Note: This is our final Word of the Day for the 2019-20 school year. This feature will resume in September.
propinquity prə-ˈpiŋ-kwə-tē noun
: the property of being close together
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The word propinquity has appeared in one article on NYTimes.com in the past year, on May 17 in the Opinion column “Farewell, Office. You Were the Last Boundary Between Work and Home” by Jennifer Senior:
But the benefits to office life are more than just social. They are also intellectual. Without offices, we miss out on the chance for serendipitous encounters, and it’s precisely those moments of felicitous engagement that spark the best ideas.
Years ago, the productivity philosopher and author Adam Grant pointed out to me that the reason we have Post-it Notes is because a chemist at 3M, Spencer Silver, spent years trying fruitlessly to promote his low-tack adhesive in and around the office — until a churchgoing colleague, Art Fry, finally saw one of his presentations and realized the sticky stuff would be perfect for keeping his bookmarks affixed to his hymnals. Propinquity made all the difference.
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