Beautiful words — aestivate

I love the power of language, and of well-chosen words. A little over a month ago, I wrote a post bringing together a number of the words and short phrases I’ve mused on over time on this site with links to those posts. That post is called

“Beautiful words bring dimensions of meaning”

In that post I highlighted the power of language for leaders: “we follow leaders partly through rationality, through thinking about what they say. However, we also process (often unconsciously) other ways in which they communicate. Are they calm? sage? energised? fierily passionate? purposeful? resolute?”

By choosing words and phrases of rich meaning, we bring depth to our expression and so our leadership. One such word of resonance to me right now is:

Aestivate

Thank you to Robert Macfarlane, who posted this on twitter:

Word of the day: “aestivate” — to pass the summer in a state of torpor, drowsiness & lowered metabolic rate (from the Latin aestas, summer); also to summer in a place. A creature or person may emerge from “aestivation” in autumn as from “hibernation” in spring.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been talking about “back to school” energy, as recently as yesterday, in fact, in “When will you next recharge..yourself?”. In fact, in the middle of writing…