A WORD, PLEASE — enthusiasm

continuity: Next, Professor Aubrey Vellum, with a cheerful little word that once got people into serious trouble.

the verdict: You've seen the job advert. Night shifts in a warehouse, stacking boxes, and right at the bottom, in hopeful letters: 'Must show enthusiasm.' I always smile at that line, because the word they're asking for once meant something far bigger than a good attitude about boxes.

a word, please: Enthusiasm. A word, please.

the crack: It starts in ancient Greece, with a little word called entheos . It's made of en, meaning 'in,' and theos , meaning 'god.' So to a Greek, an enthusiast was someone with a god inside them, filled up and carried away by something divine. Not merely keen, but possessed. Now, you may have read online that the word means 'in the essence of God,' with a third Greek piece tucked onto the end. It's a lovely story, and it isn't true. That ending is just the ordinary bit that turns an idea into a noun, and the real story is better anyway.

the collision: The word came to English in fifteen forty-eight, through French and Latin, in a translation of Martin Luther. For the next two hundred years, calling someone an enthusiast was no compliment. It was an accusation. It meant a person who claimed God spoke to them privately, with no church needed, and that made a great many people very nervous. In seventeen fifty-five, Samuel Johnson put it in his great dictionary as 'a vain belief of private revelation.' Then, slowly, the word cooled down. The god quietly moved out, and what stayed behind was the glow: the eagerness, the lit-up face. And that is how a word for holy fire ended up in a warehouse advert, right next to 'forklift licence preferred.'

the glimmer: Maybe the old meaning never really left. When someone is truly lit up by a thing they love, it still looks a little as if something bigger than them is burning inside.

the exit: That's the word. Bring a little of it to something today, even if it's only the boxes.