Reader question:
Please explain “for lack of a better word” in this quote: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
My comments:
“Greed is good” is something often heard in economic circles. Greed is what drives productivity, economists say, for example. It’s people’s desire to own more things, better things that make them work harder.
In other words, it is their greed or insatiable desire for bigger and better houses and cars that gets them out of bed early every morning.
This is a simplistic view, of course, but then again, “greed is good” is itself a simplistic view.
Because, let’s face it, greed or our excessive and insatiable desire to obtain and own more things can be dangerous. One greedy, not to mention corrupt official in China, for example, has found himself in jail for, among other things, owning more than 1,800 houses or apartments.
That’s just one example and it should suffice.
Simply put, greed is perhaps not so good. That’s why in our quote above, someone said: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
By that, the speaker admits that he or she doesn’t have a better word to describe greed more accurately and thoroughly.
For lack of a better word?
That means exactly as those words reveal at face value – due to a want of a better word or phrase.
In other words, the speaker’s vocabulary is limited.
I’m kidding. As a matter of fact, this speaker isn’t lacking in terms of either vocabulary or imagination. On the contrary, this speaker uses “for lack of a better word” rather deliberately. The speaker uses this expression to point out the very complexity pertaining to the concept of greed.
To point out, in other words, that greed as an issue (for lack of a better word on my part), is complicated.
Anyways, we can usually detect whether “for lack of a better word or term” means literally or otherwise (for example, humorously) via context.
And here are a few recent media examples:
1. There were no best-seller lists in 1809, but it was quickly clear to the German reading public that Goethe’s third novel, Elective Affinities, which appeared in the fall of that year, was a flop. His first, The Sorrows of Young Werther, had inspired a fashion craze and copycat suicides, and had fired the heart of a young Napoleon. His latest effort, on the other hand, received befuddled notices from critics and little love from the coterie of writers and philosophers drawn to the Great Man. Everyone from the Brothers Grimm to Achim von Arnim to Wilhelm von Humboldt agreed that the book was a bore, that its plot made nearly no sense, and that its treatment of adultery bordered on the distasteful.
At sixty, Goethe was not one to let bad reviews get him down. The universally beloved Faust had appeared in 1808, and by 1810, Goethe was to have completed his Theory of Colors as well as his autobiography, Poetry and Truth. Nonetheless, in the correspondence he sent out around the time of publication, Goethe found himself compelled to admit that he had as little idea as anyone else of what he was trying to accomplish with his most recent book, or of what it had finally become. Then as now, Elective Affinities is an incredible, deeply mystifying read, the headstone of a man who hoped to groom the wilderness of life into an English park where even loss, pain, and death have finally found their proper place.
It’s difficult to pinpoint what makes the novel so elusive, in our time as in Goethe’s. The book is neither long nor dense; its characters’ motives are not hard to fathom, its plot not difficult to follow. In fact, Elective Affinities is the rare book that opens by spelling out what will happen by its end. The protagonists, Eduard and Charlotte, are aristocrats who have overcome loveless marriages to find true love with each other. At the start of the story, they invite Eduard’s childhood friend, the Captain, to live with them, ostensibly to help out with various projects around the estate. Soon after his arrival, the Captain, a dilettante scientist, explains the principle of elective affinities to the couple – how the elements of a seemingly stable compound, such as limestone, will separate and form a new combination when introduced to sulfuric acid. With Charlotte’s beautiful but withdrawn niece Ottilie due to arrive shortly, the company observes how amusing it would be if, like the limestone and the sulfuric acid, Eduard rushed to Ottilie while Charlotte paired up with the Captain. (No points for guessing what happens next.)
Chemistry is, to be sure, hardly the most inventive metaphor for romantic feeling. And yet, as Charlotte observes, we often forget just how much of natural science, which we take to be the inalienable reality of our existence, is informed by the human experience it is meant to illuminate. Elements don’t elect to do anything; they just rush together blindly, machinelike. Nor are the “laws” of thermodynamics freely legislated – they just are. Everywhere Goethe’s characters look, they see portentous signs that give the action a sense of fatefulness, as though it were being propelled by an “invisible, almost magical force of attraction.” Eduard discovers that he and Ottilie have the same handwriting; a visiting Englishman reads from a novella that perfectly describes the plot up to that point. All the while, Goethe reminds us, via the supporting cast, how often we misread the world in order to dress up self-serving behavior for which we are reluctant to take responsibility. What begins as a rather slight take on the romantic tribulations of the moneyed class gradually unspools, in Goethe’s hands, into a meditation on the murkiness of the laws that rule us – on the “riddle of life,” as the narrator calls it, for which we only ever find the answer in one another.
The biggest obstacle between Goethe and his American readership has always been his style. Only Goethe could write a sentence like “He took note of all the beauties which the new paths had made visible and able to be enjoyed,” skipping, in typical Goethe fashion, right past the actual beauty to linger on the sensibility of organization that makes it possible. When his dialogue and scene direction are not delivering one perfectly crafted aphorism after another, they’re bare and utilitarian. (At a dinner party, Charlotte, “wishing to get away from the subject once and for all, tried a bold shift of direction and was successful.”) And then there is Goethe’s strangely limited vocabulary, which favors simple yet maddeningly untranslatable words – like bedeutsam – that never sound quite right, no matter how they are rendered. (“These wondrous events seemed to her to presage a significant future, but not an unhappy one.”) Goethe’s English translators have always turned the clarity and placidity of his prose into something flat and wooden – although, in their defense, Goethe was never really one to wrangle for le mot just to begin with. By the time of Elective Affinities, he dictated his works entirely to his secretary. The privy councilor to the Duke of Weimar was simply too busy to spend the day trying to decide if scarlet sounded better than vermillion.
It doesn’t help Goethe’s case that how his characters spend their days seems, for lack of a better word, insane. The newest Oxford Classics edition of Elective Affinities misleadingly promises a scathing critique of aristocrats “with little to occupy them.”
- An Irresistible, Almost Magical Force, TheParisReview.org, April 22, 2014.
2. The question is reverberating across university campuses, research centers, think tanks, and not least, in the minds of authors.
I have some thoughts as a nonfiction book coach (the topic is swirling in our community too), which I’ll get to in a moment. But first, I conducted a little experiment.
I posed the question (the title of this piece) to Microsoft’s Bing search bar. The first response that popped up told me this:
“While AI in fiction writing might evoke images of robots crafting fantastical tales, its role in non-fiction is more grounded, focused on enhancing research, improving accuracy, and streamlining the writing process. Non-fiction writers, from journalists to historians and bloggers, are increasingly turning to AI tools to assist in their work.”
That assertion was pulled from a LinkedIn post written by Thomas Testi, Director of AI Technical Education at the Global Alliance on Sustainability & AI, Inc. (GASAI). GASAI is funded by, among others, NVIDIA, the self-proclaimed world leader in AI computing.
Do you see an ouroboros – a dragon eating its own tail? I do.
I next posed the same question to Microsoft’s AI companion app, Copilot, which cheerfully informed me that “AI is a powerful tool that complements human creativity and expertise, making the nonfiction writing process more efficient and effective.”
Copilot listed six ways that AI can help produce nonfiction, ranging from drafting text to tailoring content to specific audiences and that old standby, proofreading.
The subtext from Copilot: Sit back, relax, let AI do most of the work for you.
Indeed, if we take responses like these at face value – and with a straight face – then we may as well put down our pens and relax. The jig is up. The age of struggling to write is over.
That’s not gonna happen – not any time soon.
Nonfiction writers are not, for lack of a better word, stupid. I trust that writers with integrity and professional experience are able to discern sources offering confirmatory bias, for starters. I trust, also, that with trial and error, they can figure out the extent to which AI can be relied upon to assist with specific tasks.
- What is AI’s Role in Researching and Writing Nonfiction? By Amy L. Berstein, AuthorAccelerator.com, October 22, 2024.
3. How do you make a former reality TV star and sitting U.S. president look like a supporting character in his own show?
Simple: let Elon Musk waltz into the Oval Office, dressed like he’s about to drop his kid off at daycare, and casually dismantle the entire concept of protocol. That’s exactly what happened on Feb. 11, 2025, when the world’s richest man – and now, apparently, the de facto ruler of the free world – stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Donald Trump during a press conference. Except, Trump wasn’t exactly “shoulder-to-shoulder.” The man who has spent his life demanding loyalty oaths and gold-plated adoration, looked, for lack of a better word, small. This press conference was about Musk reminding everyone who’s really in charge. He brought his kid, and spent more time talking than the actual president.
Musk was addressing the concerns related to DOGE, the committee he was tasked with leading. Its mandate is to supposedly cut waste and investigate fraud. However, DOGE has been criticized for its lack of transparency, and for good reason. Musk’s idea of “efficiency” seems to align perfectly with his business interests. Tesla, SpaceX, and his other ventures have already benefited from billions in federal tax breaks, loans, and contracts. At least 11 federal agencies were investigating Musk’s companies for various alleged shenanigans. Now, he’s in a position to decide which parts of the government get axed.
When a federal judge restricted DOGE from going rogue, Musk’s response wasn’t to respect the rule of law, or maybe reconsider his overreach. Instead, he called for the judge’s impeachment. Is this the new America? A country where judges are vilified for doing their jobs? Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale warned us about what happens when institutions are co-opted by power-hungry leaders. George Orwell’s 1984 showed us the dangers of a world where dissent is crushed and the rule of law is meaningless. And now, Musk and Trump are giving us a live-action version. If we let this happen, we deserve exactly the dystopia we get.
- ‘A picture of presidential subservience’: As Donald Trump bends the knee to Elon Musk, a terrifying reality settles in for Americans, WeGotThisCovered.com, February 13, 2025.
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About the author:
Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.
（作者：张欣）
