Today's Word "Parergy"
Published in Vocabulary
parergy \peh-RER-jee or PAE-reh-jee\ (noun) - Something unimportant, incidental or superfluous.
"Rick's tomahawk-throwing at the county fairs is a parergon to his job as a tax attorney."
From the Greek parergon "by-work, secondary business" from parergos, "incidental, subordinate, incidental," itself based on para "beside" + ergon "work." "Para" shares a source with Russian prefix pere- "over, across," English "for," Latin per "through, by." "Parergy" and "parergon" are not directly related to paragon "model of perfection," which comes from the Greek parakonan "to sharpen" from para "beside" + akon "whetstone." An obsolete word, perhaps, but one that deserves to be brought back into the English lexical fold, especially since so many of us practice parergies (the plural form), like surfing the Web at work.
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