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I call these "Gilded Words." They're all new and shiny, superficially expensive, but with little to no substance under the surface.

This article actually has things to say. It would say them better if it referred to "integrity" and "breach of trust" and "principles," which, like "decency" have specific meanings, and do not leave me wondering what a moral center is, how it relates to a moral top, and what it even means to "harm" this novel abstraction.

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Emergent is my favourite. Perhaps it has been poorly described to me, but it doesn't seem to add anything to the ideas it gets applied against.

That's an especially good one because an "emergent property" is a very specific thing, but people use it to replace "new" (for dramatic effect) and then I have no idea what they're talking about.

I also like "intentionality" which suddenly appears everywhere and means "put thought into." Authors who like that word never seem to specify the content of those thoughts, and therefore delegate all of the hard work of actually having thoughts worth expressing off to other people.

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