Friday, August 17, 2012

What You Can Learn In Economics Class

The August 17, 2012 Doonesbury:

Doonesbury - Learned Fungible In Economics Class

In this class last year, during the first week, a student who had read something on this blog outside of class came to class the next day and asked what one of the words I used meant.

I gave him some good advice. Open Google, and type the keyword define and the word you don’t know, and it will give you definitions. He didn’t know this, and he was an A student. Now you know it. Here’s what I got when I looked it up in Google.

N.B.: Fungible has been a word on the move the last 2 decades. When I first heard it perhaps 25 years ago, it wasn’t in even in the first dictionary I looked at. Now, it’s such a useful word for an interesting property that there is a Wikipedia page for fungibility. Even though the word “fungibility” is not in Microsoft’s default dictionary for Windows Live Writer (which I use to write these posts).

BTW: If you find dictionary definitions to dry to be useful, you should try Wordnik, where people can post examples of the actual usage for words. It has a page for both fungible and for fungibility.

FWIW: I don’t use dictionaries any more. I packed up all the ones in the house and office about 2 years ago. They’re in storage, but I haven’t gotten them out once.

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