And Now, a Lexicon for the Non-Wired

Do you head for the cube farm every weekday morning anxious about being Dilberted, or worse, chain sawed?

Have you turned into a body Nazi trying to shake the stress?

There was a time when the jargon of any specialized group took forever to reach the mainstream, but that was before technology wired us together. Today, a piece of office slang can spread through e-mail and over the Internet “faster than a head cold through a kindergarten classroom,” says jargon impresario Gareth Branwyn, who treasures such cross-fertilizations as symbolizing the values, ideas, anxieties and humor of our times.

Branwyn has produced “Jargon Watch” (HardWired Books, 1997) described as a “pocket dictionary for the jitterati” (those who fear they are outside the digital revolution).

It’s an extension of his Wired magazine column, which, he explains, is collected from Web pages, e-mail, computer programs, trade shows and other sources.

Some samples of the emerging language:

* Begathon: A TV or radio fund-raiser for a charity or PBS station in which every form of guilt, sweet-talking and outright begging is used to get people to fork over dough.

* Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

* Body Nazis: Hard-core exercise and weight-lifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn’t obsessively work out.

* Chain Saw Consultants: Outside experts brought in to reduce the employee head count (leaving the top brass with clean hands).

* Cube Farm: An office filled with cubicles.

* Deboning: Removing stitched-in subscription cards and card stock ad pages from a magazine to make it easier to read.

* Dilberted: To be exploited, oppressed and screwed over by one’s boss.

* Elvis Year: The peak year of something’s popularity. “Barney the dinosaur’s Elvis year was 1993.”

* Entrenched Transactors: Bank jargon for people who refuse to bank by ATM or computer, thus wasting the bank’s money / time on tellers.

* In the Plastic Closet: Said about someone who refuses to admit to having cosmetic surgery.

* Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a big mistake.

* Open Collar Workers: People who work at home or telecommute.

* I-Way: Short form of information superhighway.

* Mouse Potato: The online, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

* Siliwood: Short for “Silicon Hollywood,” the coming converge of movies, interactive television and computer.

* Starter Marriages: Short-lived first marriages that end in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.

* Tract Mansions: Large, expensive homes built in tract-like developments by the nouveau rich.

* Xerox Subsidy: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies at the workplace.

* Yuppie Food Coupons: The $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a meal: “We each owe $8, but all anybody’s got is yuppie food coupons.”

Do you have samples from your own workplace? Branwyn welcomes submissions at [email protected].