Likely Normal

Every profession has its own special dialect—a bizarre, acronym-laden, jargon-packed way of speaking that sounds like fluent nonsense to outsiders. Doctors, soldiers, engineers, and IT guys seem to take particular pride in this, casually dropping phrases that leave the rest of us blinking like confused golden retrievers.

Take medicine, for example. A doctor might say, “The patient presented with acute onset dyspnea and hemoptysis, so we ordered a stat CXR and started him on IV ABX pending CBC results.” To a normal human, this translates to: “Man couldn’t breathe and coughed up blood, so we X-rayed him and gave antibiotics while we waited for lab work.” But where’s the fun in that? If doctors spoke plainly, how would they maintain their aura of mystical, clipboard-wielding authority?

Then there’s the military, where every sentence sounds like it was generated by a malfunctioning robot. A soldier might casually mention, “We did a HALO insertion at 0200, exfil’d to the FOB, then debriefed after the SITREP showed TICs along the MSR.” In civilian terms? “We parachuted in at 2 AM, went back to base, and talked about the fight that happened on the road.” But why use five words when 15 acronyms will do? Bonus points if they throw in “negative contact” when they just mean “we didn’t see anything.”

And let’s not forget IT, where every help desk ticket reads like a riddle written by a troll. “The issue appears to be a DNS propagation delay, so we’ll need to flush the cache and reset the TCP/IP stack.” Translation: “Turn it off and on again.” But if they admitted that upfront, how would they justify their hourly rate?

The funniest part? These people genuinely don’t realize how insane they sound, and I admit to being one of them. A mechanic will deadpan, “Your muffler bearing’s shot, and the Johnson rod needs a torque adjustment,” while you nod along like any of those words mean anything to you. Meanwhile, lawyers out here drafting contracts in what appears to be ancient Sumerian cuneiform.

The lesson for us all is to know your audience and speak appropriately to them.  Yes, it is easy to speak in the terms we know and are comfortable with, but all the other person hears is blah, blah, blah…