Over the course of my career as a copywriter for a tech company, I have encountered more hideous, meaningless industry buzzwords than I can recount. They're everywhere! In webinars, blogs, white papers, the social media streams of top thought leaders and experts, on calls with vendors. It's hard to escape them.

To say that marketing and sales buzzwords are a bit of a pet peeve is a serious understatement. But then again, who doesn't shudder at the word "recalibrate" and roll their eyes at a sales analogy that has to do with creating a "secret sauce."

When I took my marketing job straight out of college, I hadn't the slightest inkling that the professional world would be so full of strange, vague terminology and useless technical jargon. And not only are those words and idioms irritating and misused; they're just plain confusing and seriously muddle the message that the writer or speaker is trying to get across. Ridiculous strings of buzzwords like "lock step" and "finger on the pulse" often leave me and my team scratching our heads and thinking what in the world did you just say?

In honor of Valentine's Day, my team and I have put together a list of the 15 most egregious offenders on our buzzword hit list. For everyone's sake, please "circle back" and keep these delightfully terrible phrases "off the radar."

Infographic credit: Ryan Boswell, graphic designer at Momentum Telecom