the.com/generalist
Knows a little about everything, so nothing can blindside them at dinner.
means Someone with broad knowledge and skills across many areas rather than deep mastery of one.
from Traces to 'general,' from Latin 'generalis' — 'relating to a whole class or kind' — itself from 'genus,' meaning race, kind, or type. The 'generalist' as a human type emerges in the 19th century, built by adding '-ist' to mark a practitioner of the general, in contrast to the newly prestigious 'specialist.' The two words were coined as a pair, almost as rivals, as the modern world began splitting knowledge into narrower and narrower fields.
- origin
- Rose as specialization made careers narrower and brittler
- superpower
- Connects dots specialists are too deep to see
- risk
- Jack of all trades, master of none, oddly often better
- job market
- Undervalued until the role nobody specialized for appears