Our office is very civilised and breaks the wine out at about 1715 - unusually for me, I have indulged this week, whilst reading the latest pile of papers from ACF.

Then I had a right fine little (and, I'm sorry to say, fairly unprintable) rant about "Civil society" (mentioned several times in said paperwork). Would anyone like to define that WITHOUT cheating and Googling it - like I did, in sheer exasperation at my inability to define something that I do, in fact, understand - but somehow couldn't articulate.

Civil society is, basically, any organisation that is not state-backed or commercial. Er, that makes it not-for-profit sector, right? In which case WHY NOT SAY SO.

Too often, groups of the wise, great and good sit around talking about "Buzzword [this]" and "Buzzword [that]" - and can't actually define the buzzword articulately. Which has the potential to lead to enormous miscommunication. Until someone (often me, I'm sorry to say) says "Hang on a second, please can we check we have a common understanding of WTH we're talking about here?". Surprisingly and depressingly often, there is no common understanding.

Which buzzword of the moment is driving you nuts right now? (Capacity building, so 2006 - where are you now?)

@Howard: I know there's lots of jargon-busters out there - but very few are charity-specific, most seem to be aimed at statutory authorities. Room for one perhaps?