Business Jargon: Jargon for meetings
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Hello and welcome to Learning English for Work, an hour series all about business jargon. I'm Phil. 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. MUSIC

In the last episode, we explored what jargon is and some opinions about it. So listen back to that if you missed it. But in this episode, we're going to talk through some more jargon, what it means and how to use it. 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? 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. Yes, but also when we have meetings that are talking about

very ideas and strategies that are very corporate. And this could 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. Yeah. So let's have a look at some of the strangest jargon you might hear in a work meeting. Okay. Now, shall we start with one that I personally, I absolutely hate this one. You might not, but I really dislike this one.

circle back as in maybe you've got a question or something and they go let's circle back to that later we'll circle back to this in a few weeks

I just, I really don't like it. 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.

OK, so the next one is hard stop. And I like this phrase. I learned 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.

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? I guess so. The next one we have is a deck. Do you know what a deck is, Phil? I know what a deck of cards is. I mean, that's where you have all the cards for playing games and things.

That's not this, is it? No, it's not. So a deck is what we call the slides from a presentation or the notes from a presentation. So it will have different pages with lots of information. So you might hear someone in a 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. And this next one we've got here is touch base deck.

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. 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.

We've been asking for the jargon that you hear all the time at work. Now, our colleagues at Business Daily, that's a program on the BBC World Service all about business, are

have asked their listeners for the jargon that they hear all the time and that maybe they find confusing or annoying. And there are a few that came up that are about meetings. 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.

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. Does it annoy you, Phil?

Can you tell? 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 cliché. 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 at bbc.co.uk. OK.

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 the strangest jargon phrases come from. Let's touch base then. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this podcast from BBC Learning English. Continue your learning on our website with courses, quizzes and programmes to improve your English.

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