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I’ve noticed there are a bunch of buzzwords in Mormon culture, much like corporate and tech buzzwords (e.g. “synergy”, “the cloud”, “big data”) that have been so overused and misused that they have lost their meaning. Yet at the same time, using them makes you seem more Mormon or something. – “Obedience” is a common one, especially in missions.
– I can’t speak for all missions, but “dignified” was a big buzzword in mine, at least for a while. I’ve heard of “quiet dignity” being especially prevalent around 10 years ago, so that’s probably the same line of thinking.
– “Eternal companion” also comes to mind. Can’t we just say “spouse”? Why does it always have to be about eternity? The funny thing is that this term is used almost exclusively for singles looking for spouses, when it would probably be better to take off the pressure of “eternal” because it gives no room for error.
– “Family names” – Oh how I hate this one. I think it is supremely disrespectful to one’s ancestors to reduce them to “names.” We do not do ordinances for names. We do ordinances for people, whom we identify by their names. And yet, this term is so painfully common that I have seen it on posters that directly imply that we save names, not people.
What others can you think of?
“Testimony” drives me batty. To everyone else in the world, it’s the words you say when you testify. To a Mormon, it’s an abstract thing inside you that can be strong or weak, which you influence by doing stuff the Church tells you to do. Many members don’t think about it deeply enough to properly identify it as belief or faith. Why don’t we use those words instead? I sometimes wonder if abstracting and separating these ideas has allowed a certain amount of semantic drift. It certainly muddies the discourse surrounding belief and faith. Growing your testimony is always seen as a positive thing. But if “testimony” is functionally equivalent to “belief” to you, then growing your testimony will eventually turn you into a fanatic.
One good thing about the abstraction is that it allows nuanced believers to reframe “testimony” as “faith” or even “hope,” which you technically can always have even if your belief is very close to zero.
Rather than use the word “testify”, many protestants “witness” to others. I’m not seeing a big difference between these two words. I was going to say “testimony”. Testimony is akin to witness in my book, and I think all of those are used far too loosely. Believing in something due to a strong feeling or conviction does not count. I feel it’s misleading, but everyone uses it because everyone else uses it. We often see these “testimony battles” in Church, to see who “knows” it the mostest. Also, “I know”, “True”, and “I promise”. There are many others… but none have been the cause of quite so many “tribulations” as those above.
More: tender mercies, sustain, eternal truths, celestial (when it means “identified by the Church as godly”). I wonder whether there are loads of them that I just can’t hear. JWs use the word “stumble” as an act you do to someone else (“don’t stumble the other brothers”) and it’s so, so weird, but they don’t hear anything strange. Do my Mormon ears do the same thing?
* A Fireside (what?!) * This dispensation – not unique to our church but highly unusual
* Sunday school (the phrase is used for the equivalent of primary in most churches, not adult classes)
* The like sign
* Investigator/investigate (this sounds bizarre to outsiders)
* Make manifest
* Uplifting
* Endure, endure to the end
* Bowels (yes you read right) as in bowels of mercy
* Authority, having authority
* Chastity
* Worthy, found worthy
* Iron rod
* Follow
* Semi-active
* CTR
* Stripling – pretty much extinct elsewhere
* Sealer
* Organize
* The president
* The saints – we often use this in a historical sense as in the saints crossing the plains. But we don’t talk of St John or even St Nephi or St Brigham.
Most of the names of our clergy – e.g. our very young elders, our plainly dressed bishops (who are lower down the hierarchy… most churches’ bishops are more like stake presidents), apostle, seventy, patriarch – plus the distinction between Aaronic and Melchizedek PHs which are unknown outside Mormon churches.
Likewise the terminology of branches, districts, wards, stakes, areas etc is unusual. Stake especially.
* Manual
* Quad, triple combination
* Living scriptures
* Temple prep
* True, one true
* Mutual
* A Beehive
If you think about it, most of us could probably use code with most long term members pretty easily. We already have the signs and tokens.
Reuben wrote:
More: tender mercies, sustain, eternal truths, celestial (when it means “identified by the Church as godly”).I wonder whether there are loads of them that I just can’t hear. JWs use the word “stumble” as an act you do to someone else (“don’t stumble the other brothers”) and it’s so, so weird, but they don’t hear anything strange. Do my Mormon ears do the same thing?
Hard to think of anything so general (as opposed to specific like the names of church ranks & organization) in our church.
Most people encounter a jarring on first contact – why are such young people called elders? Am I now an investigator? Why do adults go to sunday school? Why don’t bishops have miters and crooks?
In many churches, elders are the equivalent of ward council, investigators are detectives, Sunday School is where children go, and bishops are higher up.
With verbs it’s harder to think of anything quite as quirky as stumble. JWs are much better than us at changing words’ meanings – common words such as church, Christendom, cross etc are actually BAD in their terminology, whereas we would use them like other churches. We use the term scriptures regularly, but they use it instead of Bible much of the time. We use Christian to refer to other groups, they wouldn’t.
What we DO DO well is alphabet soup. When you’re BIC, you’re pretty much LDS, your father’s in HPG or maybe EQ (probably an RM), your mother is RS (hopefully she wasn’t a MIA Maid in YW when you were born), and the SP was at your YSA event in the FHC, where we heard from a GA talking about the BOA in the POGP. And that’s just the basics. Whether your parents met at BYU at SLC, or at the MTC or just at SM or SC, makes no odds. I’ve been a church member for years and still struggle with some of these. New converts must be completely flummoxed by this.
Some which are no longer buzzwords: * Great Whore (RC Church etc)
* Plural wife
* Gentile
* Lamanite (in a contemporary sense of living Native Americans)
* Gathering to Zion
* Suffer e.g. suffer it to be so.
* Blood oath
* Scrip
* Mission (quite different to our age range)
19th century LDS had a lot of idiosyncratic vocabulary.
Mine aren’t really buzzwords so much as they are labels we use to pigeonhole people. Investigator: It’s weird. Hey guys, I just showed up at church like my friend/the missionaries asked, now I’m an “investigator?” I’ve been to several other churches, usually I’m referred to as a “visitor” or “new” but in our church we present people as “investigators.” Inactive/less active: I feel like these labels set us up to assign members to tiers of perceived righteousness at the subconscious level. Worthy/member in good standing: I feel like this label set us up to assign members to tiers of perceived righteousness at the conscious level. Let’s not forget worthy members of the church; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of god. SamBee wrote:
Some which are no longer buzzwords:
*Sectarian
Helen Mar Kimball (plural wife of JS) used the phrase “Kiss the rod” several times in talking about trying to accept tragedy/ divine punishment/ bad things that God may design for a higher purpose. The phrase was used by Shakespeare and refers to “a former practice of making a child kiss the rod with which it was beaten.” I do not like the imagery and am very glad this is no longer used in our culture.
nibbler wrote:
Mine aren’t really buzzwords so much as they are labels we use to pigeonhole people.Investigator: It’s weird. Hey guys, I just showed up at church like my friend/the missionaries asked, now I’m an “investigator?” I’ve been to several other churches, usually I’m referred to as a “visitor” or “new” but in our church we present people as “investigators.” Inactive/less active: I feel like these labels set us up to assign members to tiers of perceived righteousness at the subconscious level. Worthy/member in good standing: I feel like this label set us up to assign members to tiers of perceived righteousness at the conscious level. Let’s not forget worthy members of the church; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of god.
I don’t mind inactive, but worthy is judgemental.
Investigator stinks as a label. I use it, out of convenience but don’t like it.
I think a lot of these are more of “jargon”… We have a lot of jargon. I guess when I think of buzzwords, I think of the kind of words people slap on a resume or a corporate memo to fluff it up and make it sound good. In reality, there is nothing impressive about it and it’s just an annoying or misused term.
Imagine the kind of crap people say in F&TM to virtue signal. Stuff that isn’t really professing belief or hope but makes them feel good about what they’re doing in their lives. Or perhaps it’s the kind of qualities that teachers and whatnot encourage the class/group/whatever to be… but in a nebulous and overused way such that nobody really knows what you’re talking about.
There was a time, recently, when my eye would twitch uncontrollably every time someone said “hasten the work.” It was like one of those annoying ads they play twice per commercial break, every commercial break during the NCAA tournament that makes you want to track down the people that made the ad and… Roy wrote:
SamBee wrote:
Some which are no longer buzzwords:
*Sectarian
Helen Mar Kimball (plural wife of JS) used the phrase “Kiss the rod” several times in talking about trying to accept tragedy/ divine punishment/ bad things that God may design for a higher purpose. The phrase was used by Shakespeare and refers to “a former practice of making a child kiss the rod with which it was beaten.” I do not like the imagery and am very glad this is no longer used in our culture.
Me too. Yes, sectarian is a good one. It has faded out even in my time.
nibbler wrote:
There was a time, recently, when my eye would twitch uncontrollably every time someone said “hasten the work.” It was like one of those annoying ads they play twice per commercial break, every commercial break during the NCAA tournament that makes you want to track down the people that made the ad and…
If you want phrases, rather than individual words:
* Follow the prophet
* I know the … is true.
* I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
* Choose the Right
* Take names down to the temple.
* I’ve been asked to give this talk on … by …
* Merriam Webster’s (or other dictionary) defines blah blah as…/the Bible Dictionary says
* Can you go to the paragraph starting …
* Bishop would like to meet with you
* Is there anything we can do for you?
* I’ll have to ask the sisters.
* Are you reading the Book of Mormon?
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