![]() Folks, it’s been a minute.īut now we have two new Cormac McCarthy novels. troops were in Iraq, the University of Alabama football team was eking out a losing season, and a hundred million users were making the world’s most visited website. You might need them for something important one day.The last time we had a new novel from Cormac McCarthy, Enron and JonBenet Ramsey were in the headlines, more than a hundred thousand U.S. Until then, look after the words you've inherited. When you can write like Shakespeare, by all means make up whatever words you like. The writers who imposed the greatest number of new words upon the English language had the greatest grasp of existing words. Do we want to shape the world for the better with our ideas, or shut it out? I hope that the reasons not to emulate the financial world are evident without having to spell them out, particularly when it comes to language. Maybe that's where some people derive it from. In finance, leveraging is using borrowed capital to make investments that will provide greater profit than the interest owed. Let me confess that there is a recorded use of leverage as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. Using leverage as a verb is also confusing, because it means levering your leverage. It’s not just that it stomps all over obvious grammatical integrity. ![]() 'The more you say leverage, the less you've probably thought about what you're saying.' I wonder how he can be so convinced that spelling is important yet throw away basic grammar without remorse. They mean ‘using the leverage you already have to your advantage’ A much better analogy for capitalising upon previous advantage gained would be advancing your troops further, or investing in new ventures having worked hard to create money in the first place, to name but two. Leverage has become a buzzword, yet there are few situations where it is apt. ‘if you lever the content that you have already created…’Īnd if this sounds dumb, it is because it is. If the writer (it would be unfair to identify him as so many people do it) means capitalising upon the work that you have already done, then the correct word is simply lever: ‘if you leverage the content that you have already created, you will be able to squeeze out a bit more mileage’ In most cases, I think people mean one of two things: 1. You can’t spillage me across the floor or dotage me into delirium for suggesting that language does not work this way.īecause if leverage was a verb then we could create leveragage by doing it. You can’t get more noun-like than a word made into a noun by the suffix –age. The suffix –age is the linguistic equivalent of streaking across the live final of The X Factor wearing nothing but a banner proclaiming ‘I AM A NOUN’. It takes a verb, to lever, that has become a noun, leverage, and twists the word into another verb even though it ends with the noun-defining ending –age. It is a crude bastardisation of language. In other words, to leverage (verb) your leverage (noun). They say that the way to capitalise on your position – is by leveraging it. Because a verb transformed into a noun by adding –age can’t suddenly be a verb as well.Īnd yet bloggers, especially those who would like to be Seth Godin, are doing this all the time. So if you want to use further the advantage that you have gained, how do you do it? Let me tell you how you don’t do it. You advance (verb) your army, to give yourself an advantage (noun). ![]() The suffix –age transforms these verbs into nouns. When you lever (verb) the rock, you get this: The word comes by adding the suffix -age to the verb lever. You ram a crowbar underneath it, push down on the bar and the rock begins to rise. Leverage is the advantage gained by the use of a lever. So it’s worth keeping an eye on our words. If you like what you've read so far, join us on LinkedIn to talk all things digital product development with our team of experts.
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