Attention, Masters of Business Administration of Corporate America:
Quit using the word ‘learnings’. It makes you sound really stupid. The word you really want is ‘lessons’.
Your pal,
Jeffrey
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I’m writing an article on the Top 10 Things I Learned from (reading a certain book). I was going to use “learnings”. “Knowledge” doesn’t work (“Top 10 Pieces of Knowledge Acquired” would be grotesque). I did not acquire “skills” or “learn lessons” or make “findings” or discover “solutions”.
“Learnings” is the best word for this situation. It’s shorter than “Things I Learned” and perfectly clear. But because it’s not in the dictionary, or perceived to be pretentious, I guess I won’t use it. Wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
Why can’t you use “lessons”? Are you afraid of not sounding self-important enough?
This is the greatest post I have ever seen.
Agree on the need to permanently delete ‘learnings’.
What do your hackles do when someone uses the term ‘as to’ whuch seems to pop up in the middle of sentences for no apparent reason?
Example:
…though we should talk with AAAAA about this as to whether it might be undertaken by them….
which just means:
…though we should talk with AAAAA about whether it might be undertaken by them….
Wow! What a bunch of snobs and language police. (Most of) you guys obviously don’t understand how language evolves. The conversation here demonstrates exactly why new words or new usages of words happen. When you can’t find a word that fits the meaning you are trying to relay in an efficient manner, it is natural to invent one. It happens everyday. I would certainly hate to work with anyone who would worry so much about a convenient and succinct choice of a word than the meaning of what someone is saying. While the word “learnings” might not fit into an MBA thesis or other formal forms of communication which tend to speak in a language not common to the real world, common usage has or will eventually cause it to become acceptable and part of the vernacular. The fact that all of you seem to know what it means is a testament to how efficient the word is for everyday use, especially since it isn’t (yet) in most dictionaries.
Get over it.
By the way, here in Texas we sometimes say “y’all” but that doesn’t by itself make us a bunch of boobs. As evidenced by this thread, even the smartest people can make themselves look foolish by just being rude or pretentious. I look forward to many of you proving my point.
You really don’t think that anyone here knows how language evolves? Really?
News flash: the evolution of language is a tension between established convention and the constant addition of neologisms. Just because something sounds right (or, more likely, makes you sound self-important) doesn’t mean it’s right, even on your planet where people apparently get to make up whatever words they want.
My whole point was that “learnings” is a bogus neologism because there are already perfectly good extant words that mean the same thing and don’t seem — oh, how do they say it in Texas — “highfalutin”.
BTW, I’m German-American and I’ve always thought that the lack of a succinct way to say “y’all” (which German and other languages have) is a defect of the English language.
“Learnings” is not a word.
“Leverage” is not a verb.
End of story.
I’m a JD/MBA student, and I just heard someone use the word “learnings” today for the first time, and I just started cracking up right in the middle of her presentation. I also shake my head when someone uses the word “leverage” as a verb, especially “leverage my contacts.” I can only use these words ironically.
Nathanau: Whoever it was that said the development of language is dictated by the most ignorant of its speakers, was right – as your comments prove!
Somebody who doesn’t know how to express him/herself properly may resort to inventing a word or phrase for his/her own purposes, but he/she does not give the right to expect everybody else to approve of and adopt it.
E.g. one of my pet aversions: inside/outside “of”…
“Y’all” just put a glimmer of hope in my life. I’m a copy and content editor for a sales training firm, and I slash ‘learnings’ every time I see it. The fact that dictionaries do not universally accept it is only half the problem, as correctness isn’t the only goal in writing. The other half of the ‘learnings’ problem is that it sounds stupid and awkward. No one wants that.
Today it struck me as particularly awful, so I decided to google it and see if other people have embraced it. Glad to see an angry mob has already formed!
‘Customer-facing’ also sounds stupid and awkward. I haven’t found a truly suitable alternative yet, but I’m open to suggestions. Anyone?
Oh, and don’t you love it when people utilize something instead of just using it?
Perhaps a suitable synonym (in the context of knowledge aquired through a university, school, or other formalised education) would be “teachings”. Teachings being you are taught during a lesson. Learning being what you DO during a lesson. Notice the difference between noun and verb?
Back in May Kate said:
“‘Lessons’ are things we had to sit through in school and they bored us to death, whereas ‘Learnings’ are the good things that we take away.”
The word “lesson” has several meanings one of which is things we had to sit through in school. Another is: “a useful piece of practical wisdom acquired by experience or study”.
I still think “lessons learned” is more appropriate than “learnings” and “learnings” drives me nuts every time I see it (including in a corporate agenda I just received in which someone used MS Word’s auto-correct feature which put an apostrophe in to “correct” the word.
I have banned my suppliers from using it in presentations and I ask anybody who uses the “word” to go home and google it.
Enough said.
I guess I best learn me sum learnings so I can sound as learned as ya’ll…
Jeffery, et al; Thank you for proving my point.
“Bogus neologism”? Somehow those two words don’t seem to be compatible. After seeing them together in your response I had to look them up because I wondered if there was a meaning that I wasn’t familiar with. Either it is a neologism or it isn’t. I don’t see how it could also be bogus or fake. It could be awkward, silly or even sound stupid but not bogus. I forgive you for this confusing usage. (Smile, I am just having a little fun at your expense .)
And by the way, English does have a succinct way to say “y’all” or you-all. It is “you”. It serves as both singular and plural forms of the word. It might have been a German-American like you and me who thought it wasn’t clear and so created a compound word to make it clearer. Germans are masters of this and create new words all the time by simply stringing them together. On the other hand, we ignorant southerners are lazy and are prone to shortening words down to make them more succinct:
you-all / y’all
stuff I learned / lessons learned / learnings
Wigwhammer,
Your response gets another Wow! from me. It sounds like you are angry that people of lower intelligence than you have more influence on the language than you. No one suggested that you have to approve of, much less adopt, the usage of a word you personally consider awkward. I find your arrogance more off-putting than a few awkward, made up words thrown into a presentation or document. If I understand what they mean, I can over look it. And if you don’t like it, lead by example and leave the word police mentality behind. In the name of all of us sub-Mensa types out there I apologize for speaking in your presence.
By the way, my pet peeve is the use of the slash to imply the word “or”: “… for his/her own purposes, but he/she does not…”. Is it really so hard to type “or “? Why not use more succinct words like “their” and “they” which are really what you mean? What’s up with that? (It really doesn’t bother me, I am just having some fun with you too.)
Etiquette is something that one practices to avoid making others feel uncomfortable not a tool used to make others feel uncomfortable (paraphrased from Miss Manners). This is probably the most important thing that Miss Manners (Judith Martin?) has ever taught on the subject of etiquette. I personnally think that the same rules apply to how we communicate.
I’ll get off my (or is it your) soapbox and leave you (y’all) alone. I was mostly just funnin’ with you (you-all) anyway. (That ought to make your skin crawl.) Y’all are way too serious about something that is totally out of your control, except for Mark – UK of course who apparently has the power to ban its use. THAT deserves another Wow!
When a schoolteacher looks at a classroom and says “you go to the principal’s office” and nobody knows whether she means the whole glass or one person in the class, that’s the kind of linguistic ambiguity that needs to get ironed out. You don’t have to come from a culture with an unambiguous third-person plural pronoun to know that.
“Learnings” doesn’t fall into that category, since there are plenty of non-dumb ways to say the same thing.
I support the defenders of “learnings”.
“Learnings” do designate something you have learned, as opposed to “lessons”, which designate something you have been taught.
The semantic extension of “lessons” to “results of an experience” was , I think, merely filling the gap left by the absence of a word such as “learnings”. Now that Corporate America has created this useful and easy to remember neologism, “lessons” can now be confined to a classroom environment.
Ken Mill, New England
Looks like this has been seconded. http://learnings.org/learn.asp?word=learnings&d=8
Brilliant! I have just come across the IMHO ridiculous word “Learnings” in a German presentation I am currently translating into English and thought “HUH?!” so googled it to see if it is me not keeping up or if it is indeed a ridiculous word which I can translate into something more sensible-sounding. Thanks for those who have proven the point!
Have a good day!
blue monkey
Thankings I am learnings a lotings from youings. Its complicatings this Englishing thingings. I mustings buyings dictionings to helpings me not lookings likings a rightings cockings.
YES! THANK YOU! I was just having an IM convo with a friend about how I hate the new buzzword at my company “learnings.” So I googled it and this was the first result!!
Sounds like we’re all furiously agreeing.
Let’s pushback on learnings, take ’synergise’ off the back burner, run it up the flagpole and take a more helicopter view on what’s happening.
Thank you Jeffrey.
I have been against the usage of this word for ages. I had an argument with a collegue today, so I thought “Let me Google it”. I forwarded the link of this blog. This guy who is atleast 5 years senior with an MBA and everything came and apologised. I am sure he would not argue on English Issues anymore. lol…
Oh my god. I cringe inside every single time my boss uses “learnings.” I’d assumed it was because she was born German (but raised in the US) and she was just using Germlish–direct translating a proper German word. I gearing up to try to explain to her this was not proper English when I decided to google it. I should have known it was MBA-speak.
Interesting. I have no contact with MBAers but I hear the word “learnings” every time I attend a presentation within the international engineering/manufacturing company where I work.
I had “learnings” squarely down as euro-english, in the same group that includes “a training” / “trainings” and “a planning” / “plannings”.
Each of them instinctively make me flinch (I´m a native speaker), but I can´t deny that they seem to have potential.
Anyone claiming that a new word that is sneaking into world’s vocabulary is ‘not a word’ is ignoring the fact that language evolves. And they are fighting a losing battle. Learnings gets around 1.7 million Google hits. It is used in companies, lecture halls and conferences centres everyday around the world. And the word is becoming popular because, for whatever reason, a lot of people like using it.
Claiming that it’s not a word is simply ridiculous. (And be careful, in a few years you may look as foolish as this person who claimed ‘blog’ was not a word: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~hachu/mt/archives/2004_09.html just scroll down to “WTF is a blog?”.)
Language is about communication – it’s not a matter of right and wrong: it’s a matter of understandable and not understandable, appropriate and not appropriate. If you don’t like it, then don’t use it. But don’t try to tell people who like it, understand it and, most importantly, use it to successfully communicate that’s its not a word.
And anyone who’s searched the web to find out if learnings is a word or not, and has then come to this page, remember: these comments come from a couple of dozen people who can’t control the English language anymore than you can; and at least a few million people evidently think it is a word.
Maybe you should read a little more carefully. Nobody’s asserting that it’s not a word, just that it’s stupid.
Tracking back, I can see that you have already written “I didn’t assert that “learning” isn’t a word” once. Sorry to make you say that again.
So my comments are directed to Dirk, who does claim that learnings is not a word.
I googled “learnings” today because someone at my job wants to use this in the title of a session we are having at work. “Key Learning(s) of the Day.” Uggh. It does sound strange. Why can’t we just call it a wrap up…?
Is there an appropriate alternative word (or term) meaning, “the knowledge, specifically gained from relevant experiences and the consequence of actions, acquired TO DATE”?
If there is, I’m not aware of it. None of the suggestions in this thread are appropriate, either; “learnings” implies that the information is inconclusive, subjective and susceptible to change.
A much, much more annoying business term is “going forward”. It’s (probably) the most redundant ‘business term’ in existance (although there are many)!
Dude, the word you are looking for is “lessons”.
All knowledge gained is knowledge gained “to date” unless you are the owner of a time machine.
If you’re trying to imply that the lessons are preliminary and the learning is ongoing, you should say “preliminary findings”. But ultimately, since all learning is ongoing (do you really think you’ve learned everything you’ll ever need to know on the topic at hand?) simple “lessons” should suffice.
When you say “going forward,” you really mean “in the future”. That one is a huge pet peeve for me too, although it doesn’t grate on me nearly as much as “in harm’s way,” which is a totally histrionic version of “danger”.
You have a point: I don’t own a time machine (or if I do, I’m not aware of it, yet).
I was implying that the ‘learning’ is ongoing, yes, but not that the ‘findings’ are specifically ‘preliminary’ (as they may not actually precede anything in particular).
For example, in the ongoing development of x (where x should be considered as a constantly evolving entity), the knowledge gained will be applied and the lessons learned will influence its development, so the ‘findings’ are not ‘preliminary’.
I suppose that my explanation of my understanding of the non-existant word was incorrect. Perhaps I am looking for an alternative word (or term) for “the knowledge, specifically gained from relevant experiences and the consequences of action taken so far, which we can (and should) learn from”.
By the way, I dislike the word ‘learnings’, too (hence I found this blog), and I am genuinely looking for an appropriate alternative! I just don’t consider any of the proposed alternatives on this page to be appropriate.
JBL, you already found your solution to an alternative ‘learnings’ in your own explanation. The following is gramatically and appropriately applied to replace that hideous word…
“the ‘knowledge gained’ will be applied and the ‘lessons learned’ will influence its development”
People have got to stop trying to make two words into one by creating a word that doesn’t exist. I blame websters and their “new words” I’m sorry Gianormous and Chillaxe are not words!
I think that I am in love with all of you. Having been inflicted with many such atrocious “words”, I think that they oozed into existance to fulfill some cabalistic urge of corporate-Land.
Be brave and fight the good fight.
I see the word “learnings” all the time in my work, and it really sets my teeth on edge. I googled (no-one seems to be complaining much about this new verb) it today to see if others were troubled by it. And lo! I came across this site and this entertaining discussion. I wanted to see if I was simply being a pedant, or if there was a better way of communicating the subtlety of “learning” as oppposed to “lesson learned”. But here’s the interesting thing: I have ended up wanting to defend this poor, maligned word. How can we justify such anger and vitriol at something as trivial as the supposed misuse of a word that has clearly caught the imagination of so many users? If “learning” gathers widespread currency, then maybe that justifies its existence? Lessons may in many cases be the right word choice, but not always. The other alternatives offered – knowledge, findings, solutions, skills – miss the mark. The most helpful suggestion is ‘insights’, and I would consider this as a subsitution. I think, though, there may be times where “learning” may be the right word after all. Matthew made valid arguments, and I appreciate the thoughts of Nathanau, JLB ,Dan, Dave Pollard and others because these have all helped clarify my thinking. Yes, I have an allergic reaction to “learnings”, but I am willing to try to understand why the word seems to be so well-used.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant. What was meant to be a five-minute excursion to get some clarity has turned into a more full-blown exercise.
As for leverage, I don’t see why can’t use the verb “to lever’.
What about “updation”…
Learnings has been a tremendous success as a word, and I’d like to make my own contribution to this debate. I find I have the time as I have just finished my intra-day eatings break.
I frequently cringe as colleagues and customers butcher our mother tongue in emails, presentations and conversations. I understand that English is an evolving language, but I fear that we’re rushing to embrace a mediocre short-hand; a version of English that forgets how beautiful it used to be . MBA speak is, to my mind, one of the worst offenders. It’s an ego-driven attempt to own or create jargony words that other people don’t understand; exclusionary, cliquey and in many instances lazy.
I suspect that TV, film and other visual mediums have diminished our willingness to be entertained by the written word. One might posit that this decreased participation in reading and writing has reduced our ability to speak and write effectively. Jargony language seems to be accepted now, so I suppose I’ll resign myself to grinding my teeth publicly and ranting on occasion.
For the record – I hate the word “learnings”, though not as much as “reccos” -nonsense ‘biz’ short hand for “recommendations”.
I find the training and professional development industry love using this word – it drives me crazy!
What next?
I would like to share my “knowings”.
I’ve googled ‘learnings’ as I have always believed this to be an iditoic expression, i’m glad the rest of the world agrees with me.
Someone infected our office with that word in the last couple of weeks. I’ve heard it ten times today. -sigh-
The spread of this ghastly mutant seems to be even more insidious than swine flu. Any chance we could develop a vaccine against it?
Perhaps the vaccine is a decent education in the mother tongue……..??!?
Everytime I see it I want to strike it out and when I don’t for fear of being ridiculed as an intellectual snob, I feel like a bad grammar enabler instead. It is so irritating that just because it is popular that we should all allow its use. So many fun things are illegal and this is one stupid stupid word that should be illegal instead.
Believe it or not, my experience with this word comes from the official government curriculum documents in the Department of Education here. It makes me cringe every time I hear or read it, and the context makes it especially disheartening.
How stupid and patronizing can you get?
Oh forgive us noble Englishmen!
So Jeffrey criticises ‘learnings’ because there are plenty of ways to say the same thing.
Does this mean that he would like to get rid of them all except one (presumably ‘lessons’), since all the others are not needed?
He criticises it for being “highfalutin’”. Now, we’ll sidestep the fact that ‘highfalutin’ isn’t in my Oxford dictionary. A Google search tells me it means “pretentious”. (Makes me wonder why ‘highfalutin’ is a word, when it means the same as pretentious).
Now, I’d take issue here. When I use the word ‘learnings’ I use it because I think it is the right one for the job. As discussed by many above.
Certainly, though, some people use language pretentiously. They will use long winded phrases which tend to obfuscate the intended meaning. They will use long words when short ones will do. But is ‘learnings’ really that long a word? That complicated a word? As someone above wrote, everyone who was written on this thread knows exactly what is meant by ‘learnings’. It communicates.
Here is a lovely podcast by Stephen Fry on evolving language which you may enjoy http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/12/22/series-2-episode-3-language/
You need to get a new dictionary, champ.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/highfalutin
“Learnings” isn’t long or complicated, and I didn’t argue that it is. It communicates, sure, but it also grates, and that’s because it’s used by a certain type of person (typically business managers) to convey information in a way that is, without a doubt, over-inflated.
Ah – OK; so it grates because it is used by a certain type of person to convey information in a particular way.
So – that’s good. It means the more people like me use it, the less it will grate with you. And s far as I can see, that’s been happening a lot since your original post in 2004.
[["When a schoolteacher looks at a classroom and says “you go to the principal’s office” and nobody knows whether she means the whole glass or one person in the class, that’s the kind of linguistic ambiguity that needs to get ironed out. You don’t have to come from a culture with an unambiguous third-person plural pronoun to know that."]]
Or that schoolteacher could use the word “everyone” instead of “you” and make it crystal clear. Just sayin’…
What a blog post. 29 words, 99 comments. You’ve obviously struck a cord.
I was listening to a radio program(me) about business, when the CEO of a major cell/mobile phone company used the term. It certainly grated… so here I am. To me it brings Borat or pidgin to mind.
Corporate types across the Anglophone world, please quit it.