Today is the last class of our current January class period. The start time for our class will be 10:00am. We will begin class with a casual conversation. Our reading today is about house work. Please try to read as much as possible. Underline any words or sentences that are unfamiliar. Our listening is about synergy. Please listen and read the transcript. We will complete our grammar sentences.
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What is the ultimate corporate buzzword? It might be synergy, as seen in company statements or PowerPoint presentations from management. But before it was corporate speak, synergy had roots in religion and medicine. With our Word of the Week segment about the origins of popular words, here's NPR's James Doubek.
JAMES DOUBEK, BYLINE: The word synergy comes from the Greek syn, meaning together, and ergon, meaning work. It basically means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, two people working together can be more productive than two people working separately. Jess Zafarris is the author of books about etymology. She says synergy is hundreds of years old.
JESS ZAFARRIS: There are several New Testament books that were written in Greek by the apostle Paul that contain the Greek word synergoi. And depending on the version, it's typically translated into English as fellow workers or laborers together.
DOUBEK: In the 1600s, the word made an appearance in a dispute between Christians. Here's Douglas Harper. He's the editor of etymonline.com.
DOUGLAS HARPER: One of the things they're fighting about is whether salvation comes from God's grace or man's will. And some people naturally would compromise and say, well, it's both. They work together.
DOUBEK: God and humans working together for salvation was called synergism. Synergy came back in the 1800s in medicine to talk about how human organs can work together and in toxicology, to say how compounds can be more powerful together than individually. By the mid-20th century, the business world caught on. The business strategist Igor Ansoff wrote a whole chapter about synergy in his 1965 book, "Corporate Strategy." Sociolinguist Erica Brozovsky says it caught on in the following decades.
ERICA BROZOVSKY: So synergy became this corporate buzzword in the '80s and '90s with all these business mergers and acquisitions, like, we're better together and we can do more, you know, and eventually it became overused.
DOUBEK: Chances are, you've seen synergy in a corporate presentation. Google synergy and you'll find lots of businesses using the word in their name or products. Harper says companies like the word because it sounds smart and positive.
HARPER: It sounds like energy. It sounds like sympathy. It sounds like a lot of things that sound good. Ask people what they mean by it. I bet they couldn't tell you.
DOUBEK: So next time you hear someone talk about synergy at the office, you and your coworkers can roll your eyes together.