Introduction
Lots of people use jargon during meetings. Pippa and Phil talk about business jargon and some common phrases heard during meetings at work.
Vocabulary
agenda
list of what will be talked about in a meeting
minutes
notes made of what people say at a meeting
circle back
return to a topic later
hard stop
an exact time the meeting needs to be finished by, for example if someone is attending another meeting
deck
the slides of information from a presentation
touch base
talk briefly about something
Transcript
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.
Phil
Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work and our series all about business jargon. I’m Phil.
Pippa
And I’m Pippa. We’re on a quest to understand business jargon, how it works and when to use it. You can find a transcript for this episode on our website: bbclearningenglish.com.
Phil
In the last episode, we explored what jargon is and some opinions about it. So listen back to that if you missed it.
Pippa
But in this episode, we’re going to talk through some more jargon, what it means and how to use it.
Phil
That’s right. And today’s jargon is all jargon that you might hear in a meeting at work. Pippa, do you hear a lot of jargon in meetings?
Pippa
Well, when you have a formal meeting at work, there can be lots of jargon terms. So you have the agenda, that’s kind of the list of what you’re going to talk about. You have the minutes, sometimes, so somebody might take notes and that’s called the minutes. So there’s all of that jargon around meetings.
Phil
Yes. But also, when we have like meetings that are talking about ideas and strategies that are very corporate and this can be a time when we get lots of this slightly vague jargon, which is often the ones that people complain about and they don’t like.
Pippa
Yeah. So let’s have a look at some of the strangest jargon you might hear in a work meeting.
Phil
OK, now shall we start with one that I… personally, I absolutely hate this one. You might not. But I really dislike circle back, as in maybe you’ve got a question or something, and they go let’s circle back to that later. Or we’ll circle back to this in a few weeks. I just… I really don’t like it.
Pippa
Yeah. So, circle back just means return to a discussion at a later time. I guess it’s vague because if you don’t know when we’re circling back then it feels like your point or your question hasn’t been answered and I think that’s why people find it annoying. You could also just say let’s return to that point another time. So it’s kind of not necessary, it’s just another way of saying return.
Phil
OK.
Pippa
The next one is hard stop and I like this phrase. I learnt it quite recently, actually. And hard stop is just a firm ending to something. So, Phil, if we were having a meeting and I asked you at the beginning do you have a hard stop, I’m asking do you have something straight after this meeting. Another meeting, maybe, or something you need to do so we can’t run late.
It’s a good way to get an idea of people’s time. If I know you’ve got a hard stop, I’ll make sure we’re running to time, maybe let you leave a little bit early so you can get ready for the next thing.
Phil
Yeah I mean it’s quite a nice way of talking about this concept, isn’t it? The idea that we all know that meetings can overrun and this is a way of making sure that they don’t. And you’re kind of respecting the other person’s time, aren’t you?
Pippa
I guess so. The next one we have is a deck. Do you know what a deck is Phil?
Phil
I know what a deck of cards is. I mean, that’s where you have like all the cards for playing games and things. That’s not this is it?
Pippa
No, it’s not! So, a deck is what we call the slides from a presentation or the notes from a presentation, so it’ll have different pages with lots of information. So you might hear someone in the meeting, say, “oh, if you look at page four of the deck“. And that would mean have a look at that and you’ll find the information that I’m talking about.
Phil
And this next one we’ve got here is touch base. I think it comes from baseball and it just means to have a conversation with someone or to catch up on what someone’s thinking.
Pippa
So, Phil, I might ask you “Can we touch base about a project later?” and it’s useful when you need to have a short update or short conversation about something, you don’t need a full meeting. So touch base is just have a short conversation.
Phil
We’ve been asking for the jargon that you hear all the time at work. Now, our colleagues at Business Daily, that’s a programme on the BBC World Service all about business, have asked their listeners for the jargon that they hear all the time and that maybe they find confusing or annoying. And there were a few that came up that are about meetings.
Pippa
Yes. So one that got mentioned was unpack. So, unpack an idea and that means to explore something. Ali mentioned this one. She says she doesn’t even like unpacking after her holiday, let alone unpacking something at work.
Phil
Here’s another one that lots of people mentioned is I’ll give you some time back. And that’s what someone who’s running a meeting says when the meeting ends early and they want you to feel grateful that you’ve been able to have some time back in your day. I think that annoys a lot of people, that one.
Pippa
Does it annoy you, Phil?
Phil
Can you tell?
Pippa
Yeah, I think it’s a strange one and I guess the reason that people find it annoying is it’s a bit of a cliche.
Maybe you have jargon that confuses you, annoys you, or maybe you love using it at work. Send us the phrases you’d like us to talk about to learning.english@bbc.co.uk.
Phil
And that’s it for this episode. We’ll circle back next time to talk about some more jargon and we’ll hear from some experts about where some of this strangest jargon phrases come from.
Pippa
Let’s touch base then. Bye.
Phil
Bye.