Name: 10 Words to Use Right Now at Work in English
Uploaded: 2025-07-08T10:48:13.000Z
Duration: 10 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey, it's Anne-Marie with Speak Confident English, and what is the number one thing that you probably want when you're using English at work?

You want to sound smart and professional.

So today I've got 10 smart words that you should definitely be using to sound professional, intelligent, and positive at work.

And the best part about today's lesson is these are small changes that you can make.

Sometimes a very small change can have big results, and that's what we're focused on today.

So be sure to stick with me to learn these 10 smart words and find out exactly how you can use them with example sentences.

And be sure to watch to the end because word number 10 is maybe the most important one that you need to know on this list.

Let's get started right away with number one, certainly.

What are some of the most common words that you hear when someone wants to agree with you or agree to a request?

We often say words like okay or no problem.

But we use them too much and they're pretty casual.

So if we want to sound a little bit more professional and positive, certainly is a great option.

For example, if your boss asks for a document by the end of the day, you could say okay or certainly.

Or a colleague asks you to help with a project, certainly.

Let's say that you have a project at work and just before the deadline you get an email that says there's some changes in the requirements.

A better, smarter word that you could use is modify.

It doesn't have the same feeling that the word change can have.

For example, at a meeting a colleague might say that we need to change the way that we're dealing with our customers.

That sounds like you have to change everything and nobody really wants to do that.

Instead, it's better to say something like we should modify the way we deal with customers at work.

Modify doesn't sound so scary or overwhelming.

It's a fantastic word to use in place of the word change.

Similar to the word change, there's another word that no one likes to hear at work and that is the word problem.

The boss has a problem she wants you to solve.

None of us like hearing those statements.

The word complication is a great alternative and it doesn't sound as bad or scary.

For example, instead of saying there's a problem with your order, you could say there's a complication with your order, but we're working on it.

I'm curious, when you think of a word that native speakers use to be positive and show that something is great, what word do you think of?

Native speakers love the word awesome and it's a fantastic word.

I love it, but I want you to have the ability to be flexible in English.

I want you to have vocabulary that you can adapt and use in different situations and the word sensational is a fantastic positive word that you can use in place of the word awesome.

For example, if I didn't sleep very much last night and I'm feeling super tired at work and a colleague says, hey, Anne-Marie, I'm going to go to the coffee shop.

I could say, oh, that would be awesome or that would be sensational.

To elaborate simply means to give more details and there are many times at work when we need someone to clarify something or give us some extra details.

So if you're in a meeting and a coworker says something that isn't really clear, you're not exactly sure what she means, instead of saying, what do you mean?

If you use the word leverage at work, you'll definitely impress some other people.

If we modify our marketing approach, we can get some real leverage over our competitors.

We've used two words from our list there.

I could say, if we change our marketing approach, we can get an advantage over our customers.

Or I could use these two words, modify and leverage, to impress.

Word number seven, similar to talking about problems versus complications.

We can use ramifications instead of consequences.

A bad consequence is when something negative happens as a result of something else.

And that word consequence can immediately have a negative feeling with it.

For example, if your team is talking about how to modify a marketing approach, you definitely need to think about the pros and cons, and what are some of the possible ramifications of making that change.

We've got just three more words on our list of 10 smart words to be using at work.

I don't know why, but I love the way it sounds, perplexing.

You and I know that confusing things happen at work.

A customer does something weird, files disappear, someone says they sent you an email, but you never got it.

In those moments, you could say, I'm really confused about that situation, or I'm confused how that happened.

Or similar to saying I'm confused, we could say I'm perplexed.

Smart word number nine is straightforward.

Everyone loves things that are easy to do, easy to understand, and straightforward is a great alternative to using the word easy.

Instead of saying something like, this project is really easy, you could say, this project is really straightforward.

Maybe you're working with a new client, and you know that they're going to be wonderful and easy to work with.

You could also say, working with this client is going to be really straightforward.

And finally, we're at smart word number 10 that you should be using at work, kind of.

This word is actually a word that you should avoid, and we're going to replace it with something else.

It has become a filler word, a word that we use when we don't really know what to say.

In fact, sometimes I've heard the word like used in the same sentence two, three, four, even five times.

This is a word that you definitely want to avoid using because it doesn't sound smart or professional.

In fact, it can sound uncertain when it's used too much.

But the problem is, it's a really great word for some situations, like when you're going to introduce an example.

Did you notice I just used it there to introduce what I wanted to say?

That is an appropriate way to use this word, but because the word like is used too much, I want to give you an alternative.

When you need to introduce information or introduce an example, you could use such as or for instance.

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10 Words to Use Right Now at Work in English

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