Unemployment lingo

Mark Peters markpeters33 at YAHOO.COM
Sat Mar 7 19:41:15 UTC 2009


I'm doing a column on the many words and phrases for firing people: let
go, downsize, rightsize, shitcan, sack, discard, terminate, pink slip, show
the door, etc.

There are two things I'd like to sip (siphon?) from the collective pool of
wisdom:

1) What other words fit in this category? I have some recent ones like getting
fit and synergy-related headcount reductions, but there must be
more.

2) Any info on the history of shitcan? The OED doesn't have it, and HDAS
doesn't go that far...

Thanks!

Mark

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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