First, a confession: I went to business school. Buzzwords are to business school as beer is to college, so I admit that some of the following tired expressions are words that I might have used liberally in the past. Many other overused buzzwords can be found flying around conventions, on the blogosphere and in certain media. Jack wagons keep these words alive at conference cocktail parties. Eliminate the following from your vocabulary, and you’ll start sounding like a normal human being, and not a middle manager at Acme Inc.

1. Gamification

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Gamification is the use of video game features and incentives to make every other online experience (that has nothing to do with video games) super annoying. This word should be taken behind the barn and shot. Until that day comes, please try not to use the word unless you truly are so simple-minded that you can be motivated to do things by accumulating virtual gold coins.

2. Stickiness

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Frankly, this word is kind of revolting. And it shouldn’t be used to describe a good thing. Stickiness describes manipulative tactics used by some websites to keep you captive. Pageview-churning tools like galleries for the “best 10 neighborhoods to wear skinny jeans” are examples of stickiness. If what you mean is that you have a site that captivates your audience and holds its attention, then use words that make sense to describe it–words like “interesting” and “useful.”

3. Scalable

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There’s actually nothing intrinsically wrong with this word. But how it’s used? Shameful. Scalable means systems that can handle increased amounts of capacity without more investment OR systems that can be grown easily enough to accommodate growth. Think about that. What scenario for growth is not scalable? Right. Only the ones that would cause your business to completely fail. Everything else is scalable. But people talk about scalable like it’s a freaking mystery that they alone possess.

4. Deliverable

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Someone needs to create a word to replace this monstrosity … and fast. Every single meeting that has no clear ending point or next step causes someone to utter the phrase: “So what is the deliverable?” To translate that into English, it means that you are so boring that you caused that person to completely disassociate from the meeting, or you are so passive aggressive that you can’t tell people what you want or are going to do next.

5. Entrepreneur

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What normal person describes himself as an entrepreneur? Business owner is sufficient. Here’s part of what’s wrong with entrepreneur. It’s a French word, and the French are on vacation for six to eight weeks a year. Most business owners are on vacation six to eight weeks every 20 years. Plus, entrepreneur sounds like one of those words that is intended to fool people about what you do, like sanitation disposal worker for garbage man, or maitre d’ for the person who carries menus and walks you to your table.

(Featured Photo: Alex Pang on Flickr.)