Forum Topic

Trade and professional jargon

I like business and occupational jargon.  It amuses me when I hear chefs talk kitchen speak...as in "sweating the onions", "blitzing" the beetroot or their front of house colleagues referring to "100 covers".  Also, city financial blokes speaking of "bed and breakfasting" their holdings or going "cum or ex dividend". What other amusing trade or occupational jargon can you think of in your particular profession?  There must be thousands of phrases of interest to lay folk like me - I'd like to hear of some unusual ones please.  ;-)

Gerry Tan ● 6308d17 Comments

English as she is spoke is a great language, including it's colourful Cockney slang.  I Googled some Londoner's slang recently and smiled when I read costermongers' terms for amounts of money.  Like, an Ayrton meaning a tenner (£10 - as in Ayrton Senner).  And pony for £25.  The word that gave a smile was an Archer for £2000(the amount Sir Jeffrey Archer allegedly gave a prostitute for services rendered)!It just shows how good the English language is - a wonderfully growing living language.  ;-)

Gerry Tan ● 6255d

I'm not sure this is exactly jargon but I love the way English makes words loveable like "cozzie" for costume, biccky for biscuit.  My Swedish godchild learning English loved how we used "thingy".

Barbara Yerolemou ● 6255d

I have just had my memory jogged by Tony Wood, in the the most remote way I should add, of some programmers' slang.Formatted dump - normal passing of stools.Unformatted dump - diarrhoea.Core dump - very, very satisfying dump (see above).Liquid diagnostics - effect of lunchtime drinking on solving a programming problem inasmuch that the problem is solved in  one third the time that it would have taken in the morning.

Alan Brainsby ● 6256d

vox-pop (vox populi, vox dei) interview with random passer by - sometimes called MoS - man on streettum-tab - the words over the bottom quarter of screen identifying interviewee - lots of altervatives for that one: aston, chyron and many others.cue dots - the black and white flicker top right when coming up to a junction or commercial breaknoddy - cutaway shot of interviewer -not used so much any moreDOG - station or programme identifier logo in screen corner (probably archaic)

Sara Nathan ● 6295d

The law and lawyers have a wonderfully extensive jargon range – any Ealing lawyers care to comment?But one of the best lot of jargon comes from the film industry – interesting words like best boy, chief grip, dolly-wally, pups, dinkies, hair-in-the-gate, it's a wrap,talent caravan, chuck wagon,  rough-cut, "one-for-Lloyds", day-for-night etc etc(I could go on for another page!)Any more jargon from other professions/trades?  ;-)

Gerry Tan ● 6295d

Building has a great jargon list - soffit is one of my favourites (exposed underside of a building, usually the  wood/plastic under the eaves of a building).At least with jargon, until the Americans cocked it up, each word or phrase had a precise, unambiguous meaning within the profession in which it was used.

Alan Brainsby ● 6301d

Medics have some very funny jargon in their occupation. Most professions do I guess, not least the police. Officers speak of a miscreant being "in the club", meaning he has a Criminal Records Office history...ie. he's a member of that club. "Previous" is a cute phrase, as is the description of a solicitor as being a "brief". And Police officers often refer to someone who's mentally unstable as being "pitch'n putter"! Policemen/women have an interesting appearance/identity code - IC1 meaning of European looks with light skin, IC2 meaning European with darker skin, IC3 mean Afro-Caribbean etc etc.Strange and interesting is this jargon business.

Gerry Tan ● 6301d

http://www.messybeast.com/dragonqueen/medical-acronyms.htmSelf-explanatory I hope, else you must be pumpkin +ve!

Alan Brainsby ● 6304d

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3159813.stmSee above for medical slang, and below.Vet: a doctor who treats a patient who can't speak English.Sadly many of our doctors now can't speak English.Is that why on out-patient forms it's asked if one needs a translator?

Alan Brainsby ● 6304d

Sorry, can't type on small keyboard: PAFO

Keith Clarke ● 6304d

I rather enjoyed the acronym by which A&E departments would categorise some of their customers, particularly on a Saturday night: PAFE (P*ssed And Fell Over)

Keith Clarke ● 6304d

Francis House ● 6304d

"This facility has been transferred to microfilm"A notice placed in lieu of lavatory paper- very IT.A bit of RAF cod Latin:"Nil illegitimi carborundum"

Alan Brainsby ● 6305d

TLA: Three Letter Acronymused by IT types in a self-mocking, post-modern ironic sort of way.Jargon is my bread & butter. I work on the interface between Insurance and IT, translating the Finance goobledygook into Geekspeak.

Gavin Gilbert ● 6306d

My favourite IT acronym (as it makes a word) is the process by which print output does not go directly to a print but to a holding file which may or may not print out the print information at that time.The term is spooling, originally because the output file was a tape. The benefit of doing this was that the computer processor could complete a program faster instead of waiting for the printer to print. Printers are really slow compared to disk access times and processor cycles. Thus one could run several programs while one of them plodded away printing from the tape generated from an earlier program.The concept was developed for mainframe computers in the 1960s, long before microcomputers.Anyway SPOOL - Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line.

Alan Brainsby ● 6306d

IT:WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get!GIGO - Garbage In Garbage OutNFG - Not F(airly) GoodRTB - Return To BaseBASIC - Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

Jim Wong ● 6306d

From the NHS:Trick cyclists - pyschiatristsPlumbers - any surgeonNurs - patient attendant without a degreeNurse - patient attendant with lettersPathologists - diagnosticians without the responsibility of prescription. Not exactly jargon but a statement of fact.From computing:RTFM - Read The F(riendly) Manual!

Alan Brainsby ● 6308d