We are used to words that are developed or re-interpreted in the USA business environment moving across borders and oceans and slowly becoming part of the global business lexicon. Recent examples guaranteed to make the traditionalist English language student shudder include cadence, collude, on-boarding and socialise.

‘Cadence’ is losing its musical connotations and coming to mean regularity or timing – “there will be a regular cadence of press releases”.

‘Collude’ which should refer to nasty or illegal agreement, can now mean just get together or meet – “let’s collude next week on that”.

‘Socialise’ seems to have just appeared in the last two years with the meaning of introduce or gain acceptance– “we need to socialise these concepts before we announce them formally”.

‘On-boarding’ means inducting or introducing – “when you’ve been on-boarded, we’ll show you the canteen”.

OK, you get the message. In a dynamic environment such as the US business world there are things you need to say that don’t seem to be expressed by existing terms so you re-purpose (or re-career) old ones or simple make up new ones. We’re used to this now – I remember being surprised 10 years ago when I heard the word ‘tasked’ for the first time. I had only ever heard ‘task’ as a noun prior to that, but ‘tasked’ is in very common usage today.  

The reason this came to mind is that I came across the word ‘gilivable’ yesterday. It was in the heading of an email sent by a Chinese client to Chinese colleagues, in English. I tried Google just in case my first impression was wrong and it really was a word in the English language.

Google brings up 2050 results for ‘gilivable’. There is a, perhaps clumsy, definition here - http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Gilivable. The adjective derives from a Chinese term which means ‘giving power’ and is most closely translated as ‘awesome’ or ‘cool’. It started to circulate online during the 2010 world cup, and already has an opposite – ‘ungilivable’. How long will it be before we start hearing it in the US and the Europe?

So now China is introducing new English words to the global lexicon. Get used to it. Gilivable might not catch on outside China, but more words will come, and one day we will use them without thinking.

Lyle