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Preneur-ism is Getting Out of Control
Entrepreneurs are fine, and I was okay with solopreneurs, but I’ll be damned if I acknowledge the wantrepreneur
Americans have a knack for taking perfectly normal, good things and making them absurd, even — or perhaps especially — when we invent them. We gave the world the hamburger, and then unleashed the “douche burger.” How about the taser? Useful, it saves lives! Except, of course, we had to make it look mistakingly like a gun.
We also tend to butcher words. And it’s not just that English is markedly confusing. It’s that we like to take regular words — sometimes from other languages — and contort them into unrecognizable, ridiculous versions of what they once were.
Today I’m harping on the seemingly harmless: “Entrepreneur.”
The French gifted this phrase to the world with the original meaning of “undertaking” or “one who undertakes or manages.” It has evolved to more generally define someone who undertakes a business enterprise of some sort — typically something new or innovative — with the added reality of risk. And over time we’ve generally kept that word sacred.
But not America. No. We turned freelancers into “solopreneurs.” Online sellers-of-things became “e-preneurs.” Evidently…
