Paul Krugman: Learning to Speak Economese

What we have here is a problem of communication. Actually, mostly that's not true. Most of the arguments about economic policy involve real disputes about how the world works. Sometimes these are smart disputes, like the argument over the effectiveness of quantitative easing, and sometimes they're stupid disputes, like the one over whether the Federal Reserve is debasing the currency, but, anyway, the disputes are about something real.

But to such arguments one must add an extra layer of confusion arising from the way economists use words. Fairly often, a term that is pretty deeply embedded in the professional discourse either sounds strange to outsiders or can be misinterpreted. An example of the first is the term "secular stagnation." I know many of my readers dislike it. It relies on definition 3(c) of "secular" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary: "of or relating to a long term of indefinite duration" — not exactly the meaning that comes to most people's minds.