Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Synergy
/ˈsɪnərdʒi/noun
The extra effect produced when two things combine that neither produces alone.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together with
ἔργον
érgon
work
Literally: “working together”
The story of the word
The word arrived in English through theology, not business. Synergism was the Reformation-era doctrine that the human will cooperates with divine grace in salvation, and it caused a bitter Lutheran quarrel. In Greek, συνεργός simply meant a fellow worker; Paul uses it of the people who travelled with him. Pharmacology took it up for drugs that amplify each other, and management borrowed it from there in the twentieth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1650s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
energyergonomicssurgerysynod
In a sentence
The two departments were merged on the promise of synergies that never materialised.