BUZZWORD COMPLIANT DICTIONARY
D

dashboard: Key indicators/gauges used to track the progress of a business project. Of course, Microsoft and others are happy to sell you a "digital" dashboard to group and monitor those indicators for you.
Nominated by Dave Farrant

data cholesterol: The build up of information or traffic that slows down a software application's ability to perform. "Outerbay's technology improves performance mission-critical Oracle applications up to 40% by eliminating the 'data cholesterol' that builds with transaction volume."
Nominated by Ananth Srinivas

data dump: Basically it's a debriefing. A person working on a project does a "data dump" for the person taking over the project. It also refers to a brainstorming session where everyone contributes ideas. Nominated by Susan Albright

data mart: A data mart means you’re too cheap to spend the money to buy a big enough computer system to handle all your business needs. Instead of putting all your business information in one system (a data warehouse), you continue to use several different computer systems to run your business (one for accounting, one for customer service, another for sales, etc.). In a data mart approach, you pull only the info you need from each system and merge it to give you the big picture.

data point: Once a hard number that could be graphed, it's now become any anecdote or opinion disguised as fact that can be used to persuade others. "I think we need a few more data points before we can make that decision." Also, a "bullet" point in a PowerPoint presentation.
Nominated by John Cornellier

data shadow: The trail of digital information you leave behind every time you use a credit card, send an e-mail, browse the Web or use a cell phone.

data smog: To be overwhelmed with too much information. Example: A Google search that turns up six million references is data smog.

dataveillance: Tracking an individual by following the data trail left each time he or she uses a credit card, cell phone or the Internet.
Nominated by Audrey Byrnes-Tolley

Day 2 project: Anything that's not on the immediate horizon or is a low priority. "Don't worry about that now, that's a Day 2 project." Loosely translated: "That's a nice idea, but don't hold your breath."
Nominated by Nick Linsalata

DBT: Death by Tweakage. When a product or project fails due to unnecessary tinkering or too many last-minute revisions. "Why did the new product fail?" "It had the DBTs."

dead peasants insurance: A corporate "win-win" bet on your life.  The practice of companies taking out life insurance policies on their own employees (often without them knowing it) while designating the company as beneficiary. If the employee dies young, the company gets tax-free death benefits. If the employee lives long, it has a long-running tax break. Also known as "janitors' insurance."
Nominated by Mark Worden

deck: A staple of every modern business meeting -- the PowerPoint "slide" show. "There were only 12 slides in the deck, but the presentation lasted an hour."
Nominated by Margaret Wilson

deconflicted: Military-speak for the elimination of conflicts. This can be done several ways. One is to identify and synchronize your planes, troops, etc., so their missions do not conflict. Another is to control a given area by the elimination of an opposing force. "The skies above Iraq have been deconflicted."
Nominated by Michael Troiano

deep dive: To explore an issue or subject in-depth. "We did a deep dive on that market. There's just nothing there."
Nominated by Robin Corpuz

deep-domain expertise: A favorite of consultants, particularly in the technical arena. It simply means they have expertise in a particular area. The term "deep domain" is for extra emphasis. In other words: "We know what we're talking about when it comes to this particular subject; in fact, we really, really know what we're talking about."
Nominated by Craig Hughes

deer market: Neither a bear market nor a bull market. It's when the market is flat and not moving in either direction. Investors are indecisive - like deer frozen in the headlights.

defenestrate: The original usage, dating from the 17^th century, meant "to execute by throwing someone out a window." In today's geek-speak, it means throw Microsoft's Windows out the window. "The users are much happier since we chose to defenestrate the servers and workstations at this location."
Nominated by Jay Hamacek

deferred success: Term proposed by a group of British educators to replace the word "failed" to avoid demoralizing students.
Nominated by Paul Hupkes

defrag: Once we just "defragged" our hard drives, now we're "defragging our brains. "I'm too tired to go out tonight. I want to stay home, have a quiet drink and defrag." Rest, relax and mentally recharge.
Nominated by Lorraine Jackson

deja moo: The nagging feeling that you've heard this bull before. Deja Moo T-shirt and coffee mug available
Nominated by Bernie Corrigan

deja poo: The feeling that you've stepped in this bull before. Deja Poo  T-shirt available
Nominated by Mindy Parsons

demand-side management: Basically, it's a form of conservation. Electric utilities regularly offer incentives to companies that practice "demand-side management." By getting companies to shift their power usage from peak times when power consumption is high to off-peak times, the utilities can be more efficient.
Nominated by John Driscoll

denial-of-service attack: Any attempt to prevent legitimate users from accessing your Web site or sending you e-mail, usually accomplished by flooding your servers with page requests or thousands of e-mail messages. Pssst! This requires slightly above average technical skill and a malicious mindset.

de-risk: Corporate-speak for reducing risk. "We continue to de-risk our revenue profile with stronger growth in Europe."
Nominated by Peter Zanger

desktime: Those brief periods between meetings when you're actually sitting at your desk working. "I'll need a little desktime between the offsite strategy meeting and the afternoon brainstorming session so I can schedule tomorrow's team status meeting."
Nominated by Mike Capsambelis

destinesia: A temporary condition that explains the dumb blank look on your face when you arrive at your destination but can't remember why you're there.
Nominated by Allen Danielowsk

dial it back: To tone down or take a step back. As in turn the dial back a notch. "Your press release is pushing believability. Dial it back."
Nominated by Mark Worden

dialogue: Apparently no one talks during business meetings any more. Instead, everyone has a dialogue. "Let's have a dialogue on the new product launch."
Nominated by Charles Baker

directionally correct: To be in the general direction of, but not exact. A great way to cover your butt. "His analysis was directionally correct. It was wrong, but it was in the ball park."
Nominated by James Wilson

Dixie-Chicked: To be reviled or boycotted for voicing an unpopular political sentiment. "Dreamworks is worried that Chris Rock may criticize Bush and the movie will get Dixie-Chicked."
Nominated by Mark Worden, Fritz Liess and Andrew Penchuk

digital amnesia: The result of being so overwhelmed by the availability, speed and volume of digital information that you can’t remember any of it (or where you might have put it on your hard drive).
Nominated by Joe Shields

digital capture device: Any digital camera, video recorder, scanner, etc, that "captures digital images." So be leery when a photographer's invoice includes a surcharge for use of a "digital capture device."
Nominated by Simon Watson

digital denial: The failure of a company or industry to accept that the Internet has changed the world and made their business model obsolete. Example: The recording industry, desperate to maintain the status quo, has turned to suing its own customers.

digital dieting: Thanks to digital photography and PhotoShop, more and more folks are managing to lose weight - by removing pixels, not pounds. (Hey, it worked for Katie Couric.) The BuzzWhacker is hoping to add hair.

Digital Divide: More imposing than the Continental Divide. It’s the disturbing gap between the Haves and Have Nots of society. The Haves are able to keep abreast of the changes caused by technological advances. The Have Nots are getting further behind because they can’t afford computers, Internet access, etc. This is clearly being seen in the education system where poorly funded schools are producing graduates who are not prepared for the digital world they’re stepping into.

digiteria: Geek-speak for a coffee shop, restaurant, bar or other public place where “cool people” meet in a WiFi environment.
Nominated by Max Matthews

DINOs: Democrats in Name Only. Despite their party affiliation, they sound and act like Republicans. Their counterparts across the aisle: RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
Nominated by Mark Worden

diplo-speak: The coded language spoken by diplomats to "send a message"   without actually committing to anything. Diplo-babble, on the other hand, is laden with fuzzy buzzwords and contains no message at all.

directionally correct: Consultant-speak for “Trust us. We don’t have a specific answer, but if you go in this general direction we think you’ll be making the right decision.”
Nominated by Phil Brown

Director of First Impressions: A receptionist. Once the punch line of an Internet joke, it's now an actual job title at some companies.
Nominated by Michael Brown

disambiguate: To remove ambiguities. To make clear. Used extensively by software developers, as in: "Before we go gold, we need to disambiguate the help menu verbiage."
Nominated by Jed Alger

disclude: Growing in use, particularly among the computer crowd and marketers, it simply means "to not include." "We disclude those who don't have a net worth of at least $1 million."
Nominated by Scott Dittman

dispense suspense: Those milliseconds between making a vending machine selection and it successfully dropping down for you to retrieve -- during which you silently scream to the bag of chips, "Don't get stuck; DON'T GET STUCK!"
Nominated by Beth Wegerbauer

divaesque: To project one's self as a diva with all the trappings and prima donna attitude without necessarily having the talent to back it up.
Nominated by Michael Troiano

Dixie Cup: A small, economy car. After being involved in a substantial accident, it's totaled and then discarded like used Dixie (paper) Cup.
Nominated by Scott Haddon

DKTM: An abbreviation often added to e-mail when the writer wants the recipient to know that he doesn't support or agree with the proposal he has been elected to deliver. Stands for: Don't Kill The Messenger.
Nominated by Jason Lemons

DNA trip: The annoying act of pushing one's beliefs, ethnic heritage or traditions on others. "Jack's on a real DNA trip."
Nominated by Scott Haddon

document polish: Fancy phrases and buzzwords added to reports or other documents that sound important or impressive -- but add nothing meaningful to the content.
Nominated by David Miller

docusoap: A term that appears to more accurately describe the genre known as "Reality TV." Half documentary, half soap opera.
Nominated by Billy McCormac

dog-whistle politics: A political message that works much like a high-pitched dog-whistle. It's inaudible or ignored by most of us, but is heard clearly by the target audience.
Nominated by John Burland

dooced: To get fired for something you wrote in your personal blog. Named after Heather Armstrong's Web site dooce.com. Heather was one of the first to get sacked for her musings.

dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Nominated by Jeff Kirk

dormandise: Dormant brand names resurrected to take advantage of  ad campaigns that are still rattling around in the collective consumer conscience -- even though the products themselves may have long ceased to exist. So once again we're buying VW Beetles, Ovaltine, Atari games and Care Bears.
Nominated by Hunter Boyle

dot-bombs: The virtual landscape is now littered with companies that existed only cyberspace and couldn’t make the transition to real profits. Most discovered that you cannot live by VC bread alone. Some vanished because they couldn’t find "an appropriate business model." Others were simply mismanaged. The rest? Just bad ideas.

dot-calm: First, there was the calm BEFORE the storm when all was perfect in the Internet economy. Everyone had stock options and drove Ferraris. That ended in the spring of 2000 as the stock market and venture capitalists turned their backs on the dot-coms. NOW, the term is used to talk about the calm AFTER the storm as the remaining dot-coms maintain a low profile as they search for a way to actually make profits like "real" companies do.

dot carnage: The aftermath of the dot-com collapse where the digital landscape was littered with broken dreams and hordes of people looking for work. This message was spotted on a listserv: "My company may become another victim of the dot carnage because my paycheck is now delayed by 'a few days'."

dot.con, dot-con: We can finally retire "grifting" and "flim-flam" from our vocabulary with this digital update. Plus, this perfectly appropriate name for an Internet scam is a double entendre.
Nominated by Mary Gray Rust

dotcorps: Corporations that primarily exist on the Internet. They have few -- if any -- physical assets. Most died in April 2000 when the stock market took its pound of flesh.

dotsam: The Internet's wasteland of abandoned Web sites, Hotmail accounts, blogs, wikis, MySpace pages, etc., that their creators have ignored for months/years -- but are still accessible on the Web.
Nominated by Gavin Wilson

dotted line: Organizational-speak for employees who do not have direct reporting responsibility to a manager, but share account or customer responsibilities. In reality, they generally defer to their own group before contacting the outside manager whom they "dot" into, thus negating the "dotted line" relationship. Example: "Bob reports to the sales team, but has a dotted line to Jane who manages customer service."
Nominated by Jennifer Regelman

double-click: To give more attention or evaluate in depth. Derived from double-clicking on a file to open it. "Let's start with the historical data and after that we can double-click on the pro formas."
Nominated by Matt Baker and Steve Herz

double drunk: Police-speak for someone whose blood alcohol level registers twice the legal limit on the Breathalyzer.
Nominated by Michael Troiano

downline: The Merriam-Webster dictionary refuses to recognize "downlines" and we don't care much for them either.. It's a term in multi-level marketing (MLM) that describes the people who work beneath you (down the line). Your job is to recruit them to sell your products. In return, you get a percentage of their sales. Their job is to recruit people below them. In return, they get a percentage of their recruits sales. And so do you. It spirals down and down. The only people we are sure make any money at this are the people at the top. MLM existed before the Internet, but the Net has helped it to run amok.
Nominated by Leslie Nelson

DRIB: Don’t Read If Busy. An acronym used in subject lines by thoughtful and courteous e-mail senders, which pretty much guarantees an e-mail will never be opened and read.

drill down: In the early days of the Web, it was the process of clicking on hyperlinks to go deeper and deeper into a Web site to find increasingly minute detail. Now a good Web site gives you everything you need in one or two clicks. So NOW the term applies to other parts of business. As a verb, it means to investigate something thoroughly; to discuss in detail. "We need to get together and really drill down on this." As a noun, it’s the results of that process: "Do you have the drill-down on that report for me?"
Nominated by Richard Curtis

drinking from a fire hose: Overwhelmed. Taking on too much of a workload.
Nominated by Leonard Sachs

drink the Kool-Aid: This one’s got to make the Kool-Aid people cringe. The truly tasteless buzz phrase has its roots in the Jim Jones’ cult that committed suicide in Guyana in 1978. The cyanide-laced concoction they drank was made from a powdered fruit drink. For the record, it was NOT Kool-Aid. Now, back to the definition: It’s an old phrase that has resurfaced in the dot-com world. It reflects how many dot-coms require 14-hour workdays, not to mention unpaid on-call weekend duty. That’s a "drink-the-Kool-Aid" environment. Of course, Jim Jones didn’t offer stock options.
Nominated by Jacqueline Celenza

drip irrigation: In marketing, it’s the process of slowly building a customer file. Never ask them for too much of their private information at one time. Get a little bit here, a little bit there, until you have what you need. It supposedly is the best way to build a relationship with the customer. Sounds a little sneaky to us.

drip marketing: Marketers love to steal terms from the agricultural world, but this one’s not all wet. Drip marketing allows marketers to control the generation of sales leads. Example: A marketer has a mailing list of 40,000 potential customers, yet only a small sales force. So the marketer mails to 5,000 every two weeks for four months and the leads arrive at a rate the sales force can handle without the leads growing cold.

drive-by download: A software program that automatically downloads to your computer -- often without your consent or knowledge and for nefarious purposes.
Nominated by Michael Troiano

druce, druced: To go to extraordinary lengths to avoid consequences for one's actions. To shamelessly manipulate the courts to skirt justice. "He druced the IRS by shredding the paperwork and blaming it on his partner." Coined in honor of former Pennsylvania state legislator Thomas Druce, who has spent years trying to duck responsibility for killing a man in an hit-and-run accident.
Nominated by Janet LoFurno

drunch: A combination lunch and dinner. It often starts out as a late lunch, but then runs into the dinner hour (or later). Drunches are generally fueled with an abundance of liquid libations.
Nominated by Scott Haddon

Dub-dub-dub: Short for w-w-w. You'll often hear techies say this when giving another techie a URL. Hey, can you check out this site? Go to dub-dub-dub.buzzwhack.com
Nominated by Anne McKay

Dubya: It's George W. Bush’s nickname in some corners. BuzzWhack first saw it in a Molly Ivins' column. Molly, for those who don't know, is a true Texas legend. She's been haunting Lone Star politicians for years with her biting political wit. "Oh, my Gawd! Dubya's done gone and got himself elected President."

duck shuffler: Just when you get all your "ducks in a row," a duck shuffler -- usually someone in upper management -- comes around and rearranges them for you. T-shirts, mugs available
Nominated by Debbie Gassmann

duppie: A depressed urban professional. Duppies are often overeducated and underemployed -- and flipping burgers at McDonald's until the job market improves. T-shirts, mugs available

DWT: Driving While Texting. It's become a such a concern that the Arizona State Legislature is considering a bill to make it illegal.
Nominated by Evans Neil