Towards A Lexicon Of Resilience

In 2020, ‘lockdown’ was the word of the year for many people.  However, as Arianna Huffington declared (and many agreed), ‘resilience’ was the true word of 2020*.  Some, especially in the business world, have already suggested that it will also be the word of 2021. 

“Resilience is a concept that has been used in virtually all areas of life and work.  Every industry, every discipline has its own way of describing resilience; defining it and talking about it.”

SINTEZO Magazine

It took 400 years for ‘resilience’ to achieve that status; at the threat of becoming completely meaningless.  Everyone had their own favourite definition or interpretation.  Almost certainly most of us, without knowing much about the genesis of the term, wanted it to resonate with our own limited knowledge of what resilience entails.  Since there is no universal law governing how it should be interpreted, everyone is free to make what they like of it; but how well people understand each other when they talk about resilience is still unclear…READ ON

The Word Of The Year And Why It Matters To Workplace Mental Health

Each year towards the end of December, it has become a tradition for major wordsmiths to choose one word that sums up the shared experiences of the previous year.

After Collins Dictionary unveiled its 2020 chosen word of the year, lockdown—“the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction and access to public spaces”—I ran across a post by Thrive Global founder and CEO Arianna Huffington. The article titled, “And the Word of the Year Is … Resilience,” was a reaction to word picks by Collins Dictionary and other outlets such as Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary, who chose other predestined words such as pandemic, quarantine, doomscrolling, coronavirus…READ ON