A.Word.A.Day --factotum

A.Word.A.Day

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Sep 9, 2013

This week's theme
What to call people at work

This week's words
factotum
interlocutor
confrere
protege
fugleman

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Wordsmith Talk

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Are you still calling people around you in the workplace with worn-out words? Terms such as colleague, employee, boss, and intern are so passé. Here's a fresh supply of words to bring some variety at work.

factotum

PRONUNCIATION:

(fak-TOH-tuhm)

MEANING:

noun: A servant or a low-level employee tasked with many things.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin factotum, from facere (to do) + totus (all). Earliest documented use: 1573.

USAGE:

"Now, a reporter trying to interview a business source is confronted by a phalanx of factotums."
David Carr; The Puppetry of Quotation Approval; The New York Times; Sep 16, 2012.

See more usage examples of factotum in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

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