily understood only by the author. (Phil Smith)
Internet Explorer: A browser that's used to download Chrome.
jury: Twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. (Robert Frost)
life insurance: term (coined by the greatest marketer of all time) for a plan that keeps you poor all your life so you can die rich
management: The art of getting other people to do the work.
management consultant: Someone who tells you how to do improve doing something that he or she can't do at all. (Shankar Sivanandan)
marketing: The art of selling a product that doesn't cost much to produce in such a way that people will take out a small loan to own it. (Jo Buckingham)
meaningless: A white crayon.
meeting: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
mouse: An input device designed to make computer errors easier to generate.
multislacking: Doing two or more useless activities simultaneously instead of working.
negotiate: To seek a meeting of the minds without the knocking together of heads.
outsourcery: The belief that all business problems can magically be solved by outsourcing.
password: Series of letters and numbers written on a post-it note and stuck on a monitor.
PhD: An academic that has learned more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.
phonesia: The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer. (Rich Hall)
printer: A machine that can smell fear, so don't let it know when you're in a hurry.
productive procrastination: Doing stuff to keep yourself busy while avoiding what really needs to be done.
programmer: A machine that turns coffee into code.
quarantine: There is no longer AM and PM. There is just "coffee time" and "wine time."
recursive: See recursive.
résumé: The closest many of us will ever come to perfection.
search engine: A program that enables computer users to locate information and advertisers to locate computer users. (Damien Whinnery)
self-employed: Jobless.
social distancing: A practice to help prevent COVID-19. But when this is over, please continue to stay at least 6 feet away from me still.
state of the art: Anything that you can't afford.
strategy: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it have left the organization.
tact: The art of getting your point across without stabbing someone with it.
taxes: A yearly subscription to the country you live in, and childhood is the free trial.
telecrastination: The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.
television: A commercial delivery system.
timefoolery: Setting the alarm clock ahead of the real time in order to fool yourself into thinking you are not getting up so early. (Rich Hall)
tomorrow: One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.
tycoon: A person for whom the government makes customized laws.
unemployment office: A career placement service for humanities majors.
unfair competition: Selling more cheaply than we do.
video conferencing: 90% looking at yourself, 9% looking at others, 1% taking screenshots.
WFH: Short for "work from home" but commonly misread as WTF.
Windows: The times between when companies innovate and when Microsoft incorporates. (Guy Kawasaki)
wisdom: Knowing what to do with what you know.
work: Sitting in front of a computer in the office all day just to afford to sit in front of a computer at home all night.
Zoom: A remote conferencing service that allows users to see which of their colleagues or friends have nicer houses than they do.