We have alreadylooked at some coded expressions in English which don’t mean what they seem. There are so many of these that I could fill a book. Maybe you have heard people say, “Let’s do lunch”, or “we’ve just got to meet up in Gothenburg some time, it will be great’. Nice as they sound the speaker has no intention of really lunching with you nor meeting up in ‘little London’.

The intention is cemented only if they ask to book an appointment there and then. This is one to watch out for. If you do want to follow-up a business acquaintance then make sure that you add something concrete to the suggestion. Otherwise, you may just come across as a pleasant person who knows how to say farewell in a polite English way.

Another tricky expressionis, ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ What you should know it that this means, ‘I am not going to give whatever you have said a second thought’. Can you imagine the cross-cultural linguistic clash and the embarrassment when someone comes back and says, ‘I thought you were going to bear it in mind, at least that’s what you said Ms Ashton.’ Believe you me; this has happened on more than one nasty occasion in Brussels and elsewhere.

Furthermore, ‘I’ll really bear it in mind’ not only actually implies that what you have said has entered in one ear and exited through the other in a tenth of a second, but during that tenth of a second I discovered that what you said was nonsense too. Judges and HR managers listening to a salary increase request love this one.

This makes me wonder why these expressions or better coded-and-loaded expressions are so common in the English language today. A huge survey across the U.K. revealed that the expression, ‘suck it and see’ (which means: ‘try out that innovative and creative solution of yours’) was voted one of the most commonly used office clichés of 2009. I guess that means goodbye to the now over-cooked, ‘think outside the box’. Worth really bearing in mind, isn’t it?

© Andrew Davies, Communicoach 2010