Mental Floss

The Top 5 Office Slang Terms From the UK and U.S.

Workers on both sides of the pond really like to “circle back” on stuff.

ByCaLea Johnson|
The UK and the U.S. have their own go-to slang for the office setting.
The UK and the U.S. have their own go-to slang for the office setting. | AzmanL/GettyImages

The U.S. and UK share a language, but not all terms are universal. When most Americans think of a cookie, they picture a crunchy, flat dessert made of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. But British people would usually call that a biscuit instead.

People from both countries also use different slang terms during business hours. Researchers from the PDF editing application Adobe Acrobat determined the top five words U.S. and UK workers used in office settings.    

In their study, Adobe Acrobat surveyed 2010 full-time employees—half based in the U.S. and half in the UK. The sample size included representation across generations: 14 percent Gen Z, 53 percent Millennial, 28 percent Gen X, and 4 percent Baby Boomers. The gender breakdown was 49 percent female, 50 percent male, and one percent nonbinary. 

You can find the top five office slang terms among U.S. and UK employees below. 

  1. America’s Top 5 Office Slang Terms of 2024
  2. The UK’s Top 5 Office Slang Terms of 2024

America’s Top 5 Office Slang Terms of 2024

  1. Circle back 
  2. Ping you
  3. Bandwidth 
  4. Locked in 
  5. Low-hanging fruit 

The U.S.’s top choice for office slang is circle back, an idiom meaning to return to a subject after some time. Twenty-seven percent of American employees voted for the phrase as their favorite, while only 13 percent of UK workers voted for it. Circle back was particularly popular among Gen X (28 percent) and Millennials (29 percent).

Baby Boomers love to use the phrase low-hanging fruit (31 percent), and Gen Z can’t get enough of using ping you (28 percent). 

The UK’s Top 5 Office Slang Terms of 2024

  1. Knackered
  2. Crack On 
  3. Dodgy 
  4. Faff Around
  5. Circle back

Dodgy is a common phrase among Baby Boomers (44 percent) in the UK, while knackered—the UK’s most-used office slang—is well-liked across many generations like Gen X (31 percent), Millennials (27 percent), and Gen Z (22 percent).

According to Merriam-Webster, knacker means “to kill” or “to tire, exhaust, or wear out,” so a good translation of knackered is “dead tired.” The origins of knackered are unknown, but some of the previous meanings of knacker in noun form included a harness-maker, a saddle-maker, or a purchaser of old structures.

Read More About Slang:

Home/SLANG