The Word at Work

A lot of what underpins a business goes unnamed precisely because it often works. An episode of The Word at Work on gratitude as a form of seeing — and the question it leaves behind about what's carrying your work this week that you've stopped noticing.

We've made the word craft soft — craft beer, craft fairs, hand-crafted. Underneath sits an older meaning worth recovering: craft meant power. Here's where yours lives at work.

Portfolio began as a leather case for carrying papers. Where the word came from, how its meaning changed — and what a portfolio really is at work.

I bought my copy of Growing a Business second-hand. Inside the cover, in a father's handwriting to his son, was a single line: "To Todd, may this nurture the seed."

We often use amateur as an insult at work. But the word comes from the Latin for lover — and Vivian Maier's story shows exactly why that matters.

We use the word idea casually. But it traces back to a Greek verb meaning to see — and that changes how we understand what ideas actually are, and where they come from.

Usually read as the regret of waste, mottainai points somewhere more hopeful: the time, energy and attention we bring to work were never a cost — they're potential, backed.