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Recession Lexicon: New Words for a New Era

The world has turned truly upside down. The Dow used to be way up, now it’s down (climbing back, but still down). Your house used to be a source of pride — and value. Now it’s underwater. Job security? Forget about it. And all that shopping and spending — now, saving’s the name of the day.

As we navigate this new, sometimes foreign turf, we’re learning to speak a new language. Here are a few of the terms you’ll need to know:

Pre-Fired
n. Being dismissed from a new position before you even start. Usually because the company folds between the offer and your start date.

Bleakonomics
n. The dire forecasts, depressing warnings, and otherwise gloomy chatter that’s still brewing beneath the recent round of cheerier economic predictions.

Slayoff
n. A particularly cold-blooded method of laying off employees, such as breaking the news on a company blog, leaving a note in an employee’s chair, dispatching a mass email, or sending a certified letter to a worker’s home that says, “Do not come back to the office.”

Brokavore
n. One who eats locally grown or produced food, a brokavore is “an obsessively cheap but highly discerning eater.”

Recession Roadkill
n. The laid-off, the unemployed, and those generally getting run over by the merciless wheels of the economy.

More words in the Recession Lexicon here, including how to say “recession” around the world.

Tags: language, Recession Lexicon, words