Vocabulary

It’s good to learn new things.  It keeps us fresh, keeps us from getting complacent.

One thing that is true of moving not only to a new job, but a new job in an entirely new domain, is that there will be plenty of new things to learn.

Today’s observation relates to vocabulary.

It’s probably true that every group larger than four starts to create a unique vocabulary.  It’s certainly true when you move from one company to another and even more so if you move to a new industry.

With my new job, I get to learn a new industry as well as a new host of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and vocabulary.

I’ve read entire emails where while I recognize each and every individual word, I have no bloody idea what the author is talking about.  That’s scary!

And then, if you like words, occasionally you simply get to learn a new word and its usage.

My favorite new word for the week is: Idempotent.

I’ve seen it used three times in the last two weeks and, to the best of my knowledge, have never seen the word before that.

I had to look it up on Wikipedia.  No, I’m not going to explain it here because they do a better job of explaining it there.

Turns out it has an application in software as well which I’d never been exposed to before and was not clear from the context.

New things to learn!  Life is good!  Now to use it in a sentence…

“If I have a sex change operation and then have another one, I’ll be back where I started,” he observed idempotently.

Hmmm.  See, that’s funnier after you read the Wikipedia article.  But not much.