Word of the day: maven
A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.
The word is topical just now because NASA has launched a mission to Mars and called it Maven – see here. In this case, the word is intended to be an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution but the choice of words was clearly intended to evoke the notion of the spacecraft as a trusted expert.
I first came across the term maven seven years ago when it was suggested that, in a sense, it applied to me – see here.
November 20th, 2013 at 6:30 am
Roger,
The term maven is actually a lot older than 7 years old. It is derived from the Yiddish term מייוון
which is pronounced “mayven” which is used for expert, and is in turn derived from the Hebrew source of the verb “to understand”