This an excerpt from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, CHARISMATIC CAREER COUNSELLING ~ ADVANCING FROM ASPIRATION TO INSPIRATION!

ORIGINS OF THE WORD “CAREER”

The word “career” is used in several senses—all related to the general subject of occupations or jobs in the world of work. It originated from the Latin word carrus, cart; Spanish carrera, road; French carrière, racecourse. The Online Etymological Dictionary informs us as follows:

career (noun)

1530s, “a running (usually at full speed), a course” (especially of the sun, etc., across the sky), from French carrière “road, racecourse” (16c.), from Old Provençal or Italian carriera, from Vulgar Latin *(via) cararia “carriage (road), track for wheeled vehicles,” from Latin carrus “chariot” (related to ‘car’). Sense of “general course of action or movement” is from 1590s, hence “course of one’s public or professional life” (1803).

career (verb)

1590s, “to charge at a tournament,” from career (n.). The meaning “move rapidly, run at full speed” (1640s) is from the image of a horse “passing a career” on the jousting field, etc. Related: careered; careering.

If we distill the options to cart, horse, and road or race-course, we could infer the meaning of career as follows:

CART: This perspective suggests that a career could be involving a job that carries one’s work outputs to others. It crafts the questions: “What is in the cart?” or “What is being carried by one’s work?” In tandem, a cart is also a vehicle that is ordinarily pulled by a horse, so to put the cart before the horse is an analogy for doing things in the wrong order, the wrong way round, with the wrong emphasis, or confusing cause and effect. Thus, one should NOT be performing work in this manner. They look at people not as ‘What do you do?’ but as ‘Who are you?’ Such “cart” people are driven by core beliefs and values and in their view, carrus (career) should lead to carus (caring).

[to be continued in the Next Post]