Home arrow Business English arrow Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors
Register Now
English Arabic Bulgarian Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Finnish French German Greek Hindi Italian Japanese Korean Norwegian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swedish Catalan Filipino Hebrew Indonesian Latvian Lithuanian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Ukrainian Vietnamese

Students

8049 registered

Student Login

Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors E-mail
User Rating: / 15
PoorBest 
Tuesday, 27 June 2006

Definition:

A form of deception; more style than substance.

 

Example Dialogue:

A: I hear the new software is almost complete. But does it work?
B: I don’t know, but I hear that the new software is mostly smoke and mirrors. It looks good, but it does not work well.

Listen and Practice:

Discuss on the Forums:

 
Discuss (3 posts)
Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors
Jun 16 2009 10:21:19
This thread discusses the Content article: Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors

hi people can someone explain this definition better for please.
#898
Re:Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors
May 20 2010 14:48:29
it means the software look good but actually have bad performance.
#1057
Re:Business Jargon: Smoke and mirrors
May 31 2010 09:45:27
This expression basically comes from the world of 'Magic' where magicians use Mirrors to create optical illusions (like hiding a person from throat to toe and show off his head alone !!) and also pumping in smoke (to remove the glasses for revealing the man's body !!) etc.

Thus, the expression is used to qualify a situation where someone tries to hide something bad and at the same time, tries to give an impression that nothing bad ever exists.

When Good wrappers, Free gifts, Good advertisements etc are used to promote a Bad Product, you can say that 'The Product is all Smoke and Mirror'.

Hope this explains....
#1062

You need to login or register to post comments.
Discuss this item on the forums. (3 posts)
< Prev   Next >

About | English Teaching Jobs | ESL Jobs | Additional Resources | Privacy Policy | Site Map