A lexicon of executive lingo, by Tony Thorne
In the last couple of years, we have been subjected to Sarah Palin's 'refudiate' — her novel confusing of 'refute' and 'repudiate' that has apparently caught on among some Tea Party supporters in the US, along with 'requestion', a noun used first — presumably — in ignorance and then deliberately by some of the online community to mean a combined question and request ("Can the
loan facility now be made available to us?")
Now reader S Gaines has alerted me to facipulate, a bizword from 2008 that has recently crossed over from US into UK usage. A portmanteau term (or blend, in linguists' jargon) combining 'facilitate' and 'manipulate'. It means driving your own agenda surreptitiously through a meeting in order to manoeuvre others into doing what
you want. When executed correctly — the subtle coercion is easiest if
you are chairing — facipulating the meeting leaves the other participants thinking that you helped them achieve their desired outcome.
Send buzzwords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk
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