Worst corporate jargon of the week: Deliverable
At City PM, we’re taking a stand and calling out the worst jargon which travels around the City faster than you can drink an overpriced pint.
Offender: Deliverable
What does it mean?
Something which can be delivered, i.e. anything. Chiefly used in plural. Derived from deliver (which at some point someone stuck an ‘able’ to the end of), the term has roots in the Latin: de (away) + liberare (set free), a sentiment we suggest we apply to this claptrap.
Who uses it?
Ding dong, corporate jargon users calling! This term is used chiefly by army-discipline moronables who speak only in gobbledygookables. Users can usually be found well at the top of your inbox, where they keep constant residence checking in on you, their micromanageable.
True utilitarians, offenders judge matters exclusively by outcome: things must be signable, sealable, deliverable, all in time for them to settle down for their evening eatables and drinkables, before their post-teatime inhalables.
While you might have once optimistically filed their requests firmly in your folder of ignorables, you quickly learned this would not be successable.
The term is also used, in good faith, by postmen.
Could be confused with…
- Your Amazon Prime addiction
- God’s salvation (that’s deliverance)
Should we be worried?
Undoubtedly. First cited by W Hughes in 1664, use of the term dates back to 1664, when it was used to refer to the concealment of law-evading miscreants “deliverable to prison”. Much like corporate jargon users today, these scallywags had evaded justice for too long and the time is ripe for their comeuppance.
Alarmingly, the frequency of the term has picked up at increasing speed in the last few decades. While usage remained relatively stable (and low) for the three centuries after Hughes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, offending rates started ticking up again in the 1960s, just as nuclear anxiety and existential dread also gained traction – coincidence? We think not. Today, rates are at a record high.
Please God, deliver us from this evil.
How do we get rid of it?
Next time someone insists on you sending them their ‘deliverables’, wait eagle-eyed until they leave their desk for even a moment. That, jargon soldier, is when you strike. Slap down your pre-prepared ‘Sorry, we missed you!’ slip Royal Mail style, and watch them crumble.