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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

> makes a specific ask

You mean ask a specific question? Or is this silicon valley jargon?

edit:

Through the power of The Googles I now realize he could have been using the stock market form of 'ask'. It makes some sense since you're asking for an investment. Not that I like it any better...

   The price a seller is willing to accept for a security, 
   also known as the offer price. Along with the price, the 
   ask quote will generally also stipulate the amount of the 
   security willing to be sold at that price.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/ask.asp

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It's an "almost anywhere business is done in America" jargon.

lol "Dawn, who do we use for Chinese?" (heard approx 1997 in u.s.)

I actually just had to look this up in a different context and came across this explanation

http://english.stackexchange.com/a/4247

It is jargon. It's the thing one is going to ask for.

The meaning is slightly more specific than a generic word like "request" or "desire". It implies something specific, focused, and prepared.

If that's the case, the word 'specific' in the sentence is what makes it specific, not the phrasing. You already know they want you to provide a request for something, but you don't know it's something specific until they specify specifically.

'give a specific ask' and 'ask a specific question' are therefore equivalent, with the exception that the former looks like it was written by a 5th grader.

with the exception that the former looks like it was written by a 5th grader

Jesus I laughed hard at this. Thank you.

They're not the same thing. An "ask" is the item being requested, it is not the question.

"Can I have a cookie?" is a question, the cookie is the ask. An ask is implicitly tangible or substantial.

"What's the weather today?" is a question, it doesn't really have an ask, since the item being demanded is trivial. It exists in business jargon specifically to separate minor requests "can you send me that file?" from substantial exchanges "can we update this report to include the last two quarters?"

An "ask" is more "demand" than "question", without the negative connotations of demanding things from people.

Alright, so 'ask' here is just synonym for 'request', then.

Looked it up... most dictionaries don't have a noun form of 'ask', though macmillan has a separate page just for it. (It's also a Scandinavian myth about the first man made from an ash tree, but that's probably not the intended use from the OP)

I think this is the simplest definition. Swap in "request" anywhere you see "ask" (the noun) and you'll keep the exact same meaning.

As I said before, the word is more specific than "request". Yes, it's an ugly term, but no, you can't make it go away by pretending it means something different.

I can believe you, but, having read your previous comments in this thread, I'm still not seeing the distinction between ask and request.

An ask is the subject/object of a request.

If you were to request a cookie, you would say "Can I have a cookie?". The entire question is the request, where "cookie" is the ask.

If that were the case, to 'make an ask' would in this case mean to make the cookie, which it doesn't.

It seems like 'ask' is a verb, not a noun - in which case it is synonymous with 'request'.

People seem to be arguing that it's a 'more specific' form of 'request', but I can't really see how you could make a nonspecific request.

Edit: Ha! I even confused myself... 'Ask' here is indeed a noun - like 'request' when used as a noun - but it still seems to refer to be entire request, not just the object (which is the point I was trying to make).

Yeah, it does seem a bit weird to "make an ask" if the ask is the object.

As to the "more specific" bit, I think people mean it has a slightly different meaning than a request.

"Request" is a pretty broad term. An ask is focused, specific, planned. It's something more like "negotiating point" or "initial position" or "requirement" or "demand".

Google "define:request" yields this for a noun: "an act of asking politely or formally for something."

An ask isn't "an act of asking", it's the object/subject of a request. So it's not really a synonym, IMO.

This is incoherent. Is the ask the item being requested, or is it a demand? Neither of these are how it's used in the article, either.

Which mostly goes to show that it's not a word with a definition as we think of it -- it's a word that displays familiarity with the tech scene and is used as a social signal.

It's not incoherent, it's an idiom.

My project is a paradigm too.

http://dilbert.com/fast/1991-11-03/

I'm not claiming it isn't horrific; I wouldn't say it myself. But "ask" is a pretty clear term of art.

Also, I'm not sure Hacker News denizens can really complain too much about other people's jargon. Among many others, we inflicted "blog" and "tweet" on the world.

`Blog' and `tweet' are at least neologisms. `Ask' on the other hand has been a verb for a very long time, and has so far resisted being made a noun. That suggests to me, and probably to most people, that it's a verb, solidly so, and not to be used as a noun.

Fighting this kind of tradition will be an uphill struggle. A losing battle. A tall order. (For those still in primary school, those are all different ways of saying "a big ask", by the way.)

It's a real shame that the article's author had to drop this particular clanger, because the article provides sound advice in a succinct fashion.

This usage of "ask" is at least 10 years old because I heard and used it in my last job, which was over 10 years ago. From my perspective you're the one looking to fight an uphill battle trying to put this genie back in a bottle.

Just because it is new to you does not make it useless or wrong. English grammar evolves; that's part of what makes it such an expressive and useful language. Another recent example:

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-...

Actually it happens all the time: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(word_formation)

Relevant: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25

You have never hear some one say "thats a big ask"?

Eg Vince cable saying "the royal mail was not under priced" leads to the response "thats a big ask"

Its more a political slang/jargon term that formally correct English.

As a Hacker News denizen I exercise my prerogative to complain about anything and everything possible, as long as there's some technical merit to it.

It's nasty language change which has spread, kind of like "I spoke to she about that problem" is spreading. Not specific to SV, but extremely common here.

Why would you say "she"? Is "her" somehow offensive now? Or have they forgotten objects of prepositions are, well, objects?

"ask" as a noun is fine (even outside of finance). I've never seen or heard "spoke to she" and Google doesn't seem to turn up anything.

I hear it occasionally. I hear its equally-appalling equivalent all the time: "Please join Mary and I in welcoming John to our team."

Of course, prescriptive grammar is for the birds, anyway.

That's surely just an over-reaction to people being told "and I" in response to a sentence like "Mary and me would like to welcome John to the team". You can't win.

As a kid, you get 'Me and Mary' as the subject corrected to 'Mary and I' for reasons of both grammar and politeness. Some people don't understand or remember the compound reason and just use 'and I' everywhere.

Seriously, "spoke to she"? I've never heard that. And I dread to think of the blood-boiling it would cause in me if I were to hear it... As gcv says below, "Mary and I" as the object of the verb is annoyingly common, even among well-educated people. No, it's not language evolution; it's wrong!

edit: ah, you're gcv :)

I've also heard it used in sports and such

Team A are X points down and given the injury to STAR_PLAYER for them to come back now is a big ask

Yes. Saying "I'd like to catch up with you to discuss what we've been doing at X" isn't very specific, and can be a waste of time. "I'd like to see if you'd like to get in on our seed round, we're looking for $200,000" is very specific, and waaaaay better.

Doesn't necessarily have to be jargon, it's a fairly common phrasing "would you ask that of him?" / "the client had an ask which we fulfilled". I suppose it can sound a bit biz-buzz but nothing specific to SV.

"Would you ask that of him?" fits the normal usage of ask as a verb, though. In "the client had an ask which we fulfilled" (where ask means "request", I presume) "ask" was nounified.

The whole phrase means "asks for something specific". However, using words like 'something' make you sound vague even if you aren't, and using jargon like this signals "I'm in the crowd that gets you". Most people do these things without thinking.

There is no 'ask' on its own and no one would refer to the ask on it's own. The entire phrase is an idiom. An ugly sounding one, but one that's here to stay, like 'day of' and 'going forward'.

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