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Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

Synergy has a real meaning: 1+1=3. A cigar and a whiskey. Chocolate and peanut butter. Hall and Oates. Et cetera. Unfortunately it's one of those terms like "DevOps" or "jam band" or "martini" whose true meaning has been sullied by people trying to sound cooler than they are.

On the rare occasions I've used it sincerely in meetings I've always caveated it with some variation of "the real meaning, not the BS one." This never seems to work so I've just dropped it from my verbal lexicon altogether.

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That's the right move. If a word changes its colloquial meaning, better drop it and find a new one. Happens all the time. From stuff like "agile" in a software development context (pretty meaningless at this point, can mean anything from the original definition to the systematic micro management it got to be commonly associated with), to previously neutral words that became offensive (because they were commonly used as such).

No individual holds power over connotations. Language just evolves.

> No individual holds power over connotations. Language just evolves.

Okay, but I still reserve the right to be pissed off at teenagers using 'out of pocket' when they mean 'off the wall' or 'out of bounds'.

This usage is probably older than you're thinking: some 80s and 90s hip hop songs used "out of pocket" like that.

Absolutely. I'm pro emotions :) Just also good to realise what battles are lost.

I do sometimes rebelliously use words in their original connotation along with an unnecessarily lengthy explanation. Never anything that's now an insult, of course, those I just stay away from and am not mad about either.

I always avoid synergy and say "bigger than the sum of its parts" or "peanut butter and jelly". Simple language with less baggage.

...except for those of us who think that PB&J is a culinary abomination in which case the metaphor disintegrates ;-D (apologies to my mother for having to make me PB-only sandwiches growing up)

I do wonder whether adding chips or bacon to counteract the cloying one-dimensional sweetness of the other ingredients would make me a fan though... chunky natural PB, blackberry jelly, hickory-smoked bacon on ciabatta? Hipster PbB&J might be the ticket.

I don't often want to start fights on HN but how dare you...

Wait, wait, wait. You were fine with the savory of peanut butter, texture, mouthfeel and crunch of the chunky variety of PB... But the jelly gave you fits for adding a shot of sweet and a slight hint of gelatinousness? You have uh... an interesting and idiosyncratic taste response, to say the least. The bacon would probably help, mind, though it's the culinary equivalent of "no shit, Sherlock". It'd run a spectrum from adding chewyness, to a bit of crunch depending on how it's prepared. It'd increase umami response, and add some protein content, but not really change the overall profile. If by chips you mean potato and not fries, you'll add some salty notes, crunch, and maybe a slight touch of after sweet as your saliva breaks down the complex starches. Still same problem with your jelly response. If you meant fries, salty notes, puffy mouthfeel/texture ranging from soft all the way through to crunchy-soft-crunchy depending on prep. If baked air fried, less oil contribution to umami. If deep fried, you have the frying medium notes added to the overall product. It'd be an experiment. I just think you maybe need to vary your jelly ratio. In proportion to your PB since you seem to have an exaggerated preference for umami.

To complicate things, this is unintelligble to non-US people who generally call what you call "jell-o" jelly, and what you call "jelly" we call jam.

But... US folks call jam jam too. Jam and jelly aren't the same.

At least, in France we'd also have the difference between configure and gelée.

Well, thought I'd fixed the configure typo and now it's too late.

But obviously, I meant confiture.

./confiture --prefix=/usr/belly && make install

Why would you drop it altogether? Medications and/or supplements can have synergistic effects, for example. Synergy is actually a term that is formally defined as "Effect(A + B) > Effect(A) + Effect(B)".

The point of saying and writing things is to be understood by your audience.

If I know a given wording is widely misunderstood, to the point I'm planning to immediately follow it with a clarification - often that's a sign it's not a very good wording.

There are exceptions, of course - go ahead and say Cephalopods (things like octopuses and squid) if you're a marine biology educator.

I am pretty sure the term "synergistic" is widely used among laymen as well in the context of supplements and medications.

So yeah, sure, context does matter.

I once told a female coworker she used my style of syntactic sugar. Later that week, I received a stern email from HR.

Synergy often means layoffs. As in, we merged two companies and now have two of every department, one of each has to go, and the remainder can do the work of both (yay synergy).

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