Which do you PREFER???

[Te tutava nei matou]

which of these 1980's buzzwords would you prefer to have:

kismet

serendipity

duende

charisma

synergy

fafafooey

please vote now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blowfish]

Synergy

[Gun Moll]

duende....but what is it?

[Blowfish]

good question. dictionary.com says:

du·en·de Pronunciation Key (d-nd)
n.
The ability to attract others through personal magnetism and charm.

[Te tutava nei matou]

these people have duende:

magic johnson
dennis rodman
pete rose
tommy lasorda
joe pepitone
bo belinsky




these people do not:

chris webber
brian billick
kareen abdul-jabbar
barry bonds
albert belle
vida blue
larry bowa
dave kingman


any additions to either list???

[Blowfish]

Dennis Rodman has charm? I'd go with he has charisma over duende.

Serendipity makes me think of a magical dragon like Puff the Magic Dragon.

[The Prophet]

"the melodious confluence of serendipity"

I guess I should preface this with the warning that I'm slowly working toward a Masters Degree in English, so I take discussions of word usage very seriously. It's like getting Mike Tyson involved in a game of "slaps"--you know he'll enjoy it more than he should, and everyone else will get tired of it before he does ; )

Anyway, I'm not so sure that you can technically "possess" either kismet (which basically means "fate" or "fortune") or serendipity. I don't have a dictionary with me at the moment, but serendipity IIRC means "the occurance or experience of making a fortunate discovery by accident." So you can experience serendipity, but I'm not sure that it is a quality you can ascribe to a person. I guess you could say that a person has a predisposition toward serendipity (which would make him "serendipitous"). I'm also not so sure that I'd list this as an 80's buzzword. What did occur in the 80's was the (mis?)usage of the word as a synonym for "spiritual awareness". In other words, "serendipity" as a goal--which, by definition, is incorrect since you can't "plan" an "accident". In one of the last honest jobs I held, my boss (who was a relic of the 1980's herself) used to speak of her "desire to achieve serendipity". I used to tell her that it was much more pragmatic to seek spiritual awareness directly while maintaining an openness to serendipitious occurance. Maybe that's why she fired me....

Fafafooey is certainly a 80's catchphrase that we can thank Howard Stern for, but "synergy" is such an 80's word that I can just imagine Gordon Gecko from the movie "Wall Street" overusing it. It's a good word, however, despite its overuse and it might be the best personal quality to possess--meaning that as a person you are greater than the sum of your parts. One of my ex-girlfriends had a very synergistic beauty--if you had to describe what about her was so great you couldn't think of anything but whatever she had worked together to make her very attractive.

Charisma is a great quality to have, but its basically the same thing as duende. Duende is a Spanish word that is usually translated as "charm" but in its native context has a more complex meaning. I know that I had a class once in Latino literature where we had a big essay question on what "duende" meant in English.

Anyway, I guess that "synergy" wins for being not only the quintessential 80's buzzword, but the best personal quality to possess.

Jim
THE PROPHET
www.netprophetsports.com

[freefallin]

how about sayings? "where's the beef?"!!!!!