This section serves to expand your regular vocabulary. What separates the men from the boys (or the women from the girls, if you want to equalize things) is v o c a b u l a r y. We cannot stress this point enough. People who have a larger vocabulary have been shown to make more money and get promoted more often.
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The literal French translation: black beast. Sounds scary. The way the English-speaking world uses the term is a little less creepy: a person or thing (not necessarily tangible) that you want to avoid because it stirs up dread, disgust and/or hatred. Uh… we hope we’re not anyone’s bête noire.
Example: Prima donna designers have long been the bête noire of contractors, but they’ve become the darlings of drama-hungry media and insecure, status-conscious clients.
Such a funny, happy little word to represent a large group or collective set of something.
Example: A bevy of interior design students from the city’s local program eagerly listed to Jackson while he toured them around the firm’s offices and told them about the firm’s latest projects.
We love this word. On the one hand, it means lighthearted, merry, and carefree in disposition or character – a positive, to be sure. On the other hand, it takes on a more negative bent as it can also mean lacking in consideration, heedless, and a little too casual when it comes to thinking things through. Our example sentence uses the latter definition.
Example: In a panic due to her client’s anger over the poor wearing capability of the carpet she specified for his bank lobby, Judith met the manufacturer’s representative at the site to inspect. To her dismay, he reacted with blithe unconcern, even after seeing the product’s deteriorated condition first-hand.
This fun, cheerful word is French (“But, of course!” said in an over-the-top accent), and it literally means “good liver.” Not in the organ sense, but in the sense of one who lives well. More distinctively, it means one who is culturally refined and has perfect social taste, especially when it comes to cuisine and wine.
Example: Nigel absolutely loved his new clients. Not only did they have multiple homes in multiple countries in need of extensive remodeling, but they were quite the bon vivants and loved to treat him to sumptuous dinners at the best restaurants London had to offer.
If you were born prior to 1973, then the first thing that comes to mind when you hear this word is probably Hoss and Little Joe. This most popular of TV westerns was certainly a bonanza for NBC as it ran for 14 years. So what’s a bonanza? A large amount of something positive, or something very valuable, worthwhile or profitable. Who doesn’t want one of those?
Example: Jennifer’s long-time friendship with her junior high soccer teammate miraculously ended up being a bonanza for her interior design career when Vicky hired Jennifer to be the designer of record for her nationwide chain of popular yogurt shops.
A tiny, to-the-point word that means a blessing, opportune benefit, or favor.
Example: Rachelle’s receiving the grant funding for her research in the area of healthcare design was a significant boon not only to her, but to the university overall and especially its interior design department.
A peppy noun with Italian ancestry that denotes the three Vs: vivaciousness, verve, and enthusiastic vigor. Capiche?
Example: Danny’s brio usually motivated the others in his studio, but after two all-nighters dedicated to finishing up the over-wrought construction documents, it was merely getting on their nerves.
We’ve seen this word more and more in the news in the last year, so we thought that we would include it in the glossary. Primarily it’s being used in relation to cities assigning tax credits and/or offering grants to private developers to transform brownfield sites into multi-use developments – i.e., apartments, condos, retail, dining and entertainment venues, conference centers, etc. – thereby revitalizing sections of a city, increasing tax revenue and slowing suburban sprawl. Therefore, you can probably surmise that the term “brownfield” refers to older, neglected or abandoned urban areas that have mostly been used for industrial purposes in the past but are sitting idle as unproductive eyesores currently.
Example: With the price of gasoline steadily rising, more investors are seeing the potential of developing brownfields into urban multifamily housing, attracting residents by decreasing their commute time and expense.
Stands for “Curriculum Vitae” (pronounced kur-RIK-u-lum VEE-tie or kur-RIK-u-lum VI-tee). Another term for a résumé. In other words, a summary of one's career and job qualifications. You hear this term used more in Europe than in the States.
This is a slippery little word because it can denote both an individual within a group and the group itself. More specifically, the aforementioned group is made up of people unified by some bond such as membership in an organization or training in a specialized skill set.
Example sentence: The cadre of emerging designers stuck together even after they graduated, attending industry events, studying for the NCIDQ, and even going to national tradeshows together.
Can too! Sans apostrophe, this combination of letters loses the meaning “can not.” No, this transitive verb means to tilt or set an angle. Add an “ed” to the end and it turns into an adjective describing how something is set at a slope or pitched to one side.
Example: The main galleries of the museum are one story in the air, expressed with boxes of various sizes, overhangs, and colors, all tied together with canted glazing at various angles.
This is a fancy word to say to give in or to yield. If you capitulate, then you acquiesce to another or a group, ceasing to resist to accept their actions, opinions, or way of thinking.
Example: Even though Carlotta believed the space plan for the new university library project to be inefficient, she capitulated and went along with the rest of the design team.
Out by its lonesome self, your first impression of “carp” most likely focuses on its definition as a fish. However, this schizophrenic word is also a verb meaning to find fault, irritably complain, or raise trivial objections to some thing or situation.
Example: If her boss didn’t stop carping about every little decision she made when trying to get the already overdue set of construction documents out the door, Vivian was going to have a nervous breakdown.
If you were born after 1975, there is a good chance that you don’t know exactly what this word means. Or, at least, where it came from. So let us enlighten you. It comes from the 1961 Joseph Heller novel of the same name (which happened to be made into a movie with a stellar cast in 1970). Anyway, a catch-22 is an unreasonable, illogical situation or policy that ends up either having the opposite effect of what is intended or results in two equally undesirable alternatives for the decision maker, usually because each outcome binds, hinders, or harms him or her in some way. Huh? It’s best understood via example…
Example: Interior design grads face a catch-22 every year: they have trouble getting a job without experience, and they can’t get experience without a job.
To bridge the gap between the student / educational community and the professional / manufacturer community of the interior design world, and not to die of boredom while we do it.
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