Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
A note that stabilizes a term of the domain so as to make it usable in decisions, links and deliverables.
Full definition
In ordinary usage, a glossary entry is a dictionary definition applied to a domain: the word, its sense, possibly an example.
In the articles on this blog, the entry carries more: it says what the term means in the context, what it doesn't mean, how it is used, which terms it can be confused with, and which notes or decisions it illuminates. It is short, clear, sourced when possible, linked to the notes that use it, and attentive to confusions. It delimits a word without defending a position: a "because" or a "therefore" signals that an atomic note is being written in its place.
Usage in the field
The term comes into play when the type of note to write has to be decided while ingesting an article, when a word circulates between several functions — product, marketing, sales, support, management — with no settled sense, and when a network of notes starts connecting domains whose vocabularies overlap.
Synonyms and variants
Glossary card · lexicon entry · stabilized term.
Not to be confused with
- Atomic note — a note carrying a single idea in the form of a proposition, and asserting something contestable; the entry delimits a word, the note thinks.
- Thematic note — a synthesis assembling several notes around an angle; it proposes a reading, where the entry proposes only a sense.
- Mini-article — a text that goes all the way round a concept; the entry stops as soon as the word is usable.
- Ontology — a description of what a domain is made of, where the relations between objects count as much as their definitions; the glossary defines words one by one.
- Dictionary definition — a word's attested general sense, outside any context of use; the entry retains the sense that holds here.
Examples
Customer signal — the textbook case: the word isn't obscure, it is read differently by Sales, Support, Product and Product Marketing.
Positioning — the entry whose value lies mostly in separation from messaging, value proposition, tagline and campaign.
Ambiguities / debates
Two symmetrical drifts are attested, and they aren't corrected the same way. The argumentative entry defends a position instead of delimiting: its ideas come back out as atomic notes. The decorative glossary, for its part, is filled with correct definitions nobody consults, because none of the words retained was ambiguous.
An unsettled wobble: some hold that an entry must fix a single sense, others that it must record the competing acceptations when the disagreement is real.