I wrote yesterday about false etymologies—all with an eye of writing this post today.
I use the word stakeholder a lot in project approaches and cover letters. I’m referring to anyone with an “interest” in the project, financial or otherwise. I’ll often modify the noun to fit: “community” stakeholders, “key” stakeholders, “internal” stakeholders.
A lot of project approach language can feel like light jargon, hard to grab a hold of: concept, schematic, develop, manage, evaluate, analyze, program.
So I’ve always liked the literalism of stakeholder. People holding…stakes! But what stakes, exactly?
The etymology I made up for myself had to do with the big tent gatherings of 19th-century evangelists: to put up a big tent, you needed people to hold the stakes and pitch the damn thing. I liked this image: a community coming together to create a space. When I drafted cover letters, this is what I held in my mind. A big tent was even sort of like a building!
But the real etymology proved, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be financial in origin. A stake was a bet or a wager, and the stakeholder was the person holding that bet or wager. You could imagine a card game, with a non-player holding the deposited money.
Over time, the meaning translated into anyone having a financial interest—and eventually any kind of interest—in the outcome of an activity.
A believable but less interesting etymology…
Taylor Coe 