“Downsizing” was itself a euphemism, but at least it admitted a direction. “Rightsizing” removes even that. It proposes that the company was the wrong size, the way a coat can be the wrong size, and that the people being let go are simply the excess fabric.

Note what the word does for the speaker. A manager who “lays off two hundred people” has done something to two hundred people. A manager who “rightsizes the organization” has corrected an abstraction. The sentence no longer has any people in it.

Mamet’s complaint was that words used this way don’t just deceive the listener; they let the speaker off the hook of their own act. The executive who says “rightsizing” enough times starts to believe there was no choice involved. That is the self-deception the essay is actually about.

Listen for the cousins: “workforce optimization,” “organizational realignment,” “a reduction in force.” Each one is a small step further from the sentence “we fired them.”