single word requests - Alternative to "queer the deal"?


The phrase queer at­ti­tude used to be com­mon­place, sim­ply mean­ing a strange at­ti­tude or un­help­ful be­hav­ior.


Un­for­tu­nately in the present era, I once used that phrase and sadly of­fended an LGBT per­son, since peo­ple to­day use queer to mean ho­mo­sex­ual.


I can avoid say­ing queer at­ti­tude by just say­ing strange at­ti­tude.


What's a mod­ern al­ter­na­tive to the com­mon busi­ness phrase "queer the deal" that does­n’t risk giv­ing of­fence where none is in­tended?


Other queer- phrases are easy enough to re­place, but I am stumped on this one.


(Fun­nily enough the other day I gave some­one the long-winded al­ter­na­tive: “I’m try­ing not to talk about it to not up­set my ne­go­ti­a­tion so don't find me rude but I’d rather not go in to de­tails, etc.”, and my col­league im­me­di­ately re­sponded “Oh, you don’t want to queer the deal, got it!” Geesh!)



Answer



It reminds me of the usage of jinx, an old word which (at least in my experience) has recently become much more popular amongst young people:



to foredoom to failure or misfortune : bring bad luck to



(source: Merriam Webster)


"Don't jinx it" is a reasonably commonly heard phrase nowadays.


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