Communities have their own jargon just as geographic regions have their own vernacular. US midwesterners say “pop,” their east and west coast counterparts argue it’s “soda,” and southerners just call every carbonated beverage “coke” (trademark dilution be damned).

Communities imbue their adopted jargon with their values and mentality, and later on the jargon instills in its future speakers these very values and mentality through its connotations. The military brass has sitrep, ISAF, and CENTCOM. These terms sound martial and chain-of-command. The startup community vocabulary includes bootstrap, stealth, and pivot. Corporate America has key performance indicators, end of… more