General FYI

[annathepiper]

In case any of you were wondering, "incentify" is not, repeat, not, repeat, NOT a word.

I just stumbled across this little gem in a spec I'm reading about a certain feature. In the section on Marketing requirements, naturally.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Frankly, "monetize" shouldn't be.... and "leverage" shouldn't be a verb.

Ahh, buzzword compliance. Ought to be 404-compliant.

[annathepiper]

I can't think of the word "leverage" anymore without thinking of John Travolta in alien makeup, on stilts. DAMN YOU, BATTLEFIELD EARTH!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

John Revolting? Ewwwwww! And worse, in Elrond's movie... talk about your bad flicks....

[annathepiper]

Hey, don't smear the poor Lord of Rivendell by connecting him with that flick. ;)

And oh yes, it was bad. I'm pretty sure at this point that it may top out Event Horizon for worst movie I've ever seen in my life. Regardless of all else, it's certainly made me decide never to use the word "leverage" again if I can help it!

Also, "monetize" is indeed sucky Marketese.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Oh how I hate leverage... and all the other buzzword crap. AAAAAAAAAA

[annathepiper]

I do have to wonder who thinks these words sound good, outside marketing circles.

[leian.livejournal.com]

... people use "leverage" as a verb?.... *is stunned*.. *is horrified*

[annathepiper]

They do! Scary, isn't it? Thankfully, it's mostly marketing people. ;)

[gazerwolf.livejournal.com]

Thats one of the few things they got close to getting like the book. The entire book is about Terl and his "Leverage"

(yes I read the thing...I actually like it...I can shut off my mind while reading it...)(of course that is actually a requirement to be able to read it...)

[annathepiper]

I believe solarbird did remark to me once that the first of that series didn't actually suck, but could have used a hard edit. Or something to that effect. I've never read them, so I couldn't say!

[gazerwolf.livejournal.com]

Battlefield Earth actually wasn't part of the Mission Earth series...that is a completely different piece of crap...which if made into a movie would single handedly cause a revolt which would bring hollywood down.

[annathepiper]

Ah, I didn't know that! Which is probably for the best.

And shhh! For the love of gods, they might HEAR you and try to make such a flick! ;)

[seattlesparks.livejournal.com]

Made-up words like that 'incensify' and 'dehappyize' me. ;P

[annathepiper]

Out of respect to the English language, I shall forgo attempting to "verbify" "throwing a dictionary at the head of whoever made up the word 'incentify'".

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I'm not too keen on "disambiguate", either. Why disambiguate in five syllables when, in three, you could clarify?

I never tried to watch Battlefield Earth. An anthropologist friend said it had exactly one good scene, in which the aliens, misinterpreting the fact that humans were resorting to eating rats, concluded that rats would be tantalizing rewards to offer to humans for good behavior. "And now that I've described that scene to you," said the anthropologist, "I have just made the existence of that film permanently unnecessary to you. Thank me." Which I did. She didn't mention the leverage problem.

Dan and I tried to watch Into the West. After enduring numerous lesser false notes, I finally gave up when the narrator, who was born in the 1820s, said in a voiceover moment that the railroad "would profoundly impact my children's lives." Impact as a verb? In the 1870s? Spielberg, your miniseries is dead to me! Dead!

[annathepiper]

The leverage problem in the movie can be summarized by this excellent Terl impersonation over on solarbird's journal. brazilrascal pretty much nailed all of what passed for Travolta's dialogue in that film. ;)

Due shudders to 'disambiguate', as well as using 'impact' as a verb!

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

i fear asking what was the author attempting to say w/ the use of such a non-word... esp since it is evoking rather ummm, not pretty images for moi!

oy!

[annathepiper]

The context was that Marketing wants to "incentify" a particular feature of the product by offering customers incentives for taking advantage of it. As I said before... ugh.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

not quite as bad as i feared, still not something i'd want to have uttered in my range of hearing!
oy!

[annathepiper]

*nodnod* It reinforces my resolve to take care with my own word choices, that's for sure!

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Of course not. The correct word is "incentivize." ;)

Cathy

[annathepiper]

...................... good gods, that IS a word. I thought you were joking until I looked it up on dictionary.com! Is that the actual Marketese term this spec author actually wanted, I wonder?

At least "incentivize" makes a little more sense. You motivate someone by offering them a motivation; you *shudder* incentivize someone by offering them an incentive. But "incentifying" a product? DOES NOT COMPUTE.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I am so-so on prescriptivist grammar. Coining words is gonna happen, and they will move from noun to verb (e.g. eulogy to eulogise).

I think a bsic understanding of how grammar works is neeful, but so long as a language is living there will be disputes (just compare the use of commas in England to the use of of commas in America) and none of us will ever be competely satiisfied with how others use the language.

I, for one, hate the locution, "To grow a business,", the use of good as an adverb, and the loss of whom.

But those are complaints of euphony, I find them ugly. There are any number of my usage which would have been thought ugly by Johnson (Samuel, not Ben), which Johnson (Ben) would have minded not at all and which Chaucer would have founf unintelligible.

TK

p.s. incentify is nasty, sound horrid, hangs on the tongue and implies a decided lack of either education or couth to me, just so you know.

[annathepiper]

Oh, I have no quibbles with a language growing and evolving--I just have quibbles with people mangling words in ways that just make no sense. ;) As I just remarked to cafiorello above, at least "incentivize" (which isn't much better than "incentify") makes a bit of sense. You motivate someone by offering a motivation; you incentivize someone by offering an incentive, I assume. But in the document I was reading, the context was that Marketing wanted to "incentify" a feature by offering customers incentives to use it, and that just didn't make sense at all.

Also, it did indeed sound horrid.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's meant, I think, to follow the pattern of Diversify, intensify, &c., and say this makes the thing an incentive.

I don't think it works, but that's me. I coin words all the time (well, not all the time) but I think I have a leg up on most, in that I know the rules I'm using, bending, or breaking.

TK

[annathepiper]

I think I agree with your interpretation, but if that's what the writer of the document was intending, it still didn't work for me. My head hurts anyway just trying to think about it. ;)

And yeah, some adroitness with the language does help when one coins words. Sadly, I think this skill is generally lacking at least in the portion of the CS industry with which I've worked over the years.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I even managed to amuse a native speaker of Russian by coining, sort of, a usage in Russian.

TK

[annathepiper]

Now if you can do that in languages besides your native tongue, that's an extra special deftness with words. Well done. ^_^