Posts Tagged “word of the day”

I couldn’t help but notice the estimable Jason Scott’s profane and precise review of the new(ish) US passport design, not least for his use of the word “glurge.”  I completely agree, and the RFID chip makes me sad, too.

The Mac’s dictionary app drew an amusing blank, and the OSPD claims ignorance of glurge.

It turns out that glurge comes from Snopes.com, the great debunking website.  I quote therefrom:

Glurge is a term specific to snopes.com, coined in 1998… The word was invented by Patricia Chapin, a member of the urban legends discussion mailing list run in conjunction with this site. At a loss for words to describe the retching sensation this then-unnamed category of stories subjected her to, she fashioned a word that simultaneously named the genre and described its effect.

Glurge … is the body of inspirational tales which conceal much darker meanings than the uplifting moral lessons they purport to offer, and which undermine their messages by fabricating and distorting historical fact in the guise of offering “true stories.” Glurge often contains such heart-tugging elements as sad-eyed puppies, sweet-faced children, angels, dying mothers, or miraculous rescues brought about by prayer. These stories are meant to be parables for modern times but fall far short of the mark.

So now you know.

Today’s word of the day is concision.

Used in a sentence…

I’ts been a while since I’ve done Word of the Day.  Today’s word is dissent.

I think dissent is pretty important.  It’s baked into the democratic system, sure, but I think it’s just as important as a business concept.  In business school we talked a lot about alignment, about getting everybody moving in the same (right) direction, and about brand, about getting everybody telling the same story in the same way.  But how do organizations determine the right direction and the right story in the first place?

I think dissent – productive dissent – is one way.  If you don’t experiment, you’ll never discover new ways of doing things, and if you don’t make space for dissent in your organization, I think you’re a lot less likely to innovate or find creative solutions to problems.  If nobody asks the inconvenient questions like “why are we doing this?” or “what would happen if we stopped doing this?” how will an organization advance?  Dissent must have a logical end, at which point an organization comes to agreement or consensus and has to bind together to get things done, but it must never go away for long.

Organizations with strong cultures and organizations that are mission-based can be more effective for having those attributes, but they also risk groupthink and hiring people who are too like-minded, even those that have “challenge assumptions” up on their mission statement.  As the definition says, dissent is voicing opinions contrary to those “previously, commonly or officially held.”

Just as dissent makes democracy stronger, I think it’s vital to organizations.  Nothing is too obvious not to be discussed, explored or tested.   A lot can be accomplished and discovered when smart people engage in respectful but otherwise unrestrained debate.  I for one, welcome it.

Thanks to LKB’s comment on yesterday’s post, where I wrote about “chimerical chemical randomness,” I realized that I haven’t had a word of the day in many moons.  So here it is.

I’ll go with definitions 2 and 3.  Chimera:  a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve; an organism containing a mixture of genetically different tissues.

Make of this what you will.  If you can play it in scrabble, it’ll be worth at least 14 points, and potentially a bingo.

And BTW, major kudos to LKB and BEM for their excellent hospitality on the deck last night.  Do you have a recipe for that watermelon tomato salad?