"I Use The Same Technique Now": 37 Peeps Online Debate Smooth Phrases To Use Against Office Liars

Just a couple of days ago, a thread appeared in the AskReddit community, the author of which, the user u/Original_Giraffe_830, asked netizens the question: "How does one say 'you are lying' in a corporate way?"

To be honest, we don't know whether the topic starter really wanted to elegantly catch someone out for being untruthful, or just wanted to expand their vocabulary - but they definitely achieved their goals!

The result was over 4.2K upvotes and around a thousand comments with the best examples of corporate language of our time. So, please read and enjoy everything in our new list, carefully made for you by Bored Panda!

No, humanity has always tried to clothe its thoughts in the most effective images, and, for example, the ancient Vikings are an excellent example of this. It's enough to remember the so-called "kennings" - conditional formulations used by them to replace this or that word. For example, "boar of waves" was "ship", "flame of the sea" stood for "gold", and "storm of swords" was actually "battle".

However, that was a thousand years ago, when any careless word could lead to a challenge to a duel - so it was way better to be fluent in your tongue than in your sword. Today, we are much less likely to run into a skilled swordsman in the office, so why do we resort to various euphemisms to point out a lie to a colleague?

Over the past decades, a special corporate jargon has developed in our business environment, also known as 'corpo lingo' or even 'corporatese,' which is characterized by extremely vague formulations, intentionally complicated phrases and words, and numerous euphemisms.

The thing is that even the most difficult and unpleasant situations are usually presented in a much more positive form than they actually are when reporting to management. So, this excessive office diplomacy has grown into a separate jargon over time.

As the British journalist Steven Poole characterizes it, "engineered to deflect blame, complicate simple ideas, obscure problems, and perpetuate power relations."

Among the examples given in this collection, there are both indisputable masterpieces of corpo lingo, which even a highly experienced linguist will not be able to understand, and wordings designed to transfer the discussion of the problem to a private meeting - and then, if you are the boss, to express everything in much simpler and more direct words.

By the way, one of the best, in my opinion, techniques from this collection is to begin accusing subordinates of lying with the words: "help me understand..." At least now, if your boss ever addresses you with such a phrase, you know what to expect. As the saying goes, "forewarned is forearmed."

In any case, I believe that even if you don't work in an office but are simply interested in all the rich possibilities of the English language when it comes to expressing your noble indignation at the fact that your deeply respected interlocutor was deliberately distorting information, this selection will be very interesting and useful for you.

And now I will go incredibly laconic - please feel free to read this list to the very end, and maybe add your own beautiful examples of such corpo lingo wordings in the comments below.