Words.  Big words, little words, made up words, great words nobody knows, we love them all!  Since our Coffee Social is all about communicating, it’s not surprising that words would be important.  Plus, a sizable segment of the WORK population falls into the writer/editor category.

Here are a few words that caught my attention:

Sustainable Growth – What does that mean, especially in business?  Is it an oxymoron?  In a world that combines finite resources with a financial system that expects gains every quarter, are we set up for failure one way or the other?  Chris Martenson’s concept of ”Peak Prosperity” is worth exploring here.  Someone else offered up the analogy of a redwood tree: It grows like crazy but still has its limits and once the old growth dies, a whole crop of new growth sprouts up around the stump breathing new life into the same root system.  Maybe that’s ‘sustainable growth.’

Decimalexia – Not a ‘real’ word but Jeffrey Ventrella is brilliant enough to be allowed to create his own lexicon.  This is the mixing up of decimal places with potentially large consequences.  Oh, the power of a decimal!

Evolution – How much of who we are is based on genetics and all those years of evolution?  There was talk about male-hunter-single-task-testosterone thinking verses female-nurturer-multi-task-estrogen thinking which ties right into Jeffrey’s latest blog article Hunter Gatherer Programmer.  And when talk fell on the trend back toward local thinking we were reminded of Darwin’s quote: “All evolution is local.”

Mondegreen – And what of great words nobody knows?  If the point is communication, how useful is that fabulous fancy word if the person listening doesn’t get the meaning?  A word my husband and I love to use is “mondegreen”.  Know it?  Probably not, but I bet you can use it:  a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung originally from the mishearing in a Scottish ballad of “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”.

And so it goes…take those small words, fancy words, or your own made up words and have fun!  Want to think more about the power of words?  Check out this fab TEDx talk we saw this summer.

Written by Natasha Juliana

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