More than words...

The other day we were discussing words at work. Being a business analyst I have a problem that words mean different things in different lines of business. Like Object, what is that? It's not as easy as referring to a word list because some words have a special meaning for a small group that is not perhaps aware of their special usage of a word.

In other cases the meaning can also lie in the mental image you project when you hear a word. Take martyr as an example. When you hear that word you can, perhaps unaware of the fact, think [be] a martyr or [act as] a martyr. And that first mental image says a lot about you and how you will interpret the rest of the conversation.

Me, being a sarcastic non romantic, visualize the "oh, feel sorry for me for I'm the martyr" characters who spend to much time convincing themselves and others that they are unselfish that they spend all their time thinking about themselves. Unselfish, naaa.

Someone else thinks about the stoic hero who throws himself in front of a mortal danger to save others.

These common words are the most dangerous during modeling and discussions on software development since you take the word and it's mental image for granted. Myself, I'm just happy that I don't have to build in some martyr functionality in our product.