Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A word or phrase connected with a specialized field or group that usually sounds important or technical and is used primarily to impress laypersons: "'Sensitivity' is the buzzword in the beauty industry this fall” ( ADWEEK).
- n. A stylish or trendy word or phrase.
Wiktionary
- n. pejorative A word drawn from or imitative of technical jargon, and often rendered meaningless and fashionable through abuse by non-technical persons in a seeming show of familiarity with the subject.
WordNet 3.0
- n. stock phrases that have become nonsense through endless repetition
Etymologies
- U.S. 1970s from buzz + word (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The urban dictionary defines the term buzzword as such:”
“Integration, inclusion, mainstreaming – or whatever the current buzzword is – tends to focus on the individual with the disability.”
“The problem with coming up with a new buzzword is that, instead of providing insight and beauty into a complex subject, it will be captured by hacks and beaten to death with the Cliche Stick.”
“Competitive balance, which the owners have used as a buzzword from the beginning, comes in second.”
“I've always used the word buzzword in much more restrictive way than the Guardian article.”
“The buzzword is "soft," and both men, ironically so solid off the court, have had to deal with the label.”
“Fair enough the police failed in their service delivery (or whatever the latest buzzword is for it) but let’s not blame them for something ENTIRELY out of their control, eh?”
“I stumbled across Carr’s blog post talking about how dumb the latest web2. 0 buzzword is – the “Social Graph”.”
“It sounds a little forward-looking, but I wouldn’t be surprised if advertisers started paying consumers to display rotating ads on their home appliances (e.g. the fridge) once said appliances are all able to get online (I believe the buzzword is ‘the digital home’).”
“It's altogether too easy to say that an acronym or buzzword will fade away.”
The Huffington Post: Tony Greenberg: The 2011 Cynic Measures His Predictions
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘buzzword’.
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word phrases
to have a look how word is used
and the plurala word, a word or two, a couple of words, word-artist, word base, word-based, word-bate, word battle, word-bearer, word-beat, word-blind, word blindness and 299 more...
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The Buzz
The bang, the cannonade,
the bale, the hum.lab situation, media, startup, scientific, gameplay, social, intuitive, creative, collaborative, funding, non-governmental ..., consultant and 124 more...
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WF - nominal compounds (figurative)
An extensive list I have been working on for quite some time. Feel free to add more of the kind if you miss any.
brainstorming, upside, downside, goldplating, bikeshedding, mudslinging, downgrading, headhunter, streamlining, mainstreaming, gerrymandering, frontloading and 503 more...
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EN - autological words and phrases
Words and phrases expressing a property which they also possess themselves: "noun" is a noun, "English" is English, etc. If W means W AND W is (a) W, then W is an autological item. Very often but n...
noun, polysyllabic, abbrv., word, common, English, lovely, sesquipedalian, heterological, short, term, terminus technicus and 63 more...
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Kalli's Words
redundant, munchkin, escapade, natch, boom, fap, geek, nocturnal, pedantic, tactile, conversant, oxymoron and 188 more...
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I do not like them, Sam I Am
Words that, for various reasons, I wish we could do without.
copacetic, gamut, horehound, lewd, membrane, metrics, mucous, mucus, negligee, nostril, odious, odor and 143 more...
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aozuas's Words
sense data, hyperreality, brouhaha, ibid, apophenia, fnord, lackadaisical, schadenfreude, bildungsroman, ready-made, readymade, tergiversar and 654 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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2008 Wordlist
Hopefully, I'll be using this site for more than one year. It will be fun then to look back and see what new words I found worthy of notice in any given year.
All words spotted in 2008...longanimity, permalancer, breeder, biodegradable, handicapable, gender-neutral, translator, interpreter, translation, interpreting, kleptocracy, fanfiction and 1598 more...
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INTERP - VOCABULARY
The vocabulary of conference interpreting. I commend this list to those who want to know more about the profession and to those who wish to organize their knowledge about the profession. To aspirin...
retour language, A-language, B-language, C-language, relay language, take sy on relay, language booth, booth meeting, mic, mike, mission, freelance interpr... and 2086 more...
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_mark's list
Words I like!
( personal list, favorite words, randomness )psy, nanobot, success, smack, vibration, microcosmic, springgraph, marksmanship, estranged, homoerotic, flex, fiasco and 1707 more...
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Katnguyen's Words
amenable, cornicopia, truthiness, collaborative, buzzword, nexus, zenith, apex, nondenominational, omnipotent, omniscient, sinecure and 37 more...
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Zz....
Fuzzy! Fizzy! And lots of pizzazz!
puzzle, pizza, piazza, nuzzle, nozzle, swizzle, frizz, drizzle, dazzle, pizazz, sizzle, mizzenmast and 70 more...
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working list / temp / to be moved to ...
inchoate, hump day, full-tilt, handicap, catapult into nat..., flannel, have an agenda ag..., superannuation, loft conversion, pentacle, encapsulate, hen night and 50 more...
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Non-medical Jargon
e-business, icon, buzzword, web 2.0, folksonomy, people person, multi-tasking, podcasting, social software
Tweets
Looking for tweets for buzzword.
arminbw Feel free to contribute: http://wordie.org/lists/the-buzz Mar 19, 2009
kalli I hate buzzwords but I love the word "buzzword". Oct 2, 2007