Going forward

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A voguish, throat clearing expression which means from now on. In a kinder time, modish wordsmiths said, “henceforth”. Some still do.

When you adopt the future tense, it’s a fair assumption — Time’s arrow doing its miserable thing and reminding us there’s but one way out of here — you are thinking of those points in time which haven’t happened yet, to the exclusion of all those which have.

“From now on, I will be eating bananas” merely implies you haven’t been doing so until now. “Going forward, I will be eating bananas” suggests something more profound: that, before now, it had not even occurred that they might be worth eating; that you are author of a beneficent new insight which will better illuminate the world.

The odds of such inspiration emanating from lips uttering the expression “going forward” is low.

See also

• Henceforth
• Criswell

buzzword