You’re a wrestling fan—which likely means you have a certain way of communicating with other wrestling devotees. But why limit the times and places you use wrestling-speak? Why not bring that wrestling lingo into the workplace? The shorthand you’ll create will save time (and if your boss doesn’t understand what everyone else is saying, maybe you can use that to your advantage. But more on that later). That being said, here’s some solid wrestling lingo to improve communication in your workplace.
1. “Go Home”
In everyday life, “go home” generally means to, well, go home (as in, “It’s 5:00. Time to go home”). But in wresting it means to finish a match—and you can apply this to all kinds of everyday work scenarios.
Example: “I really wish Frank would go home on this presentation, it’s boring AF.” OR, “After I go home from the bathroom I’ll come back and hit the go home on this org sheet—and then I’ll go home … to my husband.”
2. “Swerve”
A swerve is a trick, usually played to your advantage. If you don’t know how a good swerve can fit into office life, then you’ve been approaching your job all wrong. Workplaces are swerve central.
Example: “What a swerve!”
[Editor’s note: The example is a swerve in and of itself, because we got away with not really explaining anything.]
3. “Get Over”
Like a lot of wrestling lingo, this has several different uses. It can mean to win a match, but it also can mean to get popular or catch on. The latter definition will likely prove most useful to you—especially regarding office politics. As in you should keep track of who’s getting over—because that’s who could be getting YOUR promotion.
Example: “Steve brought donuts to get over with management, and it worked, dammit!”
4. “Kayfabe”
Kayfabe is an incredibly specific professional wrestling concept. It refers to the practice of treating staged performances as truth. Now, you may think this word won’t have any place in a modern business environment. However, nothing is more kayfabe than work! Everyone has to walk around and talk to each other as if they’re happy to be there even though no one would be there if they weren’t getting paid. Just showing up is kayfabe! Walking into a meeting and not punching Phil in his annoying face the second you see him is kayfabe! Talking about it openly will tell you who’s on your side, and who is kayfabing themselves.
Example: “I’m acting like I’m excited for the company-wide party, but it’s total kayfabe. I’m actually going to pull a swerve and leave for a long lunch.”
5. “Gimmick”
A gimmick is, at its most basic level, the character that a wrestler plays. A gimmick can also be any object that a wrestler uses in or out of the ring. A gimmick can also be a catchphrase or a certain way of speaking. A gimmick can also be a pronoun, used to replace any word. Literally any word. Basically gimmick is everything. If you use the word gimmick as liberally as possible, no one can hold you accountable for anything.
Example: “Tony walks in with this gimmick, right? And so he thinks it’s gonna get him over, and I kayfabe put him over to Jessica, but she acts like it’s time to go home, so I bring out the gimmick, and you should have seen Tony’s face when he realized he got swerved.”