BusinessAnalysis

Planet Business: Copycat layoffs, hallucinations and other words of the year

From ‘bare minimum Monday’ to ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’, some additions to the lexicon of 2023 sounded less painful than others

The uncrewed SpaceX Starship explodes after launch for a flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, in April. Photograph: Patrick Fallon/AFP

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Laura Slattery
Wed Dec 27 2023 - 06:10

Bare minimum Monday

To have a “bare minimum Monday” is to give yourself permission to start the work week with more of a whimper than a bang, thereby alleviating the “Sunday scaries” and easing the general pain of human existence. This “burnout prevention strategy”, coined by start-up founder and TikToker Marisa Jo Mayes, is the Gen-Z equivalent of absolutely phoning it in.

Bi-latte

With various relatives to embrace and peace agreements to defend, US president Joe Biden had a stuffed itinerary when he visited Ireland in April, leaving him with little time to hang out with British prime minister Rishi Sunak. This led to one US official joking that the White House had scaled back a formal bilateral meeting in Belfast to a quick “bi-latte”.

Copycat layoffs

“Copycat layoffs”, according to Stanford University professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, occur when companies axe a percentage of their workforce in the wake of a similar announcement by a rival. This makes the need for retrenchments seem like a sectoral trend, rather than mismanagement of any kind. How to use in a sentence: “I was a victim of copycat layoffs.”

De-influencing

“De-influencing” was shortlisted by Oxford Languages as one of its words of 2023, with the dictionary publisher defining it as the practice of discouraging people from buying particular products or, indeed, encouraging them to reduce their consumption of material goods altogether. The European Central Bank is clearly a fan.

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Hallucination

There’s a new definition for hallucination, and Cambridge Dictionary has made it its word of the year. A “hallucination” can now refer to the production of false information by an artificial intelligence (AI) or the false information itself. Either the AI has been confused by the internet somehow – a highly relatable condition – or it’s on drugs.

Password child

Not a technology term, but an example of tech usage spilling over into concepts as old as humanity: in this case, favouritism. A “password child”, according to the 2023 TikTok meme, is the favourite child whose name has been invoked by their parents in their password(s). Sadly, the name of your least favourite child will not count as a “special character”.

Rapid unscheduled disassembly

As a euphemism for an unintentional explosion, “rapid unscheduled disassembly” has been deployed by Elon Musk and his rocket company SpaceX for at least eight years. But in 2023, it went mainstream – to much mocking – after SpaceX’s Starship suffered one in April and another in November. The good news is it lasted a whole eight minutes the second time.

Resenteeism

“Resenteeism” is like presenteeism only without the hope. Whereas “quiet quitters” understand it is not in their interests to go above and beyond and happily adapt accordingly, workers trapped by resenteeism are depressed about their lack of career options and feel increasingly resentful towards their employers. They haven’t yet discovered “rage applying”.

Richcession

“Get ready for the richcession,” the Wall Street Journal declared back in January. Both it and other US media outlets then spent much of 2023 trying to make “richcession” happen, using it to describe the US labour market phenomenon of job losses disproportionately affecting white collar workers. The wealthiest are doing just fine as usual.

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