Learn English – What’s the difference between “lingo” and “jargon”
differencessynonyms
To what extent, if any, do lingo and jargon differ?
Best Answer
I’d use lingo to characterize a style of speaking, characterized by words both newly-minted and appropriated for a specific meaning. For example, using drag to mean boring or tedious, bread to mean money, or man as a form of address all contribute to the lingo of counterculture in the 60s.
Jargon refers to a technical vocabulary that is shorthand for complex or elaborate concepts and practices. In technology, for example, it’s often characterized by acronyms and other terms coined by inventors and innovators. In law, medical practice, and academic research, it’s a combination of terms and concepts owed to history that are often anchored to their language of origin.
A client is the one to be served, economically or not, the economical one being a customer. A customer (purchaser) is not necessarily a client, when product(s) rather than services are offered.
A consumer is the one who uses products or services, paid or not. So, a consumer is not necessarily a customer. Children at toy shops are usually consumers, their mothers being customers.
Weltanschauung is used as an English word, from the German because the English worldview is too vague and not comprehensive enough. (For anschauen = to look at, rather with the meaning "to take a good look at", for schau = to show, display, as opposed to blicken = to look, or aussehen from sehen = to see).
Primarily it means a way a person looks at the phenomenon of life as a whole. Some people (particularly those who have not lived very long) have not formed any broad (inclusive, even "sophisticated") view of life. Others consider a large number of factors before forming their overall view — maybe in their seventies — of the phenomenon of human existence. Typically a person's Weltanschauung (as an English word we drop the capital letter required of all German nouns) would include a person's philosophic, moral, and religious conclusions — including e.g. the duality of spirit and matter — and perhaps their conclusions about the origins of the universe and of the development of life. They would also have conclusions about the state, society, politics and economic activity. I suggest def. "A person's conclusions about existence (however tentative) at a particular time of life, after taking a good look at everything they have come across about". What do the German philologists say about my amateur offering?
Best Answer
I’d use lingo to characterize a style of speaking, characterized by words both newly-minted and appropriated for a specific meaning. For example, using drag to mean boring or tedious, bread to mean money, or man as a form of address all contribute to the lingo of counterculture in the 60s.
Jargon refers to a technical vocabulary that is shorthand for complex or elaborate concepts and practices. In technology, for example, it’s often characterized by acronyms and other terms coined by inventors and innovators. In law, medical practice, and academic research, it’s a combination of terms and concepts owed to history that are often anchored to their language of origin.