When I recently asked on Twitter about everyone’s least favorite buzzwords, people really mind-shared some good ones. Capacity grates, as does at-risk when describing people, along with the delightfully redundant root cause. The “optics” of “growth hacking” do little to “value-add,” as well. But the strange thing is, these folks are from the fields in which those words are used. Like everyone’s loud tipsy uncle, the buzzwords people know best tend to be the ones that irritate them most. That so many people continue to use these words anyway speaks to one of the most powerful quirks of office life—and the power dynamics that make it so difficult to change.

According to Gretchen McCulloch, the author of Because Internet, buzzwords were born from the artifice of the office itself. At work, people are paid to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do in their leisure time. They don’t dress at the office the way they do at home; they don’t act at the office the way they do outside of it; and they don’t talk about drilling down and rightsizing around their friends. Buzzwords mark the boundary of work life, broadcasting “I’m working!” in much the same way an Ann Taylor getup does. They allow workers to relate to one another—the much-decried “synergy” is an important part of a lot of people’s jobs, after all.

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Frankly, buzzwords also help save time. You can command a co-worker to “get their ducks in a row” and have them basically know what you mean. In this way, speaking in business jargon is a way of showing that you fit in with the office, the Copenhagen Business School professor Mary Yoko Brannen told me. One of the most important elements of culture is language.

From a more cynical perspective, buzzwords are useful when office workers need to dress up their otherwise pointless tasks with fancier phrases—you know, for the optics. Coal miners and doctors and tennis instructors have specific jargon they use to get their points across, but “all-purpose business language is the language you use when you aren’t really doing anything,” says the anthropologist David Graeber, the author of Bullshit Jobs. Similarly, buzzwords can provide a PR-friendly gloss on whatever “pain points” you’re trying to cover up, as in the case of doctors who say they are “happy to provide you with the paperwork to submit to your insurance company.” (In English, this means they don’t take insurance.)

Given its ubiquity, we might expect workers to stop worrying and embrace the buzzword. What’s so wrong with a little thought-leading? The reason buzzwords are so annoying, McCulloch says, is that language is inherently a reflection of the people who speak it and the circumstances in which it’s used. Terms such as circling back and touching base are inseparable from that one annoying work task you’re just trying to get someone to respond to. “If you find corporate buzzwords annoying, it’s probably because you find work annoying,” McCulloch says.