So, just goes to show that vocabulary familiarity is contextual. When I told Mark that my word of the day yesterday was fungible, he recognized the word instantly, which I admit surprised me. As we chatted, it became clear that his familiarity stems from his involvement as a manager in the negotiation and writing of business contracts. "'Fungible assets' is how I think of it," Mark said. As I learned from my perusal of various dictionaries yesterday, the term is most often cited in reference to commerce and law, related to commodities.
So based on my further enlightenment on this term, I would revise my concluding paragraph in yesterday's entry to say that if someone is writing a legal document or discussing commercial transactions and other business matters, fungible is a fine and dandy term to convey the precise meaning of interchangeable goods or one item that can replace or be replaced by another identical item.
I should also add that Mark laughed at my thinking that transposable is a more familiar synonym for fungible. As I said, familiarity is contextual.
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You say "fungible" is fine and dandy and familiarity is contextual. I say "fine and dandy" is familial -- my brother went into business for himself, naming his convenience store "Fine 'n Dandy."
ReplyDeleteIt went broke. (He lost his fungible assets.)