Six years ago, I had the distinct privilege of attending a United Way conference in Boise, Idaho. The event was busting at the seams with conference-speak. Words that sometimes seem like they were invented just so people can hear themselves saying them while standing in a large room filled with their peers.

In 2000, the big buzzwords and phrases were "passion," "passionate," "working in your own silo," "bowling alone," "white paper," "cadre" and one of my alltime favorites, "paradigm shift."

I think it's interesting that of all those words and phrases, I heard none of them at an Internet newspaper seminar I attended last week in Virginia. None. Although I'm fairly certain that there were a couple of times we came dangerously close to having a paradigm shift. Rest assured, though, that at last week's seminar, there were plenty of brand new buzzwords.

I love the language. I'm by no means an expert on it, but I like to observe it, listen to it. And my downfall is parsing words, or dissecting them to determine their exact meaning, which is a bit redundant frankly.

So, I felt it my duty to report back to you on the latest trends in conference-speak, language we will rarely hear (hopefully) outside the think tank world:

-- It's a little coincidental, I think, but to be passionate or to have a passion for something in the business world has apparently been replaced with "embrace." "We have to embrace this new media ..." Embrace ... passion ... apparently we have romance-novel tendencies when describing our businesses.

-- At the conference I attended six years ago, there was a word used frequently that actually didn't even exist: incent. We have to incent out customers!, the man said. When he actually meant, We have to provide incentives for our customers. I don't know why he didn't just say that. According to Merriam Webster, "incent" has worked its way into business speak but it's still not standard English. This year's fake word passed off as a new one seemed to be "monetize." Monetize is a word, just not in the sense that it was being used last week repeatedly. "How can we monetize our web site?" was the basic use of the word. Monetize doesn't mean "to make a profit." It means to literally make -- create -- money, or establish as legal tender.

There were many other examples ...

-- "Repurposing." Again, not a word, but apparently meant to re-establish one's product. Redefine, re-establish, start over. There are a number of examples of real words that would work just as well. Even better.

-- "Social capital." Similar to President Bush's "political capital," which he intends to cash in, as he said after his second inaugural.

-- "Upsell opportunities." Definition -- how most traditional media make money on the Internet. Offering a print ad and throwing in a reduced rate Internet ad is called "upselling."

-- "The new (whatever)." Pink is the new red. Sweaters are the new t-shirts. Summer is the new winter. Barf is the new gag. This may currently be the new most overused buzz phrase out there.

-- "Critical mass." This is a fancy way of saying a needed amount to achieve a desired objective. One definition I found: Critical mass is when enough buyers and sellers participate so that goods or services change hands efficiently. A "desired customer base" used to cover it fairly well.

-- "Matrix." Maybe the coolest new word out there, made cooler of course by the movie starring Keanu Reeves. Watch for the latest sequel in the series coming this fall: "Matrix 3: The Paradigm Shift." As near as I could figure, matrix is closely akin to "business model," which always worked for me.

Finally, there are three that are really laughable and I think we should really never ever hear -- or use -- in real-people conversation:

"Risk averse." Conservative? Cautious maybe?

My absolute favorite: "Time-deprived adults." You and I would probably just say, umm, busy.

And lastly, we used to call fancy web sites with video, etc., web sites that had a lot of "bells and whistles." Bells and whistles are out, people. If you have a fancy web site now, you have "a lot of ornaments on the Christmas tree."

All this makes me want to roll my eyes. Which would of course give me balance-challenged optical orbs.

One of my favorite stories has nothing to do with a formal presentation at one of these meetings, but at the lunch table. I was listening to two businessmen at a meal break at the United Way conference several years ago. One of the men mentioned that he had an employment vacancy at his business. The other man asked what kind of candidate he was hoping to fill the position.

"I won't hire anyone without pre-existing experience."

Oh really?

We have a problem with our language, mostly it stems from the need to sound intelligent. People just need to speak English. For if we don't have a disconnect from this self-inflating verbosity spoken only in conferences, we will be doomed to have no ornaments on our personal Christmas trees, we will fail to reach critical mass and we will have to shift our paradigms (which I hear can be quite painful) in order to maximize and ultimately monetize our product because we won't appear to be able to play well with others.

In other words, speak English, folks. When it comes to the language... think INSIDE the box. It's the new outside the box.