adjective · first recorded 2026 · status: emerging
orthogonal
1.A needlessly technical substitute for "unrelated" or "independent," used when someone wants an ordinary point to sound more analytical. In legitimate mathematical and engineering contexts, it has a narrower meaning involving perpendicularity, independence, or non-interaction.
The hiring problem is orthogonal to whether anyone actually wants the product.
01Origin
Orthogonal is not a neologism. The English word dates to approximately 1560, and its extended sense of mutually independent or non-interacting became established in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. The New Hacker's Dictionary documented programmers using it to mean independent, well separated, or sometimes irrelevant by 1991.
The ironic SF-tech sense crystallized around Chamath Palihapitiya in 2026. All-In listeners mocked his repeated use of the word in a May Reddit thread, and on July 31 Jay Kapoor posted a widely circulated image of Palihapitiya captioned, "When I say orthogonal instead of unrelated." The resulting meme was subsequently covered as a parody of inflated Silicon Valley corporate language.
02Notable sightings
03Spread the ism
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