I jumped onto a Teams meeting earlier today only to find my boxed profile virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with two colleagues who were...also in the office with me. We shook our heads sadly at the presumption and then agreed to meet out in the real world. In that moment, an alternate term occurred to me, though thankfully … Continue reading On the awfulness of “meatspace”
Tag: etymology
On opportunistic
In an opportunistic move in early 2020, the City purchased a 1.99-acre parcel near its downtown core. Hm. Opportunistic? There’s nothing wrong with it, to be fair. Merriam-Webster has it as “taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.” And that’s just what the City of Lafayette, in a recently reviewed RFP, was doing. But it … Continue reading On opportunistic
On the term “disabled”
I’ve reflected a lot in the past days on a passage in Sara Hendren’s book What A Body Can Do: Amanda would say she is disabled—not differently abled, not specially challenged, or any other similar variation.* Like many people in the disability community, she would use that term by choice, preferring it even to person … Continue reading On the term “disabled”
On recreation as re-creation
A few years ago—and, no, I have no recollection what I was writing about—I typed out a thought that involved needing to create something over again, something that had already been created. I looked real close at one of the words in that thought. Huh. Recreate? Re-create? Well, of course! It’s a lovely, if obvious, … Continue reading On recreation as re-creation
On “stakeholder” and my preferred (but false) etymology
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 … Continue reading On “stakeholder” and my preferred (but false) etymology
On the frustration and lure of false etymologies
People are always surprised to learn that dictionary editors aren’t strict grammarians, the unbending defenders of some frozen version of the English language. I was, too, when I started working my marketing job at Oxford Dictionaries. The editors’ motives were far more documentary than I’d expected. They loved words, and respected the odd ways that … Continue reading On the frustration and lure of false etymologies
On the etymology of career
Some etymologies hold a suggestive observation about the word's present-day use, where the word holds meaning under the surface, the shape dimly visible—if at all—from the surface. The etymology of career hit me this way. The Online Etymology Dictionary outlines it this way: 1530s, "a running (usually at full speed), a course" (especially of the … Continue reading On the etymology of career
Getting tired of “times like these”
In the past several weeks, I've had to do quite a bit of what I think of as "big picture" writing. "Big picture" writing is writing—usually in someone else's voice—where you step back from the everyday, take the pulse of things, and then attempt to say something about it all that is general but also … Continue reading Getting tired of “times like these”
Thinking about “through lines”
When plotting out the bigger pieces of content in my job, I love talking about through lines—the strands that weave through a proposal or an interview presentation, the recurring motifs or differentiators that draw readers or attendants from start to finish. Looking up through line in the OED, I discovered that the origin of the … Continue reading Thinking about “through lines”
What “box” are we talking about when we “think outside the box”?
Think outside the box has to be one of the most overused pieces of business jargon out there. In my less than decade-long career, I've lost count of the number of times someone has encouraged me to "think outside the box." In researching a separate post about metaphor, I was reading a blog post on … Continue reading What “box” are we talking about when we “think outside the box”?
Taylor Coe 