Corrosive was used to mean almost anything“Excessive remuneration packages for executives can be corrosive" Guardian headline 30 Aug 2001. Do they mean divisive? Damaging? In text, “Uncontrolled excessive pay can be socially corrosive and undermine morale...” Makes more sense, but still not clear on what’s going to be corroded and why this is a bad thing.
"The hounding of politicians by a cynical and corrosive media is a disaster for democracy” Guardian 10/28/2002
“A single item was on the agenda: how to deal with the corrosive allegations arising from the collapse of the Paul Burrell trial...” Independent Nov 16 02 Damaging?
“It is four years of corrosive Bush Middle East policies, coming on top of decades of US incompetence and missed opportunities.” Arab News May 6 2004 Nasty?
“The systematic spread of political correctness has a corrosive effect on our society.” Michael Howard Aug 2004
"Much of modern television is not only bad but socially corrosive, coarsening and brutalising viewers through its obsessions with sex, aggression and voyeurism, John Humphrys, the broadcaster, has declared." Telegraph website August 28, 2004 Perhaps he thinks it means “corrupting".
“Isn’t it lazy or corrosive to slam a person or a thing just because they happen to have a public dimension?” Times June 4, 2005
The importation of New World gold into Spain coincided with a corrosive inflation that has come to be known as the "price revolution." snopes.com
"As yet there are no political parties, raising fears that voting blocs will form along corrosive tribal lines." Guardian Dec 19 2005 Divisive?
"The fact that the sea is presided over by lunatics who believe there should be commercial fishing in 100% of the sea breeds a culture that is corrosive." Charles Clover, 2006 So civilisation as we know it is going to be destroyed by commercial fishing... it's so obvious!
1998
faux for fake
engagement/engage (engaging with issues - went by 2001)
disengagement (went by 2001)
overarching (Whatever happened to umbrella? Whatever happened to overarching?)
ratchet up (eg ratchet up standards when you just mean "raise standards" (or, ridiculously, "ratchet down")
shape (meaning influence)
1999 uber as prefix
comfort zone
arm candy
wrestling with (inner) demons (His demons returned to haunt him.)
pushing the envelope
playing catchup/dressup
blanking He blanks me. “I’m blanking the wheel.” Margaret Forster Evening Standard 2 Feb 00
cascade (gone by 2002)
shadowy has come to mean "having sinister unseen forces/motives/organisations/people behind it"
2000 minded Judges, politicians “were minded” to do something (and Ken Livingstone still is January 11, 2007 and March 2007)
visitor attraction for tourist trap
levels The "situation" of the 90s/00s. (Still with us in 2003. Sigh. Going out, 2004? Still around 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012...)
disorder American habit of adding ‘disorder’ to states of mind. Stress disorder, panic disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. A bit like "situation" but making sure you don’t assume stress is a good thing, or narcissism is normal, or something.
2001
People have stopped talking about "values".
wrenching (adj)
calcified French society is “calcifying”, letter to Evening Standard August 9 2005 (What happened to “ossified”?)
your call
nuanced
red-top (for tabloid newspaper)
wrap (Erykah Badu wears a head-wrap not a turban, there’s a kind of sandwich called a wrap, lines on screen suffer from word-wrap) When did wrapping paper become wrap? Oz gladwrap for clingfilm has been around since 70s.
diversity multi-ethnic became multi-cultural and now we have diversity (probably short for cultural diversity)
creep (mission creep, function creep) (like movement of glacier? expansion of asphalt?)
sassy
prongs (for horns of dilemma, multipronged approach)
junket (for free hospitality surrounding film launches etc)
buildout (like rollout)
More here (90s, 2000, 2001).
2002 and 2003 here.
Buzz Words of 2011 here and here.
Complete Buzz Words of 2010 here.
Buzz Words of 2009 here.
Buzz Words of 2009 Part Two here.
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