SYNERGISTIC

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Dr. Goodword
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SYNERGISTIC

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:03 am

• synergistic •

Pronunciation: si-nêr-gis-tik • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Interacting in such a way that the result is greater than the sum of the effects of the individuals involved in the interaction.

Notes: Today's Good Word has been very popular over the past few decades, so it has developed several derivational relatives. Synergism is a rather old one, referring to the religious belief that individual salvation can be achieved only with the help of divine grace. This adjective comes from the noun synergy, which refers to synergistic interaction itself.

In Play: It seems to be a fact that two or more people can work together and synergistically accomplish more than they could working alone: "Marge, I don't think yours are the only two kids who synergistically do the damage of three kids when they play in the house." Working together always pays off, no two ways about it: "Lloyd and Claudine's synergistic collaboration led not only to almost three times more memos in the office but to memos much better written."

Word History: Today's Good Word is the adjective from synergy, a word derived from Greek sunergos "working together". It is made up of syn "together (with)" + ergon "work". Greek ergon came from Proto-Indo-European werg- "to do, make", which ended up in German as Werk and in English as work. Greek also molded orgia "secret rites" from this root, which English borrowed as orgy—an interesting kind of work. Surgery was borrowed by English (via French) from Latin chirurgia, reduced from Greek kheirourgia "handwork" from kheir "hand" + ergon + the noun suffix -ia. (We thank Loren Baldwin for suggesting this term in hopes that we have worked synergistically with him in producing today's Good Word.)
• The Good Dr. Goodword

nicklinneh
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Postby nicklinneh » Sun Jan 06, 2008 2:20 pm

Dr. GW- You neglected to point out in the Origins paragraph that the erg is the metric (CGS) unit of work (& energy). -ken

Stargzer
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Postby Stargzer » Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:42 pm

That's OK, Doc is a Linguist, in the Humanities, not a Science Major. We can forgive him for these small lapses. :)
Regards//Larry

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nicklinneh
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Postby nicklinneh » Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:06 pm

OK, he's forgiven. But what about ergonomics? (not really a science major word). --ken

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Postby Perry » Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:32 pm

Erg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses see Erg (disambiguation)
An erg is the unit of energy and mechanical work in the centimetre-gram-second (CGS) system of units, symbol "erg". Its name is derived from the Greek word meaning "work".

The erg is a small unit, equal to a force of one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimeter. In the CGS base units, it is equal to one gram centimeter-squared per second squared (g·cm²/s²). It is thus equal to 1 × 10−7 joules or 0.1 microjoule (µJ) in SI units.

1 erg = 10−7 joule

1 joule = 107 erg

1 dyn cm = 1 erg.

From Greek ergon work [OED]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erg"
From the above, we can see that the ergy in synergy, and erg both come from ergon. So had the good doctor mentioned erg, it would have been as an aside, rather than as part of the word history.

And y'all didn't think that I could be serious. :wink:
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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