The ‘Human-in-the-Loop’  has emerged as a controversial figure for thinking the place of human agency and intentionality within automated systems. From its origins in cybernetic schematisations of the ‘man-in-the-middle’ through its subsequent theorisation in ergonomics and human factors research, the human-in-the-loop has more recently emerged within European jurisprudence as a ‘brake’ against ‘run away’ automation, especially in the provision of state welfare services. In this talk I draw from the tradition of Francophone work studies to consider the utility of ‘catachresis’ as a frame for rethinking the ambiguities of the human-in-the-loop, and its potentials for deliberation about and through automated technologies. ‘Catachresis’ is a term drawn from linguistics to describe the ‘misuse’ of language, especially the use of a word beyond or outside the lines of established categorical boundaries. In Francophone work science the term has been used catachrestically to describe the ‘misuse’ of the technologies of the modern workplace, whether in a way that enables the workforce to overcome unforeseen obstacles, or which reveals the ingenuity of the worker in their capacity to creatively reimagine the work process. The development of ‘catachresis’ as a frame for work science was coincident with the emergence of post-structuralist accounts of language as itself inherently catachrestic – as a process of working through the displacement of a fixed and determinable signifier. As large language models come to enter and perhaps remake the field of automated governance and production, the question of the catachrestic nature of the human-in-the-loop becomes newly relevant as a way of thinking the potential for interpreting and intervening in the field of automation as a component of social life.