BUZZWORD COMPLIANT DICTIONARY
M

magic hand-held: Any wireless hand-held device that allows workers to enter real-time data from the field or factory floor. This new market is known as the "blue-collar wireless connectivity vertical."
Nominated by Susan Pietrowski

magnet employer: An employer whose best practices and admirable philosophy attract job applicants in droves. Sadly, such employers are few and far between.
Nominated by Caroline Mackersey

Mahogany Row: A building or suite of offices housing C-level executives. Their desks are made of expensive wood, while the rest of us poor slobs work in gray cubicles with Formica-topped desks. Also known as the C-suite.
Nominated by Holly Herman

malicious obedience: Opposite of civil disobedience. A quiet protest of company policy in which employees go through the motions of doing their jobs but intentionally accomplish nothing.
Nominated by Dave Linabury

malternatives: Any of the "alternative malt beverages" that have exploded onto the alcoholic beverage scene. Includes "hard" lemonades, fruit coolers and most drinks that have the word "Ice" tacked onto their name. Also known as alcohol pops or "alcopops."
Nominated by Robert McCall

management insultancy: When corporate management hires a team of outside consultants to do what it should be doing -- deciding how best to run the company!
Nominated by Bron de Wein

managerial courage: Business version of "do the right thing." The willingness to make difficult decisions for the good of the organization, even if they're not in your own best interests.
Nominated by Banning Cohen

mancation: A man’s vacation. Generally includes lots of beer, a Weber grill, slabs of meat for cooking and a sack of fireworks.
Nominated by D.C. Cottrell

mandals: Sandals worn by men – frequently with socks.
Nominated by David Taylor

mandatory fun: A celebratory business event that holds no interest for you but requires attendance since names are being taken.
Nominated by Chris Lange

mandraulic: Labor intensive. Anything that requires a lot of people instead of machines to get the job done.
Nominated by David Clark

marginalienation: Cryptic comments scribbled in the margins of a document that leave you questioning the author's sense of reality.
Nominated by Christopher Uren

manscaping: Shaving or trimming a man’s body hair to change his appearance. Thanks to TV's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," we now know that manscaping can make your midsection look thinner.

marketecture: A hype-laden description detailing the design and function of a product that frequently exists only in the fertile minds of the marketing department and the PowerPoint presentation created to sell it.
Nominated by Greg Mailloux

masstige: High-quality products with prestige names at mass-market prices. Long used by fashion and cosmetic companies, it’s now the hot marketing strategy for luxury car makers to attract "near-rich" buyers who thought they could never afford a Mercedes, Jaguar or Porsche.
Nominated by K. Hough

maternal profiling: A form of discrimination. Generally occurs when the boss is making decisions about promotions or new job assignments and factors in whether a woman has children or might possibly have a child sometime in the near future.
Nominated by Patty Bonnstetter

matrixed environment: A supposedly efficient organizational structure where workers answer to a functional department head, but most of their work is assigned and managed by a project manager from a different area. Judging from the number of help wanted ads looking for workers with experience in a matrixed environment, it must be hard to find people who want to work for two bosses.
Nominated by Deidre Moore

maturialsm: Mature consumers’ pursuit of the “best of the best” materialism. They’re ditching mundane goods and services for more professional, premium or sassier versions. From heavy duty power tools to state-of-the-art cameras to grown-up ice-cream flavors. Coined by Trendwatching.com

Maudience: An audience, targeted by marketers, comprised of retired women over 65 who enjoy watching "The Golden Girls."
Nominated by Mary Mullins

MBA: To a small part of the workforce, it's a coveted business degree. To the folks who work for bosses with MBAs, it more often stands for Mediocre But Arrogant.

MBWA: Management by walking around. An informal style where top managers actually keep in touch with employees by wandering the halls, asking what workers what they’re working on and getting a clue of what’s really going on in the company.
Nominated by L. Lepori

m-commerce: Even though there have been mobile phones a lot longer than there has been the World Wide Web, we’re only now getting m-commerce. Even then, m-commerce can only happen when the phone is connected to the Web. Shouldn’t calling up on your cell phone and ordering a pizza be m-commerce, too?

meanderthal: Someone who has a difficult time getting to the point when telling a story or giving a presentation. Also: An early riser who wanders aimlessly through the house, unshaven and scratching where it itches.
Nominated by Andrew Kirkwood

meatloaf: Unsolicited mass e-mail, circulated by friends or office mates via group e-mail lists, consisting of jokes, anecdotes and other trivia. Where spam is commercial, meatloaf is homemade.
Nominated by Sionne Roberts

medaled: Another noun turned into a verb thanks to sportswriters and TV sportscasters. "She medaled in both the 500-meter and 1000-meter."
Nominated by Nick Linsalata

meeting: Any gathering where minutes are kept but hours are lost.
Nominated by Roxy Gwynn

meeting moth: An executive who flits from meeting to meeting, but seldom acts on the items discussed in them.
Nominated by Tim Wood

meeting prep: The pre-meeting ritual of going to the restroom and getting a cup of coffee.
Nominated by David Miller

megadigm: A profound change. Coined by change management experts (replacing the less impressive-sounding “paradigm shift”) to describe growing customer expectations that managers can no longer ignore.
Nominated by Kathy Willhoite

MEGO: My Eyes Glaze Over. As in: "Reading these buzzword-laden reports triggers a MEGO effect." Also: Mine Eyes Glazeth Over.
Nominated by Paul Barrett

meno-paws: When you give up looking for a husband/wife/partner and get a pet instead.
Nominated by Jacqui Scarff

menoporsche: Male menopause. Symptoms include a sudden lack of energy, crankiness and the overpowering urge to buy a Porsche. T-shirt, mug available
Nominated by Keith Frampton

Mensa-pause: A hot flash caused by deep, profound thinking. "I had a Mensa-pause during today's math test."
Nominated by Alan Skolnick

mental Pez: To be hit with so much information that it becomes impossible to focus on one thing, so stuff goes from top-of-mind to tip-of-tongue, only to eventually fall out of our head completely … sort of like a mental Pez. (From the "Sally Forth" comic strip.)
Nominated by Mark Worden

merchantainment: If you think this is a Mickey Mouse term, you’re right. In the Internet commerce world, it’s the meshing of entertainment content with product information. Ralph Lauren’s Polo.com has employed it extensively. But the term was created at Disney World. Disney staff are trained to be Merchantainment Hosts or merchantainers. The goal is to create a positive experience for park visitors so they will be inclined to buy more.

mercky: Pharmaceutically dubious. "Data from the Vioxx trials are in and the results appear to be mercky." (Pssst: Merck is a pharmaceutical company.)
Nominated by Alan Skolnick

meta-decision: An all-encompassing, comprehensive decision based on the outcomes of several smaller decisions.  "Once all of the smaller issues are resolved, we'll render a final go/no-go meta-decision."
Nominated by Matt Spera

meta ignorance: Not knowing what you don't know. "At least I have a clue about what I don't know, but my boss suffers from meta ignorance."
Nominated by Steve Hannaford

MFDs: Multi-Functional (or function) Devices. They're the fax, copier, printer hybrids that are causing the extinction of the old "standalone" copying machine. Of course, when they break the MF takes on a decidedly more vulgar meaning.
Nominated by Michael Sims

microwaiting: The time spent in front of the employee break room microwave while your lunch heats up. Regularly occurs a few minutes before noon and is generally not reported as a part of the lunch hour.
Nominated by Christopher Paulin

migrate: Birds migrate. People migrate. And now data migrates. It’s when you move data from one database to another.
Nominated by Tim Blankenhorn

mission-critical: Another sign that too many people in today’s business world have read too many Tom Clancy books. What’s wrong with the word "essential"?

misunderestimate: To seriously underestimate. Like many Bushisms (a term or phrase mangled by the president), misunderestimate is widely used (abused).
Nominated by Fritz Liess

M&Ms: Entry-level employees fresh out of college who fancy themselves "management material.”   Their candy-coated degree looks great, but inside they melt in the heat of real work.
Nominated by Jay Hamacek

Monday: Once a perfectly good name for a day of the week, "Monday" is now the new name of PwC Consulting. The spin-off from PriceWaterhouseCoopers wanted a name that was "real" – not an invented term like Accenture. So it paid a brand consultancy firm $110 million to come up with "Monday."

monetizing eyeballs: It’s what ophthalmologists have been doing for years. On the Web, it’s a term for figuring out how much each person who looks at your Web site is worth – or is costing you. In today's Internet environment, there's a lot of "monetizing" going on.

monitor-shopping: Online window-shopping. When shoppers surf your Web site -- but never buy.
Nominated by Eric Nagle

monopologue: A one-sided "discussion" in which an individual monopolizes the dialogue giving no one else a chance to get a word in.
Nominated by Peter Hadley

moonshine shop: A place where ideas are distilled and turned into working models in short order. "Boeing's moonshine shop works outside the company's traditional channels to develop cheaper, faster ways to build airplanes."

most growable customers: A steal from the agriculture world. Basically, they're customers who could be spending a lot more with you.

motherhood statements: A statement or phrase that no one can disagree with, such as “smoking is bad for you.” Politicians regularly use them to make voters feel good -- while not having to commit to anything.
Nominated by Jez Godin

mouse milk: Anything that delivers little (or at least hard to measure) payoff -- while often requiring lots of hard work.
Nominated by Ed McKendry

mouse potato: A person who spends hour upon hour staring into his/her computer screen. Increasingly couch potatoes are giving way to mouse potatoes. The TV Generation is losing to the Digital Generation. We're not sure this is really an improvement.
Nominated by Melinda Kinard

mousing surface: A term for those who feel "mouse pad" lacks cachet.
Nominated by Susan Walton

moved to Atlanta: Slang reference to Web pages that can't be found and generate a 404 File Not Found error message. "404" is also the area code for Atlanta, GA.
Nominated by James Tullous

MSM: It may sound like a food additive, but it's blogger shorthand for "mainstream media."

muffin top: The unsightly roll of flesh that spills over the waist of a pair of too-tight low-hanging pants, much like a muffin bursting out of the pan.
Nominated by Lisa Kovacs

muggle: In Harry Potter's world, it's a non-wizard. In the computer industry, hackers are wizards and anyone not in the computer industry is a muggle. In the rest of the world, it's simply someone who is mundane.

multiple store-gasms: The ecstasy brought on by hitting as many Christmas sales as possible in a single shopping trip.
Nominated by Mike Knox

multi-slacking: The act (or art) of performing multiple non-productive tasks at once. The best multi-slackers simultaneously can talk on the phone, surf the Web and watch TV. T-shirts, mug available
Nominated by Michael Larson

munge: To disguise your e-mail address to make it more difficult for spammers to strip it from newsgroup posts, chat rooms, etc. Example: s0me0ne@example.c0m, using zero instead of an “o.” A person can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use can’t.
Nominated by Terry Porter

murfing: This one has several meanings. It's most current usage means "mobile surfing" or surfing the Web using mobile phone, etc. An older usage is "mindless surfing." Then there are those musicians who use Bob Moog's MuRF device to give them new sound effects.
Nominated by Vatroslav Skare

museum kitchens: Beautiful and richly-appointed kitchens primarily designed to impress guests rather than preparing meals.
Nominated by Dan Marchant