My new column for the Visual Thesaurus, “A Very Enterprising Suffix,” looks at the rise and spread of -preneur, which has detached itself from entrepreneur and become a self-sufficient, up-by-its-bootstraps element of word creation.
Access is restricted to subscribers ($19.95 a year) is open to all! Here’s an excerpt:
Since 2001, U.S. trademarks have been registered for Christian-preneur, Dentalpreneur, Teenpreneur, Homepreneur, Kitchenpreneur, Media-preneur, Super-preneur, The Passion-preneur, and Message-preneur, among others. In more-informal use you'll find eco-preneur, journopreneur, oeno-trepreneur (New York magazine's description of Gary Vaynerchuk, "the leading grape guru of the Internet"), pastor-preneur (a minister who offers wealth-creation advice), solopreneur, webpreneur, and warrior-preneur (the nom de preneur of San Francisco Bay Area speaker/coach/consultant Ann M. Evanston). I suppose you might call me and my fellow name developers onoma-preneneurs.
I’ve been charting the -preneur phenomenon for almost five years. Here’s my original blog post on the subject, published in September 2009.
Comments